Can you tell they are siblings?

When Sweetcheeks was born people immediately thought that she looks ''just like Mommy''. Which, don't get me wrong, it would be nice but I thought she looked most like Bubba, at birth. You decide...here are pics of each of my kiddos around one week old.

I think she has the same mouth/chin as Bubba and the same cheeks of both Bubba and Peanut; her eyes look like Pooks' and her nose looks like her own :)

Catch up!

Okay so we have done a bunch of fun things, taken good pictures and generally just enjoyed life since my last post but yet, I haven't shared anything. This blog is suppose to be a way for me to journal the things that happen to our family as they happen; hopefully so one day my kids can read all about it. Well guess what? When you have four kids under the age of five, it's hard to find the time to blog! So many cute things get said/done and never shared and then slowly forgotten because I just can't hop on the laptop anymore. So, to catch up...

On Sunday, we all piled in the Swaggerwagon to go visit the Grandmas. After all, Sweetcheeks is named after her great great grandma and hadn't yet had the opportunity to be properly introduced. So, we made it happen and Grandma could not have been happier. Seriously.

(look at that smile! I hadn't even gotten Sweetcheeks out of the car seat yet!)

 She held her for hours. Ate her lunch while holding her even...

 Nanaw Phew Phew did get a turn but it didn't last long

 5 Generations of Girls

 5 generations with all the kids

How freaking blessed are we? I mean seriously. There is a 99 year and 6 month age gap between G.G. Grandma and Sweetcheeks...that does not happen everyday and I'm not about to let the opportunity to visit and have them share in a relationship, pass by unnoticed. Is it always easy/convenient to pile up the kids and head down there? Maybe not. But is it always worth it? YES!!

So that was Sunday. On Monday, Sweetcheeks was officially one week old. Thus, she had her one week well baby visit. She was born weighing 6lbs 13oz, and one week from her birthdate she weighed 6lbs 12oz but then nursed for 20 minutes so really, add an ounce or two to that. Basically, she is gaining, not losing. Since newborns aren't suppose to lose more than 10% of their body weight in the first week, she's doing great! Here she is sleeping on daddy's legs at one week old:


At the doctor's we also discovered that Peanut has an ear infection, an upper respiratory infection and both have caused his Reactive Airway Disease (aka, Asthma) to flare up. So he's on an oral steroid, an antibiotic and breathing treatments. Fun stuff when you add in 2 preschoolers and a newborn to also take care of. But overall, despite being sick, he's doing good. Snotty and coughing, but his behavior and energy doesn't seem too effected by his uckiness. 

So, that was Monday. Today {Tuesday} is my first day home alone with the kiddos. B was able to stay home for a week and a day but it's back to establishing a new routine. I got off kinda easy because they skipped school today. Both got their flu shots yesterday, Bubba is on breathing treatments for his Asthma and today is a ''gym'' day at school. {while he's wheezing, running around is less than ideal} They overslept slightly and I gave them the choice to stay at home or hurry up and go, both Bubba and Pooks agreed to just stay home and rest.

So far, the day has gone well. Sweetcheeks nursed at 7:20, the boys woke at 7:40. I got Bubba and Peanut their breathing treatments started and finished and around 9am, Sweetcheeks nursed again. After that, we had breakfast (yogurt, cheerios and a banana) and it went well, no messes or spills. The morning was spent playing with cars, playing with a box and watching Scooby Doo. I snapped a few super cute photos of the kids all together:

We ate lunch, again no messes {yay!} and did another round of breathing treatments before naptime. Sweetcheeks woke up during Peanut's breathing treatment but was fairly content waiting to nurse until after her brothers were settled in their beds. So the boys are napping, sissy is in a milk induced coma on my lap and I'm thinking I might take this opportunity to shower. All in all, a success so far!

My daughter....

Squee! I get to say that now :D 

Is now five days old. We've been home since Wednesday and overall, things are good. She sleeps through everything! Brothers hollering, phone ringing, dog barking...none of it seems to phase her and she'll sleep right through it...thankfully!

Her bilirubin levels were slightly elevated when we left the hospital so we've had to keep her in the sun as much as possible and nurse every 3 hours {whether she likes it or not!}. She is a very sleepy baby and would like to sleep 4-5 hours at a time then nurse for 40 minutes straight. While that sounds ideal, in order to help those levels go down, we have to nurse often...getting her to wake is not an easy task. It usually involves a little tickling, a diaper change, and sometimes a wet washcloth. But she is a good nurser and she only cries when her tummy hurts/needs to burp. We've had a few latch issues since my milk came in, but I think she's getting the hang of it.

Her brothers absolutely love her. Love to give kisses, love to help bring diapers, tell us when she's crying, watch her when she's awake and talk about how much they love her. I was really nervous about how Peanut would handle sharing us but he is doing awesome. Really loves her and we haven't noticed a single regression. Pookie however, while he absolutely loves his little sister, is having some attention issues. Basically he wants attention and he'll take it whether it's positive or negative. We've had a few instances where he's hit/slapped/squished one of his brothers. He's been caught with my cell phone/iPod/computer on multiple occasions. We're working on giving him more attention, before he shows signs of needing it. I've been asking him to help me with little things, helping him do things {even though I know he can do them himself} and today was much better overall.

So, on to pics...here are a bunch from the hospital:

 And some more pics meeting all her brothers once we were all settled in to our postpartum room:

 Meeting Sissy!

 

 

 

 

 

And as long as I'm at it and while miss Sweetcheeks is still sleeping, here are a few of her since we've been home:

Sunbathing....

 and a few where she was awake {a rare moment}

we're home!

I'm typing one handed but wanted to update..we're home! Miss Sweetcheeks and I came home this afternoon. It's nice to be back, while it was a super chaotic evening, it's home. The boys are excited to have Sissy home and she's settling in quite well. Sleeping through all the craziness :)

Sweetcheeks is Here!

After a thirteen hour labor {ugh!} Sweetcheeks has made her debut {yay!}! Contractions actually started Sunday afternoon. By the evening they were closer together and not stopping but very easy/manageable. Around 8pm, Nanaw and I went on a 3 mile walk to see if we could get them stronger. Oh we did! They were about 2-3 minutes apart when we decided to stop walking and maybe get some rest before the big event...if it was real labor.

Around 9pm I came home, enjoyed a bath, caught up on some laundry...all while still having contractions 4 minutes apart. Around 9:30 they were still 4 mins apart but I started vomiting when they would peak. B and I were honestly afraid that I was in transistion and didn't know it. Afterall she is my 4th kiddo...maybe labor happened and I never thought it was that intense? Better being safe than sorry, we called Nanaw and Papa. Papa stayed at the house with the {now sleeping} little dudes, while Nanaw, B and I went off to the hosptial.

Imagine my surprise when I was checked and found to be almost 3 cm dilated and 75% effaced?! WTH! They wanted me to hang around for an hour and see if things changed...they agreed that I was in labor but wanted to monitor me since I do have my babies early. Well long story short, I was admitted. Turns out the outer part of my cervix was so stretchy she could stretch it as far as she wanted {well, within reason} but the inner part was stuck at 4cm and I had reached 80% effacement. Because I wasn't technically ''full term'' they couldn't break my water til Dr.P gave the go ahead and he wasn't on call so I had to wait til 8am. With the boys, my water never did break...each time they had to rupture my membranes so I was basically waiting for 8am to roll around.

Fun times. Not. Remember, I am not one to get an epidural. In fact, I never even got an IV or hep lock put in place. I really really wanted this birth, my last one, to be free of any interventions and as natural as I could have it. 

So we walked and walked and walked. We would walk several loops around the Labor and Delivery floor, coming back to the room to sip on Gatorade. Around 5:30am my contractions were pretty tame...I actually just laid in the bed and slept thru as many as I could.  Around 6:30am I got into the whirlpool tub, using the jets for nipple stimulation and stayed there for a good hour. By 8am Dr P was here and he checked me. I was almost 5cm and he broke my water. Hooray! So it was back to walking, using the birth ball and eventually back to the tub. By 10:30am I was almost 8cm dilated and things were starting to hurt. Nanaw and I had both been up for 24 hours straight! I was in the tub and could physically feel Sweetcheeks turning and moving down. They made me quickly get out of the tub...birthing in the pool here is a no-no, which really slowed things down.

After the tub I spent most of my time laboring on hands and knees, facing the back of the bed or standing next to the bed, bending over and swaying through contractions. Pretty sure anyone and everyone saw my butt but I didn't (and still don't) care. B and Nanaw were very good about rubbing my back and reminding me to take deep breaths. Between each contraction I just wanted ice chips and quiet.

Around 11:50am I was checked and found to be completely dilated and effaced with an anterior cervical lip. I was feeling very pushy and very frustrated that things were taking this long. I labored for a bit longer and I believe it was around noon when the nurse had me push through a contraction while she attempted to move the lip over babies head. Highly painful but it was working. They started to break down the bed and I started to really want to push. I was making myself pant, making horse-lip/raspberry noises with my lips...anything to stop me from pushing too soon.

I'm not really sure what time I started actually pushing...I know it was after 12:05pm and after 12:14 because those were B's and Nanaw's guesses for time or birth. I believe it was just shy of 12:30pm when I started pushing ''for real''. While little Miss was RIGHT THERE, her big ole head took a lot of work. Finally at 12:40pm, she was here.

 6lbs 13oz, 19.5 inches long born at 12:40 on October 4th

I got everything that I really wanted out of my ''birth plan''. I delivered here without any paid meds, without pitocin and without even having an IV started ''just in case''. She was laid directly on my belly until the cord quit pulsating, and her first APGAR test was preformed there. B cut the cord and she was taken over to the warmer to be measured, weighed and wiped off. They put her in a diaper (at this point she had peed twice all over!) and hat, etc. I birthed the placenta easily and without assistance and she was given right back to me. We were breastfeeding withing probably 10 minutes of her birth. Afterward they gave her all of her eye drops, vaccines, etc.

Not to sound like a hippie but I am very glad that she was brought into this world just the way we wanted her to be. She is nursing like a champion, wetting and dirtying diapers left and right :) She's alert and happy and it was the perfect birth for our last baby :)

Here she is all cleaned up: