Update on Jack

Since there is no sense in me rewriting this, the following update on my nephew, Jack, is from an email written by Matt, my brother:

***

Just so that everyone knows some of the details. Jack was born on Monday, February 4th, at 8:39 a.m. weighing in at 7lbs exactly and 18 inches long. He appeared healthy until before our discharge when a pediatrician listened to his heart and heard an abnormality. So... 

At that point a lot of things happened quickly and we was quickly diagnosed with a blocked pulmonary artery due to the fusion of the valve between it and the right ventricle. This prevents deoxygenated blood from getting to the lungs to be oxygenated. This also leads to an poorly developed right ventricle. Fortunately, there exists a connection between the aorta and pulmonary arteries that exists during pregnancy that they have been able to keep open with medication. This stabilized him and gave him that much needed oxygen that he was having difficulty getting, since the connection begins to close after he is born. 

 Today he is in SickKids in Toronto after a quick transfer from L____'s [their hometown] cardiac department. He is stable and very happy, warm and comfortable. He loves to have his full head of hair played with and will smile if you sing at him and do it. So, lots of fun there. Everything else with our little man is just right, and he's a awesome little dude we are excited for you to all meet and fall in love with him too! 

Today at around noon he will be having a procedure done to open up the valve between the right ventricle and the pulmonary artery using a catheter. This is a minimally invasive procedure that we hope will successfully treat his condition so he can continue growing and become a member of the V's [my maiden name] baseball team we are forming. We really don't know anything beyond this procedure, and doctors cannot give us a timeline for anything. Since he is so small, how his little heart reacts to the opening of the valve is unpredictable. We will likely be at Sick Kids into next week, and depending on complications and success, perhaps weeks. 

The procedure has a very high success rate, but the risks are also great, as all things are around newborns and their little hearts. We pray that you can give extra prayer for little Jack, and keep him in your hearts as we move forward. He could be in the Catheter Lab for the procedure for 3 to 4 hours, so you got lots of opportunity to give a shout out to the Big Man. He is the great healer, and only through His saving and regenerative grace have we been able to make it this far. 

Also pray for Lynsey as she is recovering from a difficult delivery. We are trying to force her to sleep, but she is proving a difficult patient ;). But she is doing better and better every day, and is able to help Jack out in her own way. Pray for both of us to keep going with energy and optimism as we battle with frustration, exhaustion, and basically all the emotions that you can think of. 

***

Poor little man... this makes me cry. But even with all those tubes and wires, he's really adorable, isn't he? He rivals my own newborns (and blow's my older brother's not-cute-newborns out of the water :) I wish I could be with them, but since they are over 3 hours away and I have my own two kids to care for, it's just not possible...

Baby Jack

My brother, Matt, and his wife, Lynsey, had their baby boy, Jack, yesterday morning (2.5 weeks early).  They were planning to go home today, but this morning they found out that Jack has a blocked artery and is being transferred to SickKids in Toronto.  I can only imagine what a nightmare they're going through.  Please send some prayers and/or positive thoughts their way!

19 Weeks and Rolling

This doesn't really matter, buuuuut...

Isaiah did his first roll a few weeks ago, front to back... and then never really rolled again.  I don't "encourage" these things, as they'll happen on their own time.  Noah did everything early (which I was proud of, even though it seriously does. not. matter.), but I just haven't cared when Isaiah does things.

Anyway, today he is exactly 19 weeks old (I had to go to the calendar and count, because I had no idea how many weeks old he was) just shy of 4.5 months, and something suddenly clicked.  He was a rolling fool.  Not just front to back, but lots of back to front.  He's been on the verge of this for a week or so, because he rolled from his back to his side reeeally well.  Today was the day he completed the task.

He was so proud of himself.

On to things that do matter:

The most kissable cheeks in the world, I tell you.

Love that kid.

Oh, and today we discovered that Isaiah seems to be really tilting his head to the right.  I'm not worried about it (I could almost swear that when he was a newborn he always tilted his head to the opposite direction... I'm not positive on that though), but I am going to be taking him to the chiropractor again for it.  We haven't been to the chiro since October, I think.  Time for another few trips!  Like I said, I'm not worried about it because I'm looking back at other pictures I took, and as recently as January 27 he had no noticeable head tilt (every picture I've taken since then he was laying down, and he doesn't have a noticeable tilt when he's laying down).  So, it's fairly recent, but still worth some attention.  

The Joy

This is the joy he brings to our house every day...

"Alone Time"

Somebody asked how we have "alone time" if we are cosleeping.  I was trying to write a short reply, but this was the shortest I could make it so I decided to just put it in a post (so that anybody else who wonders the same thing can have their curiosity satisfied).

So, how do we have "alone time"??

-We have 6 bedrooms (all of which contain beds, only 2 of which contain children), 2 living rooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen, a laundry room... should I go on? :)

-We don't have to go to sleep at the same time as our children (and we rarely do) just because we sleep in the same bed as them.

-In our entire marriage we have gone to bed at the same time as each other maybe 5 times, so "alone time" has never been dependent on going to bed at the same time in the same bed.

-Because I am such a bad sleeper (insomniac central over here) and my husband is such a loud sleeper, even before factoring in cosleeping we have spent more nights in separate beds than we have in the same bed.  And trust me, our marriage was very happy while sleeping in separate beds or rooms, because he wasn't waking me up or keeping me awake at night (which makes me insanely angry).

-We spend all of our time together right up until the time that I go to sleep (I'm always the first one in bed).  To me, this is more valuable and intimate than the couples I know who hang out on their own, often in different rooms, doing different things all evening and then end up sleeping beside each other at some point that evening.  We spend our conscious time together... the unconscious time isn't nearly as important.

Now, all of that being said, at this point I am still going to bed within 45 minutes of my kids being asleep, so admittedly there is not a whole lot of "alone time" going on.  But that's just the stage of life we're in, and it's because I need to spend about 11 hours in bed to scrape together 5 or 6 hours of sleep.  It has absolutely nothing to do with cosleeping.

Does that answer any lingering questions??  :)

A Cosleeping Family

I have always been very pro cosleeping.  Even back in high school I knew I wanted to cosleep with my babies.  I think it's the healthiest way for babies to sleep, and it's biologically normal.  Then I became the world's worst sleeper, had a baby (who became a super loud grunter), and became an even worse sleeper.  Despite attempting to cosleep with Noah, he was moved into his own room at a couple of weeks old.  I'm not going to tell the entire history of Noah's sleep here, though.

When I was pregnant with Isaiah I knew I wanted to try cosleeping again.  But then he was an even louder grunter than Noah, so at less than a week old he was moved into his own room.  Gradually the grunting subsided (like it did with Noah), but he was sleeping so well on his own that there was really no reason to move him into a room with me.  Why mess with a good thing, right?

Except, like with Noah, that "good thing" was very temporary, and I was back to jolting out of bed and stumbling through the dark into his room to nurse him 2, 3, or 4 times a night.

When Noah was sick over Christmas, Justin started sleeping with him.  They both really enjoyed it, so it continued after he got better (it's been a month now).  This was more than fine with me, because I spent way too much time lying awake listening to Justin breathe loudly or snore.  We played musical beds to give them my new queen bed to sleep in, and moved the gloriously huge and comfortable king back into the master bedroom (we HAD been sleeping in two queen beds pushed together because I'm such a bad sleeper) with Noah's former crib side-car'd up against it.

I was hesitant to try cosleeping again, since I had never been successful at it.  But Isaiah's sleep was already kind of crappy, so I decided to try it.

Halfway through the first night I moved him back to his room, thinking he might sleep better in there.  He didn't.

The second night I was very iffy about trying it again, but I decided to power through anyway since I have never felt fully comfortable having my kids in different rooms than me.  That night was great.  Having my baby on a separate sleep surface but directly beside me and on my level with no barriers between us what just what we needed.  I felt so much less stressed laying next to him instead of having him in a different room. Every time he woke up, I was already awake anyway, and nursing him was so much less disruptive.

We've slept together 2 more nights since then, but without the "iffy"ness.  Instead, I look forward to it!  I have slept decently, and I love having Isaiah next to me.  I thought I would sleep on the opposite side of the king bed from where the crib is, but I'm actually more comfortable sleeping directly next to him.

So, that's that.  We cosleep now, and we're all pretty darn happy about it.  My dream scenario would be to have all 4 of us in the same room in one giant bed.  We have the beds to do it (we own 3 queens, 1 king, a double, a single, and 2 cribs... we could sleep a lot of people in our house!), but I don't know if it will ever happen.

Isaiah is 4 Months Old!

My blogging has gone to poop, but gosh darnit I'm going to try my hardest to post this on Isaiah's ACTUAL 4 month birthday (January 22)!

-Isaiah weighs 16.5 lbs (this was naked, on our digital scale, on his 4 month birthday).

-He is 25.5 inches tall and mostly in 6 month clothing (Carter's brand... in some other brands he's in 9 month or 6-12 month).

-Same as last month, he is on the medium rise setting on his diapers. Even though we have hundreds of diapers, we exclusively use Flip covers with various inserts (stay dry, organic cotton, Thirsties inserts, flats, or prefolds) during the day, with a few bumGenius Freetimes thrown in.  At night he wears an sbish snapless fitted (with both doublers) with a Blueberry one size cover with aplix. The rise on the cover is completely unsnapped to fit over the fitted.

-He still has those two bottom teeth playing peekaboo.

-He has no bottles ever, nor will he ever have one unless something horrible happens, like me ending up in the hospital on my deathbed unable to breastfeed.

-Last month I was rejoicing over how he was a super sleeper at night time, with a record of 11 hours and 15 minutes straight, and almost always getting a 6-9 hour stretch out of him at the beginning of the night.  He was only getting up to nurse once a night, twice a night if you counted when I was already awake in the morning. Well, no longer.  He usually sleeps 12.5 - 13 hours each night but, but he is up 3 or 4 times a night to nurse.  One of those is usually around 7am after I am already awake.  We recently played musical beds, so the king bed is back in the master bedroom, and Noah's old crib is side-car'd between it and the wall.  Last night Isaiah spent half the night in there, half the night in his crib in his room.  I'm not exactly sure where I'll be going with this.  There are reasons I want to cosleep and reasons I'm not sure I want to start it up again now, after 4 months of not cosleeping.  I will say, though, that I completely expected this regression to happen, so I'm not feeling all distressed like I did when Noah did this.

-Isaiah only ever naps 30-40 minutes at a time, whether he's in his crib or we're babywearing.

-He is still pretty decent at going to sleep on his own if I put him in his crib on his tummy. Not every time, but I don't expect him to.

-He still does all his sleeping on his tummy. I'm becoming slightly less nervous about this, but I do still carefully examine him over the video monitor to see him breathing several times a night (haha, no really).

-He continues to be a super happy baby, like he was at 3 months.  

-He's shrieking with delight, giggling, and still has the HUGEST smiles! 

-He brings his hands together all the time, eats his fingers, and is starting to grab things.

-He rolled over for the first time when he was 15 weeks old... hasn't really done it since, though!

-He is friendly to people and smiles at them when they talk to and smile at him, but he doesn't want anyone but me to hold him.  He could be perfectly happy laying on the floor, smiling and cooing away, but if someone besides me (or sometimes Daddy) picks him up, within a few minutes he will start crying.

-He likes to sit up and look around (propped up by us, although he has balanced in a sitting position for a good 5 seconds on several occasions).

-He loves to watch Noah play, and really enjoys when Noah rolls around with him.  He gets a giant smile!

-We still babywear all the time, which makes us all happy, and our carrier stash continues to grow.  I believe we're at 18 right now.  4 Wrap Conversion Mei Tais, 7 woven wraps, 2 stretchy wraps, a ring sling, a pouch sling, and 3 buckle carriers. This is a much more expensive addiction than cloth diapers!

-Evenings aren't really that fussy any more.  I can eat a lot of my dinners sitting down because he's usually sleeping in the carrier, or he recently woke up from a nap and is happy to sit in the bouncy chair on the table and watch us eat.  He gets bored of that after 5-10 minutes, usually, and then he's happy to sit in my lap and watch Daddy and Noah eat.

-He still has all his baths in the kitchen sink because it's easier for me.

Now, pictures...

Drying off on the counter after bath time in the sink:

Watching Noah play on the iPad:

He thinks being tossed around is hilarious!:

I just want to SQUISH them!:

Yahoo, I did it!  I actually started and finished a post on the same day, AND it's on time! 

Life in Bullets

I've been a bad blogger the past month or so.  I blame it on the holidays, my laptop breaking and having to buy a new one, having verrry sick kids, and trying to adjust to Isaiah's sleep regression.  Which I think is semi-permanent... is it still considered a sleep regression then?  So here's life in bullets lately:

-Isaiah is still sick, but I expected this.  Noah took over 2 weeks before he seemed to not be sick anymore (although he still has a bit of a cough).  Tomorrow it'll be 2 weeks for Isaiah.

-Like I said, sleep regression central over here.  I was kind of expecting this.  Like Noah, Isaiah became a pro sleeper all on his own around 2 or 2.5 months.  Then at 3-3.5 months they both got sick, and sleep went to crap.  This blended with the 4 month sleep regression and with Noah it didn't go away until we let him CIO at 7 months.  I'm hoping to avoid that this time, and Isaiah is a different kid, so hopefully I can.  I might have to figure out how to sleep in the same room with him if this getting up every 3 hours all night long thing continues (oh how I wish I could cosleep!!).  I feel like a zombie in the middle of the night.

-(Okay, I've been writing this stupid post for 3 days and since then the sleeping has improved.  He;s even had an 8 hour stretch!  It's still all over the map, though, because he's also had stretches as short as 45 minutes)

-Last week I went to my husband's high school to visit the parenting class with Isaiah (my father in law babysat Noah).  I was the "parenting expert".  I think I gave them a completely different picture of parenting than they're used to.  Home water-birthing, babywearing, cloth diapering, breastfeeding (it did come up that Noah still nurses), wishful cosleeping, no bottles, etc. etc.  My husband is the teacher that all the girls are in love with, though, so they took me pretty seriously (haha).  I didn't really want to do it, but it ended up being fun!  They loved my rainbow wrap, by the way :)

-Again, I've been writing this post for several days, so now I know that my "parenting practices" have sparked much discussion in that parenting class.  Apparently the girls thought that even though they'd never considered a lot of the things I do, the way I talked about it made it all make sense and seem so totally normal (which really, it should be since I try to keep things as close to the "natural" state as possible).  I'm happy to have exposed them to some of the things I was exposed to as a teenager that totally helped shape the kind of parent I wanted to be.

-In the past week I have made about $250 selling stuff we don't use.  14 cloth diapers, a big desk, 2 end tables, a pack of disposable diapers still from when Noah was a baby, a bottle warmer/cooler that has never been used because my kids don't have bottles, paper towel holder, candy dishes, and a bunch of other stuff.  I also sent a huge bin of university books to our local library to be donated... they would only take one bin per week, so another one is going this week.  I am SO HAPPY to be getting rid of more stuff.  I had to take the last 4 months off of purging because I have been busy with a new baby, so it feels good to get back into it.

-I decided my goal in 2013 is to get rid of 2013 things, either through selling, donating, or throwing away (regular garbage does not count!).  I'm at about 300 right now with more things up for sale that are being picked up this week not included in that total.  2013 sounded very easy to me, but I have gotten rid of sooooo many things in the past year, it'll be interesting to see if I can actually make it to 2013.

-I haven't seen my parents since Christmas day because we've all been sick.  It's been 3 weeks!  I miss them!


I have to post this now... it shouldn't take 3 days to write a post!

What Is Wrong With This World

Bad things have been happening in the small city where I live since the new year started.  Bad things.  My mind has been very preoccupied since January 1.

On Tuesday January 1, in the late afternoon, my Facebook newsfeed was all a-chatter about this girl I was friends with in high school, Noelle.  She was missing.  She had last been seen at 2:30am when she had a big fight with her boyfriend and left a NYE party, walking home on her own.  She called her parents and told them she was on her way home (she didn't live with them anymore, so I'm unclear on whether she was referring to her home, or her parents' home).

She didn't make it, and no one could get ahold of her.  So there was this FB event called "Noelle is Missing".  I was hoping she was off hooking up with some guy with her phone off or something.  This would be extremely embarrassing for her, as almost the entire city knew she was missing at this point and she was a kindergarten teacher at a Catholic elementary school.  But this is what I hoped for.

Hundreds of people were out looking for her that night.  She wasn't found.  There were a ton of rumors and speculation going around, like her cell phone was found dead on the ground, someone saw tire tracks on the side of a rural road and footsteps going through the snow into the woods, etc. etc.  No one knew what to believe, and there were a lot of heated words flying for the "rumor spreaders".

The next morning, Wednesday, the police organized a huge search party starting at 8:30 a.m.  At 10:30 a.m. it was announced that Noelle had been located.

My first reaction was relief.  For about 3 seconds.  Then I realized that they weren't announcing that she was found alive, that she was home safe... nothing like that.  Just that she was located.

I knew it in my bones right away.  Things were not okay with Noelle.  My hope at this point was just that she had gotten randomly hit by a drunk driver, and that driver drove away, afraid, perhaps hid her body somewhere.  You can imagine what my real fears were if that was my hope.

About an hour after the police announced that they located Noelle, it was announced that the police had found an adult female body in a woodlot.  They didn't say it was Noelle, but I knew it was.  Within a couple of hours of this announcement, my newsfeed was filled with mourning statuses from Noelle's good friends.  It had not been announced to the public that Noelle was dead, but the people close to her had been informed that she was.

On Thursday morning the police announced what many of us already knew - that the adult female body found was that of Noelle.  I was still hoping it was a random accident, but knew it wasn't.

On Thursday evening it was announced that two people, a 31 year old nurse and mother of 3, and a 19 year old male (their names were also released, but I'm not putting them here; they were also residents of our small city), were charged with the first degree murder of Noelle.  First degree murder.  That means it was purposeful, not a "last minute decision".  Also, police don't lay first degree murder charges unless they are 100% sure and have an airtight case.

I knew Noelle did not know either these people.  There was no way she would.  My worst fears started creeping up again, but I couldn't even speak them out loud to my husband.  My hopes became that either they were high on some crazy drug and it made them do something insane like kill a random person, or they were just sick people who would get a "high" off killing.

A couple of days later it was uncovered that these two individuals were members of an online "community" called Fetlife.  They shared an obsession with various forms of rape and torture.  There were pictures of them together, her beaten, bloodied, tied up, and gagged.  Him standing beside her.  They talked about each other as "partner in crime".  They talked about the violence and rape they inflicted on each other.

Bottom feeders.

These weren't the only disgusting online sites they were members of.  There were more.

While no details have been released, we can all imagine.

My uncle is pretty high up in the provincial police, and he's been working this case.  While he can't tell us ANYTHING, including how they caught these two so quickly, he did tell us:

1. These two did it - there is no shred of doubt.

2. This is the second worst case he's ever worked, second only to Victoria Stafford, an 8 year old girl who was abducted by a male/female pair, violently raped, beaten with an inconceivable brutality - all her ribs broken and skull shattered by a hammer - and killed.  She lived about an hour from here.  (The link takes you to a very benign description of the case on Wikipedia).

If this case is second only the Tori Stafford case... I can't even put into words how I feel.  Saying that I am completely and utterly horrified is such an understatement.  What Noelle's last hours must have been like... You know, we hear about cases like this, watch them played out on crime shows... it's always awful to imagine.  I don't even want to say what I wish would happen to the perpetrators of these crimes.  But when you KNOW the victim, were friends with her at one time... it really brings the horror home.  I haven't stopped thinking about Noelle for the past 8 days.  My dreams are haunted.

Seriously, what is this world coming to?

A Sick 3 Month Old is a Sad Thing

We did  everything we could to prevent this, but Isaiah got sick.  Amazingly, it took a week of Noah being sick and hacking all over our household before Isaiah got came down with a fever.  That was on Wednesday.  He spent the entire day whining/moaning, even while sleeping.  In the early afternoon I noticed he was getting hot, and by the time I took his temp it was 101.8.  

Things quickly deteriorated.  He was coughing and congested, and I couldn't get him to go to sleep.  He vomited explosively 3 times (and was really freaked out by it).  That night I didn't sleep a wink, as I had him laying on top of me all night and he was sleeping extremely restlessly.  He was basically crying or fussing every half hour.

Last night he slept with me again, but beside me instead of on top of me.  He slept better than the night before (I don't think he liked being stuck in one position when he was sleeping on top of me), but I only got 2 broken hours of sleep, and I'm not expecting to get much more tonight.

So, symptom tally: his fever comes and goes (not as bad as Noah's), he's congested, sneezing, coughing, and his eyes are running and gunky.  His voice is all hoarse, and I'm quite sure he has a sore throat.

My poor baby :(