3 months already

This past weekend for Dan's 31st birthday we decided to go on a short trip to Utah. This is the first time we've gone more than an hour away from our home with Beckett. He's 3 months today and weighs 11 pounds and 5 ounces. He's been doing better at gaining weight and he's a pro at taking the bottle. But now I think he now is becoming a little too impatient or lazy to eat from me. But this allowed for easy travel- since I could just feed him the bottle. Thankfully he did really good on our little getaway.

We also haven't seen blood in his diapers in a while- so that means I'll keep doing what I'm doing- avoiding milk, eggs, or soy. Which is incredibly hard to do on vacation. Friday night we stayed at Kim and Mark's beautiful new home- and they we nice enough to make dinner for us- minus the milk, eggs, and soy. Saturday Dan and Mark went on a bike ride in Park City while we had Kim's baby shower.

Natalie, Kim, Beckett, and me.

Natalie holding sleepy Beckett- all these activities threw off our routine. He loved playing with Natalie.

Trying to get a good picture of Beckett and me... maybe someday.

Beckett hanging out with Kim and his soon to be friend, Ty.

Saturday evening we headed over to my Aunt Jane's house to watch the BYU game and visit some family. We were excited to introduce him to Great Grandpa and Grandma Hill. Notice Grandma unknowingly wore the wrong color (San Diego's color)- she thought it was safe since we weren't playing Utah.

Beckett was enthralled with the TV- he couldn't keep his eyes off the football game.

A couple of weeks ago Dan's parents came and stayed with us for the weekend and watched General Conference with us.

This is what Beckett thought of conference- he did have a lot of fun playing with grandpa.

Our little family- notice Beckett was the only that got ready on conference Sunday.

Beckett at 11 weeks.

Beckett and Grandma Mickelson.

September 25, 2009 Stats

9/25/09- 2 month checkup Stats:

Weight: 10 lbs 5.5 oz (10-20%) at birth he was 75%

Length: 23.5 inches (75%) at birth he was 90%

Head: 41 cm (75%) at birth he was 75%

So he is long and skinny with a big bobble head. We're still working on his weight gain- which he is slowly gaining again. I think it's because of the progress we've made with the bottle. He'll take it most of the time after a little bit of persistence. He's also napping better. However we jinxed the sleeping 9 hours at night-he hasn't done that since the doctor told me that I didn't have to wake him up. He now typically goes 5 hours- which I guess is good because he needs to eat. The lactation consultant thinks that he wouldn't wake up because he didn't have the energy from not much food in his system. Yesterday we did a weight check before and after a feed and with almost an hour of feeding he barely got an ounce. The lactation consultant said he should get that in less than 15 minutes. I'm not sure if that is how much he gets every time- because he was crying a lot during that feed which he doesn't normally do- but that would explain the poor weight gain. We just don't think he's very efficient at eating- not sucking right or something. But now I get to pump after every feed and try to make him take a couple ounces from the bottle as well to try to get him the amount he needs. We'll see if that helps.

I'm still avoiding all milk, eggs and soy- which is hard to do. I'm not sure if we're making progress or not. He still loves smiling and talking to his imaginary friends and not really for us. But at least I'm finding out that he has a fun time by himself so I can put him down and prepare dinner or something.

2 month update

Like father like son. Beckett loves to read and ride bikes (well, he will- right, Dan?).

You can't really see it but Beckett is wearing a library badge like Dan but his says "in training". We took these pictures for a spotlight on Dan in the library newsletter.

Beckett is two months old now. He's such a good active baby. There are two things everyone always comments on about him.

1. that he has such long fingers- I hope that means he'll be tall.

2. how wide-eyed alert he is- which is too true because I can't get him to sleep much during the day. That is something we are working on.

He still has had a few little problems.

1. At 3 weeks old a blocked tear duct surfaced. The doctor got us these eye drops that we were supposed to use for 5 days to fix it. Well it got better but Beckett's eye was still a little gunky so I continued using the drops and then it got worse again where his eye was sealed shut with gunk every few hours. I should have taken a picture when he'd try to open his eye- it was creepy. Anyways after a month of the drops and no progress someone in my ward told me to massage it- and within a day it got better- I kept doing it for a week and I haven't seen any gunk since. So in case any of you need to know, massage is very successful at clearing a blocked tear duct.

2. We started finding blood in his diaper- so we found out he has allergies to something I'm eating- not really a surprise there. So currently I am not supposed to eat soy, milk, cheese, or eggs- We will see if dairy is the culprit. We already are pretty good about no dairy because Dan is mildly allergic. But I have dairy every so often and now I'm going to have to be extra anal and looking at labels for hidden dairy.

3. Beckett has not gained any weight in over 2 weeks. He used be in the 75 percentile and now he's in the 10-20 percentile. Since he was 2 weeks we've been trying to get him to gain some good pounds- and we've still tried many ways to figure out how to do that, including me taking Goat's Rue (if you don't know what that is you should taste it). When he lost weight at 2 weeks they told me I needed to pump and find him from the bottle after he eats. But he refuses the bottle. So I just started freezing the milk. But now that he hasn't gained any weight in awhile- they want me to be more aggressive in getting him to take the bottle and try after every feed. So our feeding routine is 20 minutes on each side and then 20 minutes or so trying to force him the poison in the bottle (that's at least what he makes it seem like we're doing). And he eats every two hours so that plus burping and changing his diaper and frequently his outfit leaves a little over a half hour in between to play, nap (so he won't sleep when he eats), and get things I want done, like eat. And not to mention I also have to pump- thankfully not after every feed.

I can get him to nap but his feeds will be longer than 2 hours apart- which they don't really want. I'm trying to put him down for a nap when he's awake so he learns how to sleep on his own- that's the real challenge. Beckett's a good sleeper at night though- recently he's been going 9 hours (feed to feed during the night) I was afraid the doctor was going to tell me I needed to wake him up to eat since he wasn't gaining- but she said I didn't need to- that he should be make to make up for it during the day. My mom says I never really gained weight as a baby either- but I don't want Beckett to be my size!

Beckett has been talking and smiling recently. He still hasn't really smiled for us. For some reason staring at the plain white ceiling when he's on the changing table makes him happy. So we tried to record him entertaining himself- but didn't get a very good video- he always stopped when he saw the camera. Here's 2 of our attempts.

Beckett's return to normalcy

It has been six weeks today since Beckett was born. At two and a half weeks Beckett had an appointment and had lost about half a pound since his last appointment the week prior (and he eats non-stop)-so that worried the doctor a bit. The doctor was going to take him off the oxygen but because he was losing weight he didn't want to yet. So we had a couple appointments for weight checks. Beckett was slowly gaining it back so they finally took him off oxygen. At about three weeks they finally put him on normal baby status so our next appointment isn't until he's about 9 weeks! Yea, after having 13 doctor visits in his first 3 weeks of life- it'll be nice to have a break.

Here's some pictures from when Beckett was 4 weeks. We blessed him so we had all the family in town.

Beckett after church- hungry and not wanting to take pictures.

Aunt April, Uncle Adam, and Uncle Austin (he was calling Beckett names so he's not so happy).

Grandma and Grandpa Mickelson

Grandma and Grandpa Hill

While my family was in town Dan entertained them with some local hiking and biking trails and I would stay home and feed Beckett all day. That's what I feel like I'm doing anyways.

Beckett Andrew has arrived!

So I woke up at about 8 am Saturday morning (July 18) and I figured my water had broke. I told Dan but didn't tell my mom and grandma. I figured there wasn't any real reason to rush to the hospital and if I told them they would probably stuff me in the car and take me themselves. I still felt completely normal besides my water leaking on and off. So I got up and made breakfast and muffins, did the dishes, sent Dan on a bike ride figuring it might be a little while till he could get on his new bike again. Finally, I called the doctor and told my mom- we had lunch then headed to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital around 1 pm. I still was feeling great- no contractions.

They hooked me up to the monitors and checked to make sure that my water truly had broke. The doctor checked my out and I was still 2-3 cm dilated and 75 % effaced with baby head down. They said I was having contractions about 4 minutes apart but I couldn't really feel them. The doctor wanted to induce me- but I wanted to see if my body would do it on its own first. I let her know I wanted to do it as naturally as possible. So Dan and I went walking to a nearby park plus we explored every hallway in the hospital- hours later still no changes. So I said fine if they are going to have to induce me they might as well start it soon- since I am not making progress on my own.

Here I am writing thank you notes and trying to pass the time. Once we told them we were ready to be induced it seemed to be forever until they got things going. They had trouble inserting the IV and had to do it a couple of times. Finally around 9 pm they started me on PIT and gradually increased the dosage throughout the night. Around 3 am the contractions started getting pretty annoying and later they started getting painful. Dan was a trooper and was helping all night- he only had to leave when they were starting my IVs. (He gets really squeamish). I was getting really frustrated because it felt like I wasn't making any progress and we were afraid if I hadn't done it on my own by the magically 24 hour mark from my water breaking that they would do a c-section at about 7:30 am the doctor finally told me I could try pushing and at 9:27 am finally our beautiful baby boy was born! Thankfully they let me finish it out on my own- no C-section because I was over 24 hours (and no other interventions) I was able to do it naturally. If we would have known I was going to have to be induced we would have started it as soon as possible but oh well.

Here's Beckett right after he was born and had a quick wipe down. He was actually born with meconium all over him (he had his first bowl movement in the uterus) so they were rushing to clean him off. He was born 8 pounds 7.8 ounces and 21 inches long- with a huge head- no wonder it took me forever to push him out.

This horrible picture is me right after the delivery. I'm not sure if this picture truly shows what a disaster I looked. I popped blood vessels in my eyes and in other places on my face and my face swelled up like a balloon (from pushing so hard). My eyes were almost swollen shut. I was frustrated becuase I couldn't see what was going on after the delivery very well. During the labor I contracted a fever and had to have some oxygen on in between pushes. Thankfully my face has now gone back to almost normal. One of the nurses said she almost didn't recognize once my face slimmed down. My mom thought it was more swollen then when I got my wisdom teeth out.

Here's Dan with Beckett shortly after he was born. Before he got taken away from us and all sorts of tubes hooked up to him. They did all sorts of tests on him and found out his white blood cell count to be elevated, so they took him to the nursery and hooked him up to an iv and started him on antibiotics as a precautionary measure. They did many other tests one of which showed my placenta was infected. So they had to do a five day treatment of antibiotics on him. While hooked up to all the monitors they noticed his oxygen levels dropping (mainly when he was in a deep sleep) so they hooked him up to oxygen.

This is Beckett hooked up to all the wires- you can't see the iv (it's in his left foot)- well that's where the first iv went- it started going into his tissue so they later moved it to his hand and that one started leaking a few days later. Thankfully they only had 3 more treatments of antibiotics and administered those with shots instead of trying another IV.

Here's my grandma, mom, Dan, Beckett and me. Four generations.

Dan with Beckett in our hospital room- he was doing a lot better so they took all the monitors off him except for his IV and he could stay with us in our room- that only lasted one night and then they took him back to the nursery because his oxygen levels were dropping again. It was hard to believe we had a kid since he wasn't with us- or it was hard not to feel like we were abandoning him already. You can kind of see the rosey circles on his cheeks from where the stickers were to hold the oxygen tubing in place.

After 8 days in the hospital and practically going out of our minds we finally got to take Beckett home. The frustrating part about our stay was they changed the day we were going to go home on us like 4 times.

We're glad the hospital tests and all that is over- but this is just going to make me an extra paranoid mom. Now that Beckett is home he has to have oxygen for a couple weeks or so. It's kinda annoying- we have a 40 foot tube that can reach pretty much anywhere in the house but I'm afraid I'm going to trip on it or something- I can be clumsy sometimes. But I think it will help me sleep better knowing he is getting oxygen.

Beckett at his one week appointment weighed 9 pounds already- We're glad to have a healthy growing boy.

My mom with her first grandchild, Beckett.

July 17

Friday night (7/17) we took my mom and grandma to Rifle's finest attraction "Rifle Falls". We did the quick hike around it. My mom and grandma are getting impatient for the baby to come and we're trying to think of things for us to do to keep us entertained.

July 16-- 40 weeks pregnant

Today's the official due date. My mom and Grandma came into to town earlier this week and are anxious for me to go into labor. I'm feeling too normal to go into labor- no signs of anything yet. I did have an appointment and the doctor said I was dilated 2-3 cm and 75% effaced. She also "stripped my membranes" to try to get things going. The baby was finally head down! Yea! She said if the baby doesn't come on it's own I will be induced next Thursday July 23. I do not want to be induced though.