A real update now. :)

At Jude's pediatrician appointment last Thursday he had gained over a pound. He's going to be a little chunker butt haha.

Tomorrow we have an appointment with the plastic surgeon at children's hospital to look at his skin tags & I guess make a course of surgical action as to what to do. I'm scared about this whole surgery business. I also kind of love his little cheek nipples & don't want them to remove them, but I know if they don't he'll get super made fun of in school because children are brutally ruthless when it comes to people who are different. Poor Judey-Tuesday. :(

My grandma yelled at me for signing the waiver for the hep b vaccine at the hospital and not planning on getting it at his 2 month appointment. I just see no point in it this early. I finally ordered a copy of Dr. Sears' Vaccine Book to read & research all of the vaccines. I also threw a copy of his Baby Book into my shopping cart.

I found a pair of non-maternity pants that fit me! I should go through the rest of my clothing to see what fits. I already know most of my tops don't fit yet, and I'll kind of be upset if I end up not shrinking down a lot more to fit them because then I'll lose all of my sweet t-shirts. Oh well, I'm over it, if it happens I'll just add them to my sewing bucket and t-shirt quilt.

I started laying Jude on the floor to "play" last week. He loves looking around at everything so I lay him on a blanket on the floor with the activity gym from Ikea to look at the things on it. I'll also set toys near him to look at. He also gets some tummy time and he's getting pretty good with lifting his head, he has really strong neck muscles and fairly good head control already. It's not perfect yet, but it's good. Sometimes, not always, when he's on his tummy he can roll over to his back. No one believes it because he's so young, but I've seen it happen. I've also seen him roll in his sleep. Like one night I woke up and looked at him in his crib and he rolled onto his side, farted loudly like 5 times, then rolled back onto his back. It was one of the funniest things I've seen. Last night he was sleeping in bed with me, I know he fell asleep on his side while nursing, and I pushed him over onto his back, and when I woke up this morning he was on his tummy, with his arms folded under his head all cute and happy looking. I didn't take a picture, but I should have and am upset I didn't, it was adorable. I actually moved him to his crib from there and he was upset about it.

I think I need different cloth diapers. I love them, and I don't think prefolds & covers are a bad system at all, it's just my prefolds are crappy. It's because we got the Gerber ones and I know it. I'm also thinking it's my washing routine so I ordered some Crunchy Clean diaper detergent. Hopefully once I change the washing routine I'll be happier with them. They just don't feel soft enough and make me sad. Trial & error I guess.

I would have never thought I'd be the person I am today. Like my friend Carly asked a few months ago, "what would you have done if I told you in high school that the 2 of us would both be mothers by the time we were 21?" "I would have laughed in your face and told you you were crazy."

A week of Kayleigh & Jude. Part 1.

I decided to start taking pictures of Jude & I everyday for a year with the built-in camera on my laptop. I have no life haha. But instead of posting them here everyday, I decided weekly is a better idea. They're backwards, but oh well.

7/365. 6/365. 5/365. 4/365. 3/365. 2/365. 1/365.

I've been slacking with the updates, but I'm beat so this will be short

Jude had his first real bath on Sunday.

Saturday night he stayed home with my sister while I went out for my friend's bachelorette party.

He's been cranky and clingy lately, but he's still sleeping well at night. He only gets up once.

He's a goofy little thing when he's not grumpy. He likes to look around at everything. He's always trying to look behind him or above him and twists his head all funny. He also makes the most ridiculous noises. He squeaks and makes noises that sound like animals. Sometimes when he nurses he'll do silly things like lap up the milk after it flows out instead of latching on.

Today, we were laying on the couch and I was playing with him, and he latched onto my nose lol.

It's only been a few days and we've already reached milestones!

Yesterday was Jude's first appointment with the pediatrician. He slept the whole time, except for when she was man-handling him, weighing him, and drawing his blood to test for jaundice. He also slept the whole night before, which was nice even though I instinctively woke up every 3 hours to check on him. He also slept while we were at the secretary of state before his appointment to renew my license, in a few short weeks I'll have my grown ups license!
Today, his cord stumpy fell off! I picked him up out of his bouncy chair to lay him down because he fell asleep and when I laid him down it just went pop right off into my hands. Since it fell off I started him on the cloth diapers (it was easier to avoid the cord with newborn 'sposies, plus we were in the hospital for so long and I had tons of free ones). He met his daddy for the first time today too. He was either cranky or sleeping the whole time and I ended up retreating to my room to nurse him the last 45 minutes he was here. I kind of felt bad, but at the same time was glad to get away because it was awkward. I hope for Jude's sake the awkwardness between us will disappear. I know it won't happen anytime soon, but hopefully it will fizzle out.
I was having troubles nursing yesterday, but I solved them today. He wasn't latching on the left side, but I figured out that it was because it was flowing faster than the right. I woke up today and my left boob was 3 times bigger than the right one and hurt and was rock hard so I decided to try pumping to fix the flow and relieve all that pain. My mum told me not to get discouraged if I pumped for 20 minutes and only got half an ounce. I came out 5 minutes later with 2 ounces. I tried to nurse him on that side again and he still wouldn't take so after I finished nursing I pumped it again and got another 2 ounces, but it took longer and was flowing slower than before. Next time I nursed him he latched onto it perfectly (yay!).. Boob: 0, Kayleigh: 1.
Yesterday was a stressful day because I got dumped (via myspace), the boob issue, and I got frustrated with Chris because he's been saying for the past few days that he was going to come visit but then at the last minute decided against it for whatever reason. My mum watched Jude last night through his fussiness so I could get some sleep, that was much needed and appreciated.
I'll upload some more pictures later, my camera cord is MIA and I need a nap.

Jude is here! And this is how...

I started having contractions Friday night at 1 and they were about every 5-10 minutes apart but didn't think too much of them because I went to the doctors that afternoon and he told me my cervix was still closed and that I wasn't going into labor that weekend. I tried to sleep through them and was semi-successful, I fell asleep at 3 and they woke me up at 5:30 but I fell back asleep again until 1 pm. When I woke up I still had them and they were about every 5 minutes, but not anymore painful than the night before so I went about my day and ran some errands. I came home and napped for about 2 hours and got up and ran some more errands and was still having them. I took it easy the rest of the night with the heat pad on my back to control the pain and at about 2:30 Saturday night they got more painful and were consistently every 5 minutes. I tried to sleep through them again with no luck whatsoever but I let my mum sleep and dealt with the pain by myself by switching positions, pacing around the house and I took a shower. At 7:30 Sunday morning I lost my mucous plug and woke my mum up and told her we had to go to the hospital. We got to the hospital at 9, they checked me at 9:30 and I was completely dilated and my bag of waters was bulging but his head was a little high when they check with an ultrasound. All the nurses rushed in to get my IV's running and took me back to my delivery room. I was in a room by 10. My water started dripping on the ride back to the delivery room. All the nurses were impressed because I was still able to laugh and make jokes through all of this and they kept calling me a champ and a rock star.
The on call doctor checked me again when I got settled in the room and my water broke completely while she was checking me. My cervix retracted to a 7 and he was too high up to deliver. Since he was so high up they were concerned about the umbilical cord and put a monitor on his head and his heart rate dropped, they called the anesthesiologist in because they were secretly plotting to take me into an emergency c section right then because they thought the cord collapsed but then his heart rate went back to normal. Not only was he too high up, but also over to the right. They wouldn't let me move from the bed though because they were concerned about the cord falling out before he did so they had me labor in different positions that might have moved him in the bed. They also put a binder around my stomach to try to push him and gave me pitocin to increase my contractions to try to get those to move him. They checked a few times and he still hadn't moved.
At 2 I decided to get an epidural even though I wanted to go completely natural, I got it because I wasn't allowed to move to control my pain, because the pitocin was making the contractions come super fast, and ultimately because I hadn't slept at all and was exhausted and knew I needed some rest before it came time to push. They got that in at 2:30. While they were putting it in my heart rate sky rocketed and they were baffled because the baby wasn't effected by it, I had a high heart rate problem the last 3 weeks of my pregnancy too that was solved a week and a half prior to labor. Not too much later my blood pressure dropped and they were baffled again because the baby still wasn't effected by it and I wasn't showing symptoms of either.
I got checked again at 4pm and he still hadn't moved so the doctor decided at 4:30 that I needed a c section because I had been laboring so long, was completely dilated and still wasn't making any progress. She thought that the baby was possibly too big and stuck to deliver vaginally. They got me into the OR at 5. It was freaky because I was numb and couldn't move anything, it's the only time during the whole labor process that I freaked out, but my mum was by my side the whole time holding my hand and keeping me calm. They pulled him out at 5:31pm and his first cry sounded like a cat. I cried when I heard his first because I was so happy and relieved, I also laughed and told my mum he sounded like a cat and asked if he was cute. The time it took for them to run their tests on him and show him to me felt like it took much longer than the 40 hours of labor. As soon as my mum put him next to my head and I saw him he started looking for the nipple and making sucking motions. She also said the whole time they were doing their stuff he was looking around for me. They put him on me and let me hold him on the ride back to the recovery room and helped me breast feed him as soon as we got into the recovery room and he latched on immediately. I love him more than I ever thought I could or would. He weighed 7 lbs, 13 oz, and was 21.5 inches long. He has a few skin tags by each ear and one on each cheek.

Pictures!
Pre-op:


Post-op:


Random cuteness:

Baby shower pictures, finally.

I finally have a bunch of baby shower pictures from 3 different sources.
I decided to give shutterfly a try and made a photo sharing website.
You can find them all there, plus I'll keep it updated with Jude's pictures when he comes and grows. I'll also occasionally post photo's here, but I figured, why not try this shutterfly thing out, haha.
For your blogger viewing pleasure, here's the last ultrasound pictures from the other week:

They're not very exciting because he's all cramped in there.

Week 38 doctors appointment.

Still no dilation but the cervix is getting softer.
I need to get off my butt and walk. I also bought some raspberry leaf tea last time I was at the grocery store. I'm ready to get this ball rolling and really don't want to go overdue.
Kelsey & my doctor gave me restrictions as to when I can't go into labor. Kelsey said not until Sunday or later because she's moving back to BG tomorrow and will hopefully be able to make it up here. My doctor said not Thursday-Sunday because he has a long weekend vacation.
I finally do feel ready for this to happen. I feel like I've got it all under control and I'm prepared for him stuff-wise and mentally(mostly). I've been trying to remain kind of cocky and nonchalant about the whole thing, especially when people constantly tell me it's going to suck. I just reply with "nah, it won't be that bad, I can handle it" or I think it just to stay positive. I need to get out of my pessimistic thinking, it's no good and it gets me nowhere. Hearing everyone tell me I don't know what's in store and that I can't handle it gets rather dull and annoying, why can't they just help me stay optimistic? jeez.
My bumkins covers came in the mail today! I finally have all my cloth diapering supplies for the first few months. I just need to wash the new covers and extra prefolds that I bought the other night and I'm golden. I feel the need to list everything I have for him just to be sure that I am truly as prepared as I think I am, or find a checklist online and check everything off. Maybe Jude is the best thing that has happened to me and I will get my life in order. I've already made so many changes and sacrifices for the better, why not keep going? Wooo, optimism!
I talked to Chris today for the first time in like 2 months. He said he stopped talking to me because he felt I was unreasonable and impossible to discuss Jude's life and custody issues with merely because I pointed out the laws on the matter to him. Hopefully this time around we can work something out and be civil and cooperate. That was something I told him tonight, that I had plans and everything set and ready to go and that my plans for raising him cannot be changed and that he'd have to mega-cooperate with me if he wanted to be involved. We didn't get into any details, but it will come in due time. I also told him that there will be no joint custody to start off because it's something I feel needs to be worked towards. If we can't cooperate and he can't accomodate to the raising/lifestyle plans I have with a visitation type dealio than I'm not going to feel comfortable or be willing to do joint custody. I was trying my hardest not to be bitchy while I was talking to him. I was with Mike and read him everything that was said and that I replied with to ensure that it wasn't bitchy too.
I want a video camera for when Jude's here so I can make embarassing home videos and record all (or at least most) of his milestones.