Mom checks out OK!

While Evan being 6 weeks last week was an important milestone (as each week is!), even more important for me was that it was when I went back to the doctor to make sure everything was OK with me post-pardom.

I have been feeling pretty good, so I was thinking that I would get the thumbs up from my doctor...and I did! Everything healed properly from what he could see and feel and since I wasn't showing any signs of anything else not being quite right yet, I got the full go-ahead to return to my normal life.

Though I did cheat and start running earlier than the 6 weeks since I had been feeling fine. Evan comes with me in his stroller and seems to enjoy it. We usually go right after he naps midday, so he's awake and loves to look at the scenery as it goes by (I run through the park by our house, so there's plenty of trees to look at!).

I started with my short loop through the park, which is between 3.5 and 4 miles. The first few times, I did a walk/run, but have since been able to run the whole loop. As for my pace, it's pretty dang slow, but it just feels good to be out there. My time has gotten faster with each run, so hopefully my body is just building back those muscles that I haven't used for 3 months! I also contribute some of the slow speed to the fact that I'm pushing a 12 pound kid in a stroller - up some hills even!

Enough about me...I know the main reason most people come on here is to see and hear about that beautiful baby boy! He continues to do well and is settling in to more of a schedule each day. His neck is getting much stronger and he is holding his head up for a lot longer now. We had a bit of rough few days at the end of last week when he had a bit of a stomachache (we could tell do the changes in his diapers), but he seems to be back to normal now. I know it will not be the last time we deal with a screaming child for multiple hours, but I'm glad we got through the first time!

The best thing about Evan lately is how smiley he is! I know I shared some photos in the last post, but I can't resist putting up some more! These were all taken on Monday when he was very, very smiley all day. Some is brought on by me doing silly noises or messing around with him, but some are just on his own!

Lots of meeting to do!

Evan has had a busy week in terms of meeting new people!

Last weekend we had a birthday party for my grandma where he met most of my Mom's side of the family, including of course his Great-Grandma. She is his only great-grandparent on my side of the family, so it was extra special for me for him to meet her. Also there was my two cousins and their three babies (Yep, the family's first set of twins! They are too cute) that were also born this year. We were missing one cousin and her daughter, which makes 5 babies from 4 cousins in 2012. We still get together as an extended family for Christmas too, so it will be fun to see these kiddos grow up together.

We also ventured up to see Chris' parents on Labor Day and spend some time at their house on the lake. Since we were in town, Evan drew in a crowd. My best pal, who had her little girl a week after Evan, and her family stopped by, as did my friend/cousin-in-law and Chris' aunt and Chris' grandparents.

I love this picture. Four generations of Steinhoff men!

Evan spent most of the day snoozing in the sun, but we thought since he was at the lake, he should try swimming! It didn't go over too well, mostly because he was sleeping and the water was kind of cold.

Cue the screaming!

This week, Evan and I also went and had lunch with Dad at work and went and hung out at my work for a bit. He did pretty well with all of the traveling. We have some screaming fits in the car, but usually it's because he wants to sleep and just isn't sure how to do it. Once he figures it out, it's a pretty easy car ride :) 

One month old!

Thanks Pinterest for the cute photo idea!

It's really hard to believe that one month ago Evan was born. That sounds like such a long time! I know I say it every post, but the time is flying by.

Evan has been doing really well and is continuing to grow and become more aware of sounds and things to see. And Mom is feeling almost 100 percent. (Can't forget that it's been one month since my body went through the glorious process of childbirth!)

Here are a few notes about Evan's first month:

Weight: While it's not an official measurement, I weighed him on our bathroom scale and he appeared to be about 11 pounds, which would be about right. He was 10 pounds, 6 ounces at his two-week appointment.

Height: Dad did the "official" measurement of his height with his tape measure and he came out to be just about 24 inches or 2 feet. So he's grown about 2 inches in the last month. The kid is seriously going to pass me up by the time he's 1!

Physical development: Evan does pretty well at tummy time. Thanks to my friend Rachel, we've got a slick little device that has some toys for him to look at (including a mirror, kid LOVES to look at himself) and keep him occupied. He holds his head up pretty well and turns side to side.
He also follows with his eyes pretty well. He seems to recognize both Chris' and my voice and will follow us if we move our heads side to side while talking or singing to him.
He loves to look at his surroundings. We have a big black and white picture in our living room that is his favorite to stare at (since those are still the only real colors he's been seeing, though he should be recognizing others soon). He also pays more attention to the TV and our lights and watches them flash.

Sleeping: While he's still not on any kind of set schedule, Evan usually gets up twice, sometimes three times, during the night. He usually goes to sleep sometime between 8 and 10 and gets up every 3-4 hours or so. He then is up for the day around 7-8 and will nap for 3 hours or so sometime midday. Throw a few half-hour catnaps in there and you've got our day! He now sleeps in his crib in his room at night too. We set him right in the middle, but usually makes his way down to the end. No idea how he scoots himself straight down while swaddled, but he does!

Eating: Kid loves to eat! We introduced a bottle this week and he does well with that as well as with Mom. The bottle will be helpful so we can go and do things more freely without being tied to his eating schedule.

Other fun things: Evan does seem to give us some smiles and he has one little dimple on his right side.
He has started to make some cooing noises as if he's trying to tell us something.
He has actually stayed pretty content during his last two baths instead of crying bloody murder like he did every other time.
And last but not least, he is balding! Haha I know most kids lose some hair, but often it's on the back of their heads since they are laying on it all the time. Not Evan! He has shed quite a bit of hair from the top of his head. He still has some up there, but definitely not as much as he started with. The long hair on the sides and back of his head hasn't gone anywhere, so he looks like an old man!

3 weeks

As everyone told me prior to having a baby and being on maternity leave, the time is FLYING by! I can't believe Evan is already three weeks old, which also means my leave is 1/4 over.

Our little man continues to be a very good baby, but this week we did have a few bouts of fussiness, which included some major screaming and crying. But we got through them! I think some had to do with his stomach being a little upset (we had a runny diaper or two after one scream session). The other times might have just been growing pains or just normal baby fusses. We still cannot complain though, because for the most part he is a really content and happy kiddo.

Evan continues to grow like a weed. When he hits one month, we'll do a formal measurement and weight check, but I am guessing both numbers will have increased. Even though he's over 10 pounds, he still is super skinny with an extremely long torso and chicken legs. He's got some pretty chubby cheeks though!

Mom and Evan are getting the hang of being by ourselves during the day. He seems to be getting into a bit of a routine - wake up around 8 a.m. (Mom too!), eat and play until about 11, sleep until 2 p.m., be up for awhile (he's been up for as long as 8-9 p.m. with a few half-hour catnaps in between!) and then bed around 10. We've run errands successfully - mostly because once he gets in the car, he's out like a light - and gotten stuff done around the house.

One thing we've also managed to do a few times is have a little photo shoot! Chris gave me a beautiful Canon DLSR camera for Christmas, so I like to pretend I'm a professional sometimes. While I like to think I have some skill from my journalist days, I am far from a know-it-all. But with such a cute subject, it's hard to take bad pictures!

Here are some pics from earlier this week:

See how long and skinny I am?

Momma caught a hint of a smile!

We also had to take pictures another day when one of my best friends sent an adorable little baseball "outfit." Perfect for a little man who will grow up watching the Twins with his Daddy!

So, so, so cute! I don't think he'll wear it out of the house, but still.



I've also gotten some other random photos this week, including finally some of Evan and me!

Hanging out in my hooded towel after bath time.

Kisses from Daddy! 

And from Mommy!

And finally, a NICE family photo without me being in a hospital gown!

Two weeks

Our little man is now two weeks old, which is hard to believe yet also feels like it has flown by. In the last two weeks our lives have drastically changed from doing what we want when we want to following his schedule and maybe getting in something that we had planned. But it has been a pretty wonderful experience so far!

On Wednesday, Evan and I ventured out by ourselves for the first time (successfully, I might add!) to his two-week check-up at the pediatrician. Surprise, surprise - our little man is not so little! He weighed in at 10 pounds, 6 ounces!! The nurse practitioner gave me a little bit of the third degree, asking me how often he eats, but I told her it was on average every two to three hours, which is normal, and she backed off a bit. She also commented how he didn't look or feel like he was 10 pounds, because he's so dang tall, which is totally true. Everything else she checked on looked good. We've got ourselves a big, healthy boy!

As for sleep, we're doing pretty good. He's usually up twice during the night, sometimes three times, at an average of two or three hour spurts. If I can get a two hour block at a time, I feel much more rested (though I still enjoy an afternoon nap while he naps from time to time!). We've had our share of nights that didn't go according to that schedule of course, but overall, I think we're pretty lucky.

Then of course there are the diaper changes. Evan loves to play the game of having a poopy diaper and then when we go to change it, poop again right after we've got the clean one on. What a fun game that is for everyone!

Chris returned to work this week, so it's Momma and Baby flying solo during the day. It's definitely different, but we're making it work. We've gotten our TV schedule down and have even gone out for a walk (a short one mostly because I'm not 100% yet), which the little man seemed to enjoy.

Hopefully we can just continue to build up to a more set routine and sleep schedule in the next few weeks, as well as introducing a bottle into the mix. Mom is looking forward to having that little bit of flexibility in their day if the want it.

And without further ado, here are some more pictures of Evan! I haven't shoved my camera in his face too much lately, so he may even look different now. He seems to change a little bit every day - and by change, I mean, get cuter and cuter!

Look how long I am!

Mom, get that camera out of my face all the time!!

Evan Charles Steinhoff

As I'm guessing most people reading this know, we welcomed Evan Charles Steinhoff into the world on Aug. 1 at 4:37 p.m. He weighed 8 pounds, 9.6 ounces (some hospital staff rounded it up to 10, some rounded down to 9) and is 22 inches long. So the age-old question of how tall will this kid be (given he has a 6'4" father and a 5'3" mother) has been answered!

Before I get into the whole story - a LONG story - of his arrival, here is what most people are probably interested in, a photo of our little man. To us (biased of course), he's perfect in every way. Everyone at the hospital commented on how cute he was, and while I'm sure they say that to almost everyone, I think they really meant it with him. :)

So how did Mr. Evan come to arrive in this world, well like I said, it is a long story, so I won't be offended if you don't read it all. And don't worry, I won't include any of the gory details (though there really were none).

As of July 29, we were technically overdue, as that was the last of our variety of due dates from the doctor. So Monday, July 30 came around and not much was going on. I felt good and went to work. But that evening, I started to feel some stronger, more frequent contractions, so we decided to take our phones to bed with us to have a stopwatch near by, just in case.

I woke up around 12:30 a.m., went to the bathroom and was feeling a decently strong contraction. I timed it and it went close to a minute, so I knew they were getting a little more serious. It was about 12 minutes to the next one, so I decided I better stay somewhat alert to the situation. I did try and sleep as much as I could, but the strength of the contractions and my paying attention to what was going on woke me up each time so I could properly time and interval them.

Chris woke up to me pacing around at about 1-1:30 a.m. I told him the contractions were stronger, lasting 45 seconds to a minute and were about 9 minutes apart. He tried to sleep from then on too, while keeping an eye on the situation.

Around 3 a.m., the contractions were about a minute long, 5 minutes apart and stayed that way for about an hour, so I called into the Labor and Delivery Unit at the hospital and told the nurse what was going on. She didn't tell me to come in yet, since the strength of my contractions wasn't that bad. She said to wait another hour and see if they keep up and get stronger/harder.

So we waited around another hour and things got a little stronger, but started to fluctuate in the intervals. I called back with this information and she said I could come in, but if I wasn't dilated, they would send me home and if I was starting to progress, it was moving slowly and that would make for a long hospital stay (little did we know!). So she said to stay home and go through the labor process for as long as I could there, until "I couldn't walk or talk through the contractions."'

We stuck it out at home until about 3 p.m. Good thing we didn't go in! We got a little more sleep and thankfully the Olympics are on so there was decent daytime TV to keep us entertained. But at about 3 p.m., I was getting the very strong contractions, which lasted 45 seconds to a minute and were coming between 5 and 7 minutes apart. I called in to the hospital again and the nurse said to come in and they would check me out and decide if admitting me was the right decision at that time.

So we arrived at the hospital a little before 4 p.m. and the nurse got me into a room and gown and had us walk the halls for a half-hour. She then examined me and determined I was dilated to 1 1/2 cm and that since my contractions were fairly strong and coming quicker now, they would admit me. So we got excited that the time had finally come for us to meet our little one!!

The nurse came back an hour or so later and I was dilated to 2 cm, so we felt that things were moving pretty good, so we let our close friends and family know that this kid should be here by morning (ha!). My contractions were definitely getting stronger and I tried walking around to help ease the pain. I had always planned on getting an epidural and the nurse said they would put one in when I was at 4 cm.

Around 9 p.m., she came in and I was 4 cm and really in a lot of pain during the contractions, so in came the anesthesiologist and the drugs. What a wonderful medicine! It helped almost instantly and thank God we were able to get at least some sleep. A nurse was still coming to check on me, so I was up each hour, but any sleep was better than what I would have gotten without the drugs. More power to the women who go without, but I will never be one of them!

Unfortunately, one of the side effects of getting the epidural is that it can slow down labor. And of course, for me it did. That was reason #2 for slower labor with me, the first being that it was my first baby. So we got stuck at 7, then 8, then 9 cm for quite awhile and my contractions started getting more sporatic. Thankfully, I wasn't feeling them, but it started to become a lot of sit-around-and-wait.

Finally around 10 a.m. the nurse said I was fully dilated and suggested I try pushing a few times to see if anything progressed. It appeared to be working, so we started the whole process. I pushed until about 11, and then the doctor came in to see how things were going. As I pushed, she checked the baby and determined it was coming out face up. That's not a problem in terms of the baby, but it can make labor go slower - reason #3. Also, when she was trying to turn baby (with no luck), she said she felt a little bit of my cervix left, which was probably keeping the baby from coming out - reason #4. So her suggestion was that we wait awhile and make sure I became fully dilated to start pushing again. I took it upon myself to get an extra boost of the epidural and thankfully I was able to sleep for about an hour or so before the doctor came in and said it was time to push again.

Then came the HARD pushing. Thankfully again for the epidural I didn't feel any pain, but dang, that's no joke. It's a lot of work to get that kid out!! Somewhere in the process, baby did turn over, so he came out face down, but the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck a bit - reason #5. It didn't impair his breathing so much that they were worried about his survival, but he did have to go to the special stage 2 nursery for a few hours just so they could make sure everything checked out.

So after 36-some hours, we had our Evan! I will say it was all worth it because he is wonderful. We were in the hospital then until Friday morning and we've been doing great at home. We're a good team of parents, just as I suspected. The nights are short, but manageable, and Evan is a very content baby, only really crying when he is hungry. We've had our share of poopy diapers and even a pee that flew all over the wall. Gotta love boys!!

Here are a few pictures from the hospital and coming home:

Official weight

Holding him for the first time

Dad getting to hold him for the first time

First family photo. Forgive my appearance as I had yet to shower in over a day!

One big, stubborn baby

Here we are at the end of July, the time we have been anxiously anticipating for months, and our child has apparently decided it wants to stay curled up inside Mom yet. I'm wondering if this is due to the fact that it took us so long to get pregnant. Is this nature's way of telling me, you hoped and prayed for this for a year-and-a-half, you're going to get the FULL pregnancy experience?

We of course know that things can progress very quickly, but we had our weekly check-up with the doctor today and nothing had changed from the previous week. We're still somewhat hopeful this kid will come out on its own because some of the steps needing to be taken by my body are done, just maybe not as much as we'd like to see at this point. But then again, one of my friends was dilated to 2 cm for 2 weeks, so just because things progress doesn't always mean Baby is coming out. So to summarize, this kid is going to come out when it wants to whether my body is ready right at this second or not. We are just planning on being on high-alert for the next week.

We have done our part to try and get Baby Steiny to come out. We've bribed it with toys, Chris has threatened to take the money out of it's piggy bank and tried reverse psychology telling it that we don't care if it comes out or not. So far nothing has worked - shocker! That's why I do believe we've got a stubborn kid on our hands. It's already taking after his or her...mom. Yes, I admit I can be extremely stubborn when I want to be. :)

The doctor also told us that part of the reason Baby isn't getting itself into the proper positioning is because it has a big head, aka we were once again told we've got at least an 8-pound kid in there. He also mentioned the number "9" again, which I'm a little less scared of at this point, mostly because I just want the kiddo out, no matter HOW much it weighs!

Everything else checked out good at the doctor. My pulse, blood pressure and weight are still normal. Baby's heart rate was good too.

The doctor did mention the "I" word today - induction. I've been hoping to avoid it because I've heard it can be a harder labor, but if that's what it takes to get Baby out into this world, I'm game. If nothing has happened by Aug. 6, we will head to the hospital and start the process. We have one more doctor appointment next Thursday and if everything is looking the same, we'll schedule our time for that next Monday.

So the good news is, either way, we will have our child here in the next 11 days! It's very exciting to think of it that way!!