New Product for Babies with Reflux

This is for everyone--but especially Melissa. Have you all seen the new Fisher Price Rock & Play Sleeper? Link: http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3739296

I have heard this is a miracle worker for babies with reflux. I don't think this was out when Hadley was born, but I wish it had been. It was hard to find anything for her to sleep in that kept her at the appropriate angle after feedings for her reflux. The sleep positioners were not angled enough, and she always slid down when we put towels under the mattress. So we ended up staying up with her for 40 to 45 minutes at night after every feeding to hold her upright (which meant I got to sleep about 20 min. before it was time for the next feeding). A lot of moms have told me this thing is great, so it is definitely on our purchase list for the new baby!

--Amanda

double stroller???

So now that we are moving on to the second round of babies I was wondering what are some of the big purchases you are looking into. We are having another boy, so this really just brings our purchases down to a double stroller. I don't know if anybody is to this point yet, except for Greer who probably already has something, but I just wanted to let everybody knwo about the Britax promotion going on right now. Basically if you get a "B-Ready" stroller you recieve a free toddler seat/choice between two infant carriers/or a bassinet. We just got one this weekend. It was a little more than we wanted to spend, but we were able to get a free seat with it plus we purchased ours at Buy Buy Baby, and they let us use a 20% off coupon from Babies r Us on it so that saved us an extra 100 dollars. We opted to get a free car seat and hope to sell it on ebay for extra savings. Overall if we can get full price for the car seat then our double stroller will only have cost us around $250, which if you haven't started looking is actually a pretty good deal. We did try out the sit and stand strollers, and even though we loved it in theory Andrew just didnt get it, and the carrier hit him in the back of the head so it wasnt a good option for us...Anyways, I hope everybody is doing well!

Melissa

Pregnancy Differences

I would love to hear some of the differences between your first and second pregnancies. I wouldn't say mine have been drastically different but I also feel like my list of little differences is long.

The worst difference is that my eczema in this pregnancy has been about 10, 000 times worse. To the extent that the itching/pain wakes me up in the middle of the night.

With Molly I only threw up 6 times, with this one 10.

I also had nausea/gagging that lasted until about week 17 with this one, week 13 with Molly.

I think my leg hair growth has slowed down.

I feel like my baby brain kicked in full force. I am forgetting EVERYTHING!

Speaking of, I feel like there are more differences but I sure can't remember them!
What are y'all experiencing?!

almost time for the first second baby!

Joe and I are heading into the hospital this evening to induce, so we are anticipating a September 1st birthday if everything goes as expected. We decided to induce for a number of reasons (my doctor is going to be out of town around my due date, the baby has been a little ahead of schedule size-wise for most of my pregnancy, our family is all out of town, etc.). Honestly, though, one of the main reasons is how ready I was to have a solid END date for this pregnancy. It has been hard to be the mother and wife and person I want to be as I have gotten more and more uncomfortable and HUGE. My round ligament pain has been pretty constant and severe again and my back pain has been worse (I blame this one my current little one... she just gets heavier and heavier while I get more and more pregnant!). There is also, of course, the element of control you gain over the experience when you decide to induce. Pregnancy is such an out-of-control state to be in for an organized, plan-obsessed, Type A kind of person like myself that by the end of 40 weeks I am just ready to reclaim my body! I have a felt a little judgment around my decision to induce this time around though... I guess most people just don't see why I would want to induce if I had the option to wait. I hate feeling like I have to defend and rationalize my decision as a parent before I even have another actual baby! Have any of you experienced ambivalence and anxiety about decisions you make during pregnancy because of other people's reactions?

Baby #2

So far, everything is going smoothly with Baby #2. I was a little sicker and much more tired this time--probably due to the fact that I am chasing around a 18-month old all the time now. I am also STARVING all the time! I am really eating us out of house and home. I don't remember being this hungry last time.

I had to switch doctors and hospitals when we moved. I toured the hospital a few weeks ago, and I have my first appointment with the new doctor in about a week and a half. I got spoiled being in Atlanta where they have a plethora of good hospitals to choose from--all within 10 miles or so of our house. Where we live now, there are two community hospitals, each about 20 miles away. Neither of those really have NICU units, and I'm not sure if they have an anesthesiologist there 24 hours a day (important to me because I don't plan to even try going natural since I only lasted about 10 minutes without an epidural last time). I also want the NICU in the hospital just in case things don't go smoothly with the baby. So I have chosen a hospital that is about 45 minutes away. If I end up having to be induced, it won't be a problem. And my old doctor said that I would most likely have plenty of time. If I start getting close and they predict snow around here, however, we will be getting a hotel closer to the hospital. The hospital itself actually has a hotel in the top of it, so hopefully we can get one of those rooms if needed and just be an elevator ride away from where I need to be. This hospital also has an anesthesiologist dedicated to the maternity ward and actually at the hospital (not just on call) 24 hrs. a day.

How are the rest of you doing?

--Amanda

Big Changes for a Big Girl!

Well, it has been a while since I have posted an update on our family. For the past month or so I have been preoccupied with trying to work everything out for our big move! As you may know, we recently moved to Indiana for my husband to take a job there. We all had a lot of uncertainty during the first half of this year with trying to figure out whether to make the move, whether we could work out the move financially, what was going to happen to my job, what we would do about childcare, etc. All I can say now is that we have truly been blessed over the past few months, because things could not have worked out better than they did! We decided to make the move because it is a really, really good career opportunity for Tom. We found a great house in the country (I mean really in the country--i.e., our "subdivision" is on a dirt road and the neighbors across the street have chickens). I have always been more of a city girl, so I never imagined I would be living in the country like this, but I actually like it (at least for now). It is very quiet here, and we have a huge yard to play in! I technically quit my job, and thought I would be staying home full-time for a while, but my prior employer actually decided they wanted me to continue working with them from home as an independent contractor. So now, I work from home and set my own hours. Can't complain about that! I usually do an hour or two of work before Hadley gets up and then do some more during nap time, and when I am busy, I can do a little work after she goes to bed. All this means NO MORE DAYCARE!!!

I really liked the daycare Hadley was in, as it was a really good daycare (and it should have been since it cost almost as much as our mortgage). I did not mind leaving her because for the most part I trusted her teachers and she seemed to enjoy it. However, she was ALWAYS sick. The everyday exposure to the germs was just immune system overload for her. The last week she was there, she had a virus that caused her to run a fever of 104.6 for about two days. I had no idea you could run a fever that high with a virus. I had her tested for every bacterial infection there was, but it was just a virus. It really started to make it seem pointless to work because numerous times I had to take an entire week off of work (which actually just meant I worked double time at home taking care of her during the day and then working all night). If I sent her back to daycare too early, she would catch something else before she fully got over the first sickness and then we would start the cycle all over again. Talk about exhausting--and especially not easy while also battling morning sickness and first trimester fatigue with Baby #2!

So needless to say, I am glad she will not have to go to daycare for the time being. We found a good church preschool here that she will go to twice a week starting in August, and she is really excited about it. Every time I say the word "preschool", she says "Yea!".

Hadley is growing up fast! She is speaking in two to three word sentences/phrases now and can usually communicate to us pretty easily what she wants--which is ultra nice! When she is done eating she says "all done", "unbuckle", "get down". She is also really good at puzzles! We had to get her some more challenging ones because she had figured out all the puzzles we had--even if we mixed all the pieces up together, she could still figure out which puzzle they went in. And she is about to have the new puzzles figured out too. She likes to try to imitate the rooster that lives across the street too. Every time the rooster crows, she says "Neh!" as loud as she can. We keep trying to teach her that it is "cock-a-doodle-doo", but she insists on making the horse sound in response to the rooster.

We aren't planning on moving her to the big girl bed until November or early December, but we did get a potty recently. She really likes to sit on it, but at first she would only sit on it for about half a second, and then she would say "all done" and get up to go play more. In the past couple of days, however, she has gone pee pee in it twice, and yesterday she pooped in it!!! So with all luck we will at least be using less diapers for Hadley once the new baby gets here.

Post on the Baby #2 coming soon!

Beware Nursemaid's elbow!

Just a quick warning about something we didn't really think would happen to us.  We ended up at the urgent care clinic this weekend with Isaac because of something called nursemaid's elbow.  In short, it's when the a baby's elbow becomes dislocated after being twirled, or pulled by the wrists or arms.  Isaac LOVES (loved now,) to have daddy or mommy spin him in the backyard, or swing him up when we're both holding his hands, etc.  But this weekend, we learned the hard way that we really shouldn't be doing that.  He's totally fine now, but the doctor had to pop the bone back into place and he was pretty crabby the rest of the afternoon.  A dose of motrin later, and he's totally back to normal, but I just wanted to let you guys know about it.  We can still swing and twirl him, but it has to be with us holding him under his armpits.  Hope everyone is doing well!  http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical/bones/nursemaid.html