denali.

hmm…

do weird people realize that they’re weird? i feel like i need to be the person to tell them that for some reason.

it’s getting better all the time.

Man, just when I think I couldn’t be more in love with Oliver — I continue to surprise myself! In the beginning of motherhood, I didn’t feel the “baby bliss” that everyone insisted on telling me about. “Don’t you just stare at him for hours?”/”I couldn’t leave my baby’s side for months!” (etc…) I couldn’t stand comments like this, mostly because I didn’t feel these emotions. It took me about six weeks to realize that I probably was feeling the baby blue (post-partum depression).

Once it was time for my 6 week check-up with my OB, I let her know how I was feeling. She was completely understanding to what I was feeling and offered me some different suggestions on how to deal with it. I chose to take medication, mostly because seeing a Therapist and having a new baby didn’t really mesh well with my schedule. Within about a month or so after beginning taking the meds, I began to feel a change. My moods began to improve, my patience with myself and Kyle improved and I began to feel more “normal.” Like the old me.

I know that talking about PPD is a taboo subject, mostly because as a new mom you’re supposed to be all goo-goo-gaa-gaa over your new child. The reality is though, that after 9 months of harvesting a human in your body and then pushing it out of what is lovingly referred to as “the ring of fire”, your emotions are bound to be out of whack. I have no problems talking about my experience, mostly because I have dealt with it and moved on.

My love for Oliver continues to grow each day and instead of focusing on my tough beginning, I treasure the moments I have with him now. He will be 10 months old tomorrow — TEN MONTHS! It was just 10 months ago that I was doing everything I could to get this baby out of me and now here I am planning for his first birthday, time flys by! I remember when I was younger and the days would drag on for what seemed like forever and adults would always talk about how fast time was going by. I now finally understand all of that.

In the past two months, Oliver has gone from rolling over (more) to crawling, to pulling himself up on things and now clapping and waving. It’s so awesome to see all these new little things that he is learning and how quickly he moves on to the next thing. I’m in constant awe of his growth and everything (even the little stuff) seems so magical. 

Even though it took me awhile to finally reach the “goo-goo-gaa-gaa” place, I’m there now. And yes, I just stood over his crib while he was sleeping and stared at him. :)

if you like it then you should of put a helmet on it.

You’d think that after you purchase a car seat you wouldn’t purchase another. You buy the infant car seat, some extra bases to put in your husbands car and each one of the grandmas and that’s it. Nope, once your baby reaches around 20lbs or one years old, then you have to buy ANOTHER car seat. Let’s be honest here, car seats are not cheap either! Each car seat is going to set you back anywhere between $75-300, depending on how fancy you want to get. Long story short, I just bought two new convertible car seats for baby Oliver (because I love him).

In other news, for the past two months we have been back and forth visiting Seattle Children’s Hospital (SCH) regarding Oliver’s plagiocephaly. We had noticed the flat spot on the back, left side of his head a few months ago, but thought it might round itself out. I finally mentioned it to our pediatrician, who was not concerned about it at all, and asked for a referral. At SCH the doctor was on the fence about whether or not Oliver needed to get a helmet to correct the problem. She said that out of all the patients she sees, his is a very mild case and that if it bothered me, then that would be the deciding factor on getting it. She said there was a 50-75% chance that it would just naturally round itself out. She eventually told us to come back in a month and think about it and maybe the spot would round out a little more in that time. Most important about the visit is that she told us that the reason he has it is because he also has torticollis. We hadn’t really noticed it, if anything we thought his head tilt was because he was curious (whoops).  The doctor recommended we do physical therapy to correct the issue.

So for the past month and half we have been attending physical therapy every Thursday and man has it been helpful! We went in for torticollis issues and came out of it with increased mobility. Our PT, Rhona, is great with Oliver and has really got him to enjoy moving (that sounds funny). He is now a little rolling machine and is thisclose to crawling. The past six weeks have been so awesome to watch him become stronger.

I suppose you want to know the end of the story about his plagiocephaly, huh? Well we went back to SCH and decided to move forward with helmet therapy. The reality is, you can never give your child enough care and I want to make sure I do so for Oliver. To not put him in the helmet would be selfish of me because of my own insecurities (what will people say? what will they think of a baby in a helmet?). We now have followed up with the specialist, done measurements and gotten our helmet! He is the cutest little baby in a helmet too, but I would say that. His helmet design is slightly comical (blame my mother), it has racecars, helicopters… and a picture of a crossed out dog on it. I don’t get it either. We were most lucky that our insurance has covered every nickel of it, because those things aren’t cheap.

Lastly, life is great otherwise, I can’t and shouldn’t complain. I’m still chugging along finishing my BA, I work with great people and I married to my best bud. Oliver is more fun that I could have ever imagined and it seems each day/week/month just keeps getting better. I keep wanting him to stay at a certain age, because it’s so great but then I think of what is next to come! 

almost eight months.

Well this is LONG overdue but as you can imagine my life has been busy lately.

Oliver will be eight months old on the 23rd which seems almost hard to believe! I can remember rushing to the hospital and hearing his cry for the first time. Now he’s just beginning to crawl and is becoming more and more vocal everyday.

The past few months have been very busy, I’m back at work now. Being back at work is a nice break, being a stay-at-home mommy is a difficult job. As much as I think I would love to stay home with him everyday, I really do enjoy going to work and having a “baby break.” We’ve been blessed with a great daycare situation, as in my mother and my mother-in-law are his nannies. My mom watches him on Mondays and Fridays and Mary Jo watches him on Wednesdays and Thursdays. My days off are Tuesdays and Saturdays and of course Kyle is home with him on Sundays. Although daycare is sometimes the best and only option for some people, I’m happy that I was able to have this situation work out for me.

Oliver has been on two mini vacations with us so far. In Septemeber we went to Lake Chelan with the Swisher family and this past weekend we went up to Whistler with my family. Getting over the border was pretty easy, we just had to have his birth certificate (which we ordered last minute). He did fairly well in the car on both trips, he sleeps about 75% of the time. Of course vacations have changed too, we get about half of what we used to get done on these trips (and that’s okay). 

Halloween and Thanksgiving were very fun to have Oliver at! Oliver dressed up as an Elephant for Halloween, the costume seemed so perfect for his personality. For Thanksgiving we were at my parents house with my family and Oliver entertained us all during the meal.

We have continued to meet with our PEPS groups since it “officially” ended back in August. We had a BBQ together in October, a Halloween party at the beginning of November and a Christmas party just this past weekend. We did a secret Santa exchange and it was so cute watching all of the babies open their presents. The final gift of the meeting was… the stomach flu. Five out of eight babies caught it, so so sad. Oliver and his iron-clad-trash-eating (just kidding) stomach are okay, for now.

We are looking forward to our first Christmas morning with Oliver, even though I told Kyle no presents for him. Mean mommy? No! I buy him presents all of the time, he really won’t notice that there are none this year for him. I told Kyle we can wrap up a box for him, that will be his favorite gift. Oliver met Santa a couple weeks back and he didn’t cry! He didn’t smile either though. He was very stoic, just looking up at Santa every few minutes. Such a funny little dude.

Hopefully my next blog isn’t so long and so delayed. I will make an honest effort to write/post more for the rest of the year and of course going forward!

You know what’s awesome? Being Oliver’s mom. For as tiring, stressful and thankless as it is sometimes… One little smile makes it all worth it. Being a mom is one of those things that you don’t really “get” until you are one. I never understood why people said it goes by so fast or how it would feel like to be the person with the crying baby. I get it now though and it feels good to be in that club.