A
lot has happened since the last time I updated this blog. Mainly Emma’s world was turned upside down
with the arrival of her baby sister – Hannah.
Hannah was born at 1:42 am on August 24.
She was 8 lbs 15 oz; 21 inches long and had a full head of very black
hair.
My
labor was fairly easy – my water broke on August 23 at 6:30 pm; I was at the hospital
by 7:30 pm. I got an epidural, pushed
for 10 minutes and out came Hannah at 1:42 am.
After Hannah’s birth, I can now confidently say that I had a natural
birth with Emma!
Emma
thus far has been a great big sister! She is very loving towards Hannah and
very helpful with her. If Hannah is
crying, Emma will tell us that she needs to eat – sometimes though Emma will
say she needs the pacifier and she’s right.
We think Emma is better at distinguishing Hannah’s cries than we
are. Emma also helps change her diaper
and will sing all kinds of songs to her. Emma loves to give Hannah kisses and when she
comes home she always wants to see Hannah.
It seems that Emma isn’t fazed by Hannah’s appearance in our home and
she has welcomed her with open arms.
The
six weeks leading up to Hannah’s birth were difficult for us with Emma. We changed her crib into a bed because she
climbed out of her crib. While she didn’t
hurt herself it was time for the crib to be changed. For about a week Emma was fine sleeping in
her bed but then all hell broke loose and I mean hell! For the first time, Emma got really sick at
night and vomited all over her bed. She
couldn’t stop vomiting and it really scared us.
It was so sad to see her in that state because she was just so
upset. Jamey ended up sleeping with her
in the Queen bed in her room because she didn’t want to be left alone – plus we
were nervous. Well that was the end of
it for us – after that, Emma would get up in the middle of the night and come
visit us – usually twice. It was quite
difficult to get her to go back to sleep let alone in her bed so there were
many nights that I slept alone in my bed and Jamey and Emma slept
together. It was a horrible habit to get
into but we were completely in survival mode.
And if we were able to get Emma to sleep in her bed she would wake up
between 5 and 5:30 almost religiously.
It really was brutal. Then if
that wasn’t bad enough, our great little sleeper who we used to be able to put
in bed at night, say goodnight and walk out the door decided that wouldn’t work
anymore. We had to stay in her room until she fell asleep. That could take anywhere from 30 minutes to
an hour and a half. We were held
captive! It was horrible and putting her
to bed was completely unenjoyable and we dreaded it. This behavior didn’t end when Hannah was born
so you can only imagine how tired we were.
We would get one to sleep and then the other would be up. We couldn’t handle it anymore and talked to
the doctor along with a sleep consultant to get some advice. Everyone said for us to put the gate up at
her door but we were really reluctant because when we originally did that she
went ballistic!! We tried everything else the sleep consultant recommended – a sticker
chart, write up the bedtime routine and go over it with her a bunch of times
during the day and again at night. While
it didn’t work perfectly Emma started getting up only once during the
night. We were finally making
progress. But we needed more – we needed
Emma to stay in her room all night and we needed to stop being captives in her
room at bedtime. So after many weeks, we
did what the doctor suggested – tough love.
We put the gate up and let her scream.
Here’s a little write up Jamey put together. It seems that the email has made its way around
the internet because Emma is such a fighter and what she did that first night
was hilarious to people… not to us though – it broke our hearts!!
From Jamey:
We finally decided that after two
months of fighting with Emma to go to bed (usually an hour to 1.5 hours) and
her waking up one to three times a night that something had to change. We
decided to gate her room and let her put herself to sleep.
Tuesday Night
At 8pm after 30 minutes of sitting
with her I walked out of her room. She was of course wide awake and asked me
not to go. The next 47 minutes produced the overwhelming feeling that we
must be the most evil parents that ever existed. We totally ignored all
her pleas for assistance. Over the course of the next 47 minutes she
cried; pleaded for us to let her out; professed her love to both each
one of us; cried more; claimed to be sick, vomiting, bleeding, and hurt;
begged us to open our door so she could see us; jumped off the queen size bed
in her room numerous times, claiming injury; slammed her
door, opened her door, hit her door; tried in vein to get the gate
down; tried to climb over the gate; turned on her lights; took off her pajamas
and diaper; peed on the floor - told us that she was doing it; claimed she
wanted her pajamas on; told us she was cold; begged for us to let her out;
cried more; threw her bunnies behind the crib and begged for them back; took
out all of her and Hannah's diapers; threw a shoe in the diaper pale; told us
she was naked; and cried some more. Finally, she turned off her
light, shut her door, got in bed, covered herself with a blanket and mercifully
fell asleep totally naked. She woke up once in the middle of the night
for 30 seconds, crying and asking us to let her out, fell back asleep and
didn't wake up till 6:30 am on Wednesday (an extra hour of sleep for everyone.)
Ironically, I slept like shit.
Update from Wednesday night:
I stayed in Emma's room for 10 minutes,
she did not fall asleep, so I left at 7:46. So I tucked her in bed,
walked out, shut her door, locked the gate, and went in our room. I heard
her sit up in bed, scream once, run to the door, open the door, scream at the
gate for 10 seconds, then run back to her bed and go to sleep. She was
asleep at 7:47. She never made another sound the rest of night.
This morning when I got her, she said "I like the gate, it helps me
sleep."
This
not only worked like a charm but she only screamed that one night. We thought
we were going to have to endure many nights of her screaming and getting out of
bed but nope – she got it, she doesn’t cry when we leave, she stays in her bed
all night and has been sleeping longer. Needless
to say, Jamey and I wish we had done this a LONG LONG time ago!!!
The
other big thing/transition that happened in Emma’s life is that she started
preschool. She started the Monday after
Hannah was born. Believe it or not, I was
able to take her to preschool so I could see her off on her first day. That was something that was really important
to me and I was so happy I could do it.
Emma was a real trooper. She was
looking all around her classroom and taking everything in. She is such an observer! When it was time for us to leave she didn’t
want us to and she cried. The teachers
told us it was best to just leave because it is easier on the kid – so we
did. We were told that she didn’t cry
that long which made us really happy.
When we went to pick her up she said she had a good time and that she
liked school. Emma continued to cry
during drop-off for the first week but now she is fine. She looks forward to going to school and will
give us a kiss goodbye when she gets there in the morning.
Emma
made a new friend named Willa. She is a
day younger than Emma. It is very cute because she tells us every day when we
ask her what she did at school she responds that she played with Willa. She has yet to learn the names of the other
kids in her class but that will just take some time. At least she knows her teachers names –
Trisha and Rachel.
Emma’s
learning tons of songs at school and will sing them all the time. It is really cute to listen to her sing – she has
such a sweet little voice. She also
learned the Hamotzi and the other day during breakfast she told Jamey that they
needed to sing it before she ate – guess that’s what comes along with sending
your child to a Jewish preschool.
Now
on to Hannah – we call her Hannah Banana or Hannah the Grunter. I swear I never knew a baby would grunt the
way she does. She grunts all the time
and will keep me up at night because she is grunting so much and so loudly in
her sleep!!! I should take video of it so she can hear how loud she was when
she is older. She is a really sweet and
fairly easy baby though. She is a fantastic
eater which makes life so much easier for us.
When we left the hospital on Sunday the 26th her weight
dropped down to 8 lbs 4 oz. There wasn’t
too much concern because that is less than 10%.
When we went to the doctor on Tuesday, she already put on 2 ounces as my
milk came in and the doctor was really happy about that. We were told to come
back in 10 days for a weight check to make sure that she was gaining at least
an ounce a day. I wasn’t concerned this
time round about Hannah gaining weight because she ate so much!! Plus I knew I had
a lot of milk and breastfeeding was much easier this time round. When we went
back to the doctor 10 days later, Hannah weighed 9 lbs and 3 oz. Quite the little eater/chunkster. Because she gained so much weight we are now
able to let her sleep through the night – or as long as she will sleep
for. The last couple of days she has
been getting up once during the night to feed which isn’t too bad. We are getting some good stretches – about 4
hours or so for ourselves and then another couple after her nighttime feed. We can’t complain considering she is less
than 4 weeks old. Hopefully she will
start sleeping longer at night which will be really nice.
Her
umbilical cord fell off pretty quickly but it was oozing which made us
nervous. When we went back to the doctor
for her weight check the doctor put some silver nitrate on it to close it
up. She told us that it shouldn’t ooze
anymore and that her belly button should start going down too – it was a bit
herniated. The next day it didn’t look
so good so we called to talk to the doctor.
She told us to put rubbing alcohol and Neosporin on it – that worked
like a charm. It cleared up and now her
belly button is looking really good.
There
was one other issue we had to deal with – Hannah’s white blood cell count. The hospital accidently ran a test that
showed her white blood cell count. The
results came back that her count was really high but they didn’t know why. They ran the test again and while it was
still high it did go down. The doctors
weren’t concerned about this as many babies have high counts at birth due to
the trauma they go through during the birthing process and their numbers are
usually out of whack the first week. Plus,
Hannah was doing so well and looked so good that they didn’t think anything was
wrong with her. To be on the safe side
though, we had to go get her another blood test during her second week of life
and the results came back stellar. As we
all knew, Hannah is perfect!
She
really is a cute little girl who is making her mark in our family. It will be fun when she is more alert and we
can tell more about her personality. For
now, she is our dark haired beauty who sleeps most of the day.
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| Emma and Daddy on Father's Day |
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| Emma being silly! |
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| Emma and her buddy Milo sporting sweet glasses. |
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| HANNAH |
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| Emma meets Hannah with Mommy |
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| Happy Family |
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| Happy Family and Silly Emma |
