3 weeks with new baby

The time flies!

It's already 3 weeks since we are home as a family of 4. 

Jessie is growing soooo fast. It's unbelievable and Alex is really a big sister. 

Even though she can be jealous and tries to get my attention when I'm attending to Jessie, she's a great help. She grew up from one day to another. 

If I ask her to help me with something, like to bring me a new nappy for Jessie or something, she usually goes and brings me what I ask for. She loves helping so much, that I had to allow her to help with washing too. 

Of course, I bring all the clothes to washing machine, prepare everything, and I never let her touch the washing powder etc, but she was so interested in pressing the buttons on the machine and turning the settings that I decided to give her the responsibility of turning it on. 

Well she's not strong enough to press the buttons, well the power one for sure, but I showed her which one is the start on and when all is ready, I turn the power on and ask her to come and help me press the start. It's usually me who press it at the end, but she has her finger on the correct button and feels so proud when she hears the water flowing in the machine. We always wait if the water comes. This way she's not trying to press any other buttons during the wash cycle or even when the machine is empty. This was one of the tips we got in our new parenting training we signed up for with my hubby.

It's great and I will tell you all about it later when I get more spare time, but at this moment it's quite busy. One baby needs me, another wants me, so it's an important game to satisfy all our little ones needs.

But I'm one really proud mummy with two beautiful kids. Love them to bits ;)

Still tired from night feeds, but they are getting better now. Breastfeeding is so handy. I'm happy that I can do it again. The only issue I have is that I have a lot of milk and very fast flow, which makes Jessie to swallow air as he's getting his milk so fast.

That wouldn't be a much problem if he would burp after each feed, but he doesn't, so the air goes to the other end ;) that means Jessie has a lot of wind and his tummy hurts because of that. I'm trying to help him with a baby massage and exercises and with trying to burp him every time he lets go of my breast, but that is not enough. 

I know boys have more tummy ache than girls, as a lot of friends told me that, but I also know he will grow out of it soon, so I need to work around it now, it all will be over soon. Alex was had a lot of wind too and she was fine by 12th week, so I'm hoping we will be lucky with Jessie as well and he'll be alright by the end of his 3rd month.

Oh BTW, Alex has 2 new teeth nearly out, and 3rd one is trying to come as well, so she's currently teething with 3 new teeth. This doesn't affect her sleeping, so we are lucky as she sleeps through the night.

Granny is here for a holidays from last Saturday to Monday so at least she has a good night sleep as she stays in Alex's room.

I'm really happy that we got some help here, but this will soon be over and it will be just us in the house. Me, hubby and two kids. Let see how we manage.
I think we did good during the first two weeks, so hope this will be even better as Jessie will be older now. Fingers crossed!

Jessie and his nappies

It is completely different changing boy and a girl. 

Of course with the girls there is the issue of what direction to clean the poop etc. and with boys to make sure their little penis is facing down, so you don't need to change his clothes every time he pees.

When Alex was tiny she managed to pee on me only once, luckily she never pooped all over me.

Jessie pees on us every day :)

Like he's waiting for being naked. I didn't expect such a small person be able to pee soooo far away.  When my hubby changes him and this is about to happen, he can somehow tell and is able to navigate the stream, I'm not that skilled yet. Well he's a man and have a lot of experience with that.

Yesterday evening I tried to navigate it, unfortunately it didn't work again. I had to laugh, but hubby wasn't impressed while cleaning it from the floor.

So I'm always trying to be fast with removing the dirty nappy and placing new one under Jessie's butt. 

As I breastfeed Jessie it's easier to have him in a bed while I feed him and change him during the night. He sleeps in his basket next to the bed. But last night it didn't seam like a good idea changing him there.

After his feed I went to check on him. He looked as he's done with it all. I got everything ready and set. Cleaned his butt and in the 3 seconds window before I managed to place a fresh nappy under him, he sharted :( there was poop on a bed, on my leg, his blanket, my duvet and before I was able to do anything about it he decided to pee as well. 

Late night bed changing wasn't really one of the nice moments of parenthood, but it was funny a little bit. Shocking at first but now I'm smiling.  At least he didn't have a tummy ache and was able to fall asleep within a few minutes after that incident.

So I need to be more careful next time and even faster I think ;)

Alex in the garden

The weather was great. It's like summer here.

We spent a lot of time in our back garden and we went for some nice walks with our double buggy.
The buggy is great, so easy to push, feels lighter than our single one and Jessie can sleep there nicely.

We had to buy Alex new shoes again as her first ones are too small now. She's growing so fast.
As we had only boots for her and it was too warm for them in this weather, we decided to left her barefoot for a while in a garden. It was soooo funny. It took her about 5 minutes to move from the picnic blanket and walk on the grass. She's ticklish. We also thought she won't be going to the house as there is a half a meter before the step which is covered by stones, but she managed to get over these too. Well now we have a sandals for her so she can walk where she wants.

That day her butt was little bit red so we let her walk in her body suit and track suit bottoms without nappy. I was waiting for her reaction when she pees first time. I was feeding Jessie when we heard screaming from the bedroom. 

Hubby went there and found Alex with wet pants, he washed her, changed her body suit for T-shirt and let her go out to the garden to play again. When I finished feeding Jessie and he fell asleep again I went to play with Alex. Reading book on the blanket, she walked towards me and peed again. Started to scream. She didn't like it at all. That happened once more before we went home to play and put a nappy on. 

I though she might like the unrestricted movement, but it seams like she prefers to have nappies now. I don't want to push her too much to go on potty as she doesn't like it and I don't want her to feel bad about it. We will wait for her to decide when she'll be big enough. I just hope it will be before her 2nd birthday. ;)

Well she decided to sit on her potty this morning, but she had her nappy and pants on. I explained her, that we have to get her pant off. She was sitting on a potty for a while, but nothing happened. Then she stood up, walked away and returned. That happened a few times until she walked away to the kitchen and peed there. I'm glad we have lino there ;) the mess was cleaned fast.

Alex absolutely loves being outside. She's trying to taste everything. Especially stones, sticks, flowers etc. When she sees some insect, she wants to play with it. Everything is so interesting for her. I love to watch her exploring things around herself.

It's a pity that the weather changed so fast. Yesterday morning was so sunny we thought we'll go to the sea and enjoy some time on a beach, but 3 hours later started to snow!!!! And today it's raining cats and dogs. We still need to take Alex out for a short walk so she can sleep better during the night, I hope afternoon will be nicer.

Coming home with Jessie first few days with two little ones home

After 24 hours in hospital I could go home. I was so happy to go, even though Jessie was sleeping a lot and I was a little bit scared that he's not feeding enough, but I didn't want to stay there.

Jessie passed all the tests and check ups, so there was no reason keeping the bed occupied if there was so many newborn babies in the hospital.

At the end of a labour I asked not to get the pitocin injection to help expel placenta. I wanted to try how it will work without it as the baby itself should raise the levels of oxytocin in blood which helps with the bonding and the 3rd stage of a labour.

With Alex I had to get one due to slight bleeding 5 days before she was born. So I have now experiences with and without it. With the injection I didn't feel much, it was very quick, without it I had a few more contractions and but it was over soon enough.

Before I left the hospital my body was still cleaning but this time it felt different. It took longer for the body to clear, but it's not as dramatic as last time. Unfortunately one midwife wasn't too impressed with me. She didn't understand why I didn't want to get the injection for the 3rd stage of labour, and with all the changes happening in my life I couldn't remember the reason why until I was home.

Hubby arrived with Alex to pick me up. She was surprised that there was a little person with me. We introduced Jessie to her and gave her and her brother presents I made. Two crocheted sheep, one in blue, another in red. Alex was more interested in the toys than her little brother. 

But when we were home she was checking on him often. She watched us changing him, feeding him etc. The following morning Alex came to my bedroom and looked for Jessie. She found him in our Moses basket next to my bed.

This repeats every morning. Even if I get her from her cot and change her. She then goes to my bedroom to see if Jessie is there. 

Of course she's a little bit jealous but most of the time she just looks at him.

I have to say that I'm really lucky that my hubby's currently home. The first 3 days were a bit crazy and I thought it would be really difficult to look after two babies alone, but now it's getting easier as Jessie is starting to have a little routine.

He still sleeps a lot, but can watch us for hours as well. Usually twice a day he stays awake between feeds and looks around. He's really sweet and doesn't cry that much. Only during the night it gets a little bit difficult as he can cluster feed for 2-3 hours, until he fells asleep.

I absolutely love being mum of two. Both of our kids are great. Alex is sometimes even helping with changing nappies or clothes of he little brother.

She had two bad nights with screaming spells. But pass two nights she's sleeping through again, without screaming or protesting to go to sleep. 

We knew it will take a little time for her to adjust to a new family member, but it looks better than we expected.

We already had a growth spurt. Jessie was feeding every hour and half yesterday and didn't sleep since morning until afternoon. Then he slept for 4 hours and 3.5 hours afterwards. Only kept me awake from 3am til 5am as usual. But the time when he feeds during the night for long period of time is getting shorter now.

I'm hoping he will stop these feeding sessions soon, so I could get more sleep. But I know he's still very small.

Baby #2 - birth

So our little man Jessie arrived! :)

We are so happy to have him home already. But the whole journey for him was completely different from our hypnobirthing experience with Alex.

I tried most of the things from my previous post how to get the baby out, but nothing worked. I think he just liked it there too much.

Well, for a few days I thought I was loosing the plug (apologies for TMI), but as it was more watery after a few days I rang the hospital. They asked me to come in to check if this was my waters.

No big gush, just slight drizzle, that what's happened to me. Unfortunately as it was already a few days, I had to get antibiotics straight away to keep the baby safe and was admitted that evening.
Following morning they checked me and broke the rest of the waters as the labour didn't start yet.

That was a big gush. They were joking that a plumber should be called in and I was told that the contractions should start soon, if not I'll get drip later that day to help things moving.

They started as they said. The problem was that I didn't get enough sleep during the night and they were really strong. My hypnobirthing technique was working at the beginning, but not as good as with Alex.

After 5 hours of nearly constant pain, when my contractions went one after another, sometimes without even a minute of break, I decided to take the injection to ease the edge of contractions.

I got it, unfortunately that didn't work for me at all. I was falling asleep between contractions when there was a break, couldn't stay awake, was really exhausted. 

I was sad and angry that I can not follow my plan. It was too much, if they wouldn't break my waters I think my body could have more time to prepare and all would be different.

I choose the epidural after about 6 hours of trying to do it myself. I hated the thought of having something in my spine. I heard some horror stories which didn't help, same as my hubby, he was concern about it too, so when the Dr came, he took him outside and went to ask him something. When he came back, we had discussion about it and was decided that another consultant will come to give it to me. 

Hubby said he asked him how many epidurals this Dr completed and he thought it wasn't enough, so we had to wait some more for the consultant.

She arrived after half an hour or so, and at the end she said we did good to call her as the spot for epidural is shorter than usual. She also reminded me to remember it for the future.

After that our little Jessie was born withing 1.5 hour. I still could feel a pain in my right hip when the contractions arrived as the epi worked on left hand side better, but I could breath through these. 

I have to say I had a brilliant midwife who helped a lot. So much that I didn't need any stitches this time. All was well, including our baby. 

So that is it. We are now family of four :) Have a beautiful daughter and lovely son :)