One Month!

We have had a great first month with Brooks.  We had lots of visitors around to help us out and he is really a great baby.  He is not fussy at all and pretty much only cries when he wants to eat (every 2-3 hours).  I have been taking a picture of him every week and we are doing the monthly photos also.


Week 1: My mom was here with us the whole first week.  We did a few more Christmas themed photo shoots before she helped me pack up all of our Christmas stuff.

 We also went to the doctor when he was 4 days old and he had gained a few ounces up from his birth weight which was good!  (He was very modest when posing for this pic) ;)

When he was 5 days old we put him down for some tummy time and he decided to roll over!  Thinking it was definitely a fluke I made him do it about a million more times (poor thing) and we caught it on video.  

Week 2: Todd's mom came to visit us the second week and his umbilical cord finally fell off so we were able to give him his first bath.  He loved the water!  (still does)

Week 3: He wore this when we went out to brunch with some friends.  He was great out of the house--slept the entire time.

Week 4: By week 4 all of our visitors were gone and we were running out of activities so I busted out the playmat and he seems to like laying there and looking up at the toys.

On January 25th we got him all dressed up for his one month photo shoot.  Here are a few of my favs...

The teddy bear is one of Todd's from when he was little that his mom had saved for him and of course Charles had to get in on the action.  I am hoping to get a pic of the two of them every month like this but we'll see how cooperative they both are as we go on!

Meet and Greet

Brooks was lucky enough to have lots of friends and family come and visit in his first few weeks of life.  Todd was great at snapping pics of everyone with him so there are only a few people not pictured (mainly my friends who came by while he wasn't here and I forgot to take pics).  So here are his first photos with (almost) everyone...sorry Channel!

Meeting Nana

Aunt Mel

Cousin Matt

Cousin Jake (cousin Chase not pictured...he had a little bit of a cold while they were here so we didn't let him get too close)

Meeting Granddad! He drove up the weekend after Brooks was born.

Meeting Matt and his new friend Calvin.

Meeting Jordan and wearing an adorable sweater that Jordan's wife Camila's mom made for him.

Meeting Paige.

Meeting Gram!

Meeting Will and Andria...they came bearing diapers which is an awesome baby gift in my opinion.  I'm doing that for everyone from now on!

Meeting Katherine and Ryan...they had us over for dinner when he was a few weeks old.

Meeting Uncle Chad!

Meeting Timmy.

Hanging out with Nate!

It's been a fun couple of weeks showing him off to everyone, and there are still so many people who need to meet him!  Stay posted for meet and greet pt 2 ;)

Merry Christmas to us!!

After many long walks and many false alarms...my water broke around 2:30am on the night of Christmas Eve.  Todd and I had gone to the Christmas Eve service at our church and then we went out for dinner.  I was feeling a little homesick so I ordered some fried oysters and we had an eggplant appetizer because someone at work had told me that eating eggplant will send you into labor.  Maybe it worked!  After I realized that my water had broken, I woke Todd up and we called the doctor.  He said since my water broke and I was having contractions to go ahead and get to the hospital so we packed everything up and got to the hospital around 4am.  They got me into a room and we were ready to go!

At 7am the nurses switched shifts and Miriam came in.  She was absolutely wonderful!  Everyone there had the best attitude especially for having to work on Christmas Day.  The only downside to it being Christmas Day is that there was no food :(  The cafeteria was closed and poor Todd was starving.  We had packed some granola bars and some crackers in the bag but those didn't last long.  

They asked me when we got there if I wanted an epidural but at that point my contractions weren't too bad so I decided to wait it out.  I was only about 3cm dilated at this point.  When I said I wanted to wait it out, the nurses gave each other knowing looks and told me not to wait too long because the anesthesiologist was on call but he was at his house and it would take him a few mins to get there. About an hour later I hit btw. 4 and 5 and I figured out what those knowing looks were all about!  Luckily it didn't end up taking him longer than  15 mins after I asked for it.  After that things slowed down quite a bit and I ended up being in labor for about 12 hours.  With the epi, the pain was not bad at all.  I actually ended up taking a few naps during the day.  The only problem was everytime I tried to move off of my left side his heart rate would drop dramatically so I pretty much had to lay there in the same position the entire time.  He ended up being born at 2:52 pm on Christmas Day after about an hour of pushing!

This is my favorite.  Poor thing, he does NOT look happy about being on the outside.

He was 7lbs 12 oz and scored a 9 on the APGAR. (Not a 10 because his hands and feet were pretty purple for awhile).  We decided to name him Brooks (after Todd's middle name) and Douglas after mine and Todd's maternal grandfathers.  We hope he likes it...it took us a loooooooooong time to pick it out :)

My mom made it down for the big event and my sister surprised me by coming down a few hours later so they both got to see him the night he was born which was really neat.  Every single restaurant was closed but my mom somehow found us some Chinese food to eat that night, thank goodness.  After 13 hours of labor, I really didn't care what I ate!  We had some fun the next day with the whole Christmas baby thing and dressed him up in a Santa outfit for a little photo shoot.

We had a great hospital experience.  Everyone there was so nice and I really didn't want to leave!

This is him on going home day...my mom got him this adorable little outfit and his Aunt Maria gave him the little gray booties :)

Definitely our best Christmas ever!

Pregnancy Wrap-Up

So, I really did a great job posting during pregnancy. Nothing after 19 weeks.  However, even though I did not have time to blog, I did snap a few more photos.  I will put them here all in one post to refer back to.  All in all, I gained about 40 lbs...way past my scary weight but what can you do?

 

This was around 31 weeks at my friend Paige's wedding.

This was taken on Thanksgiving Day.

We had a warm snap towards the end of December so we went for several walks on the beach the week before he was born.  By this time in the pregnancy I was having alot of swelling and was ready to go!