Luke's first trip to Hilton Head

A few weeks ago, we went to Hilton Head Island to celebrate Luke's 1 month birthday and my 28th birthday.  We packed up the car to the brim with all of our clothes, Luke's baby gear and the two dogs.  The car was so packed you could barely see out the back windshield.  When they say there is no such thing as traveling lightly with children, they are kidding.  We must have looked hilarious driving down the road, but atleast we were prepaired.  When we got there, we spent the next several days relaxing, watching college football, outlet shopping and eating.  We visited the beach only two times because it was a bit too hot for our little man.  Luckily nights were a perfect tempature and we were able to enjoy the beach then.  Here are a few pics from Luke's first time in Hilton Head.  Cant wait to go back in the spring when he can actually enjoy the beach!

Luke's first month!

Wow! Where do I even begin?!? This past month has been the most surreal month I have ever experienced in my whole life! It has been the most special, most wonderful month I could ever imagine but it has also been the hardest and most sleep deprived month too. ha. From the moment we brought you home, you had us wrapped around your little finger.  Your smiles melted us and your whimpers made up jump to our feet.  The first two weeks, you were a breeze.  Let me elaborate on that a little. ha.  You basically slept all day and just woke up for feedings and diaper changes.  That does not go to say that we had an easy time during the first two weeks.  I was a complete wreck. ha.  Go figure, during the weeks where you were basically sleeping 22 hours a day, I was terrified!  Every little move and sound you made, absolutely terrified me! I am not normally a nervous person but you had a few bumps along the way that terrified me.  To start off with, you were born with jaundice and we had to visit Children's hospital 3 times until we got that under control.  While Children's hospital is a very nice hospital and we are very lucky to have it so close to our house, it is not a place you want to go with your newborn. Just when we thought we had said goodbye to Children's, we were sent back when we could not get your tummy under control.  Turns out, you have a bad case of reflux.  For about a week, you would throw up (projectile vomit) several of your feedings a day.  At this point, you were mostly breast fed and apparently your little tummy was not able to keep it all down.  We are still unsure if it was the amount you were consuming, the rate at which you were drinking or a combination of the two.  Luckily for us, after an ultra sound on your tummy we figured out it was not pyloric stenosis, which they were originally worried that it would be.  Thankfully, after putting you on some prescription medicine and adding a 1/2 teaspoon of baby rice to every ounce of milk you drank, we fixed our reflux problem.  At this point, I finally started to calm down and not worry so much about everything.  I can still remember the nights that I did not sleep more than 15 minutes because I would stare at you all night, terrified that you would choke if you threw up.  Sleep deprivation can really make a person nuts. ha.  I never knew I had that side of myself but then again, I have never loved anything or anyone as much as I love you!  You have truly shown me a whole new side of myself that I never knew ex histed.  You have shown me that I have the ability to love someone so much that I would honestly do ANYTHING for them. You are such a special little boy and I am so privileged to be your mommy!

So, since I am using this blog as a way to keep track of all your milestones I guess I will go ahead and list several of our milestones/experiences from this past month.

Things you love:  Your little giraffe blanket, your wubbanub, and the hair dryer.

For a solid week, we (me, john and the doctor) thought you had colic. You would get so upset every night from about 1am-5am.  You would cry and cry and nothing worked to console you.  We would drive around in the car, which worked a little, until we hit a stop light or until we got so tired we had to go home.  Just when we thought we couldn't take it anymore, we discovered the hair dryer!  We always knew you liked the hair dryer because when you still had your umbilical cord, we used to have to hair dry it to dry it out and you always got so calm and loved the noise it made as well as the cool/warm air on your tummy.  So one night when you were really upset I turned on the hair dryer and magically you were calm.  This started the beginning of using the hair dryer to put you to sleep at night.  Thank goodness we finally outgrew this because I can honestly say  there were several nights I almost burned the house down when I feel asleep with the hair dryer in my hand but hey, at least you were asleep! ha

Length of time you kept your umbilical cord: Gosh, probably close to 20 days.  Yours took forever to fall off because the doctor said I cleaned to too much. ha. Go figure.  That's where the hair dryer trick came into play.

Friends that came to visit you in your first month:  Aunt Shmo (Morgan Jones), Aunt Christen, Uncle Wewe (Morgan Phillips- he chose the name) and then of course all our Knoxville friends: Aunt Bev, Christian, Rob, Julie, Jennifer, Ashley and Jay, and many more.

Measurements at your 1 month doctors visit:

weight- 10 lbs 5 oz  (90%)

Length - 21 1/2 in (50%)

Head Circumference - 15 1/8 in (70%)

Lukey, You are honestly the best thing that has ever happened to your dad and me.  We are so inlove with you and cant wait to watch you grow up and become the wonderful little boy we know you are going to be.  You bring so much joy to our lives already and I know it is only going to get better with each day that we have you in our lives!  Hope your first month was as fun for you as it was for us! We love you little guy!

xoxo, mommy

Here are all the pics from your first month!

Luke's Birthday - August 9, 2011

1 Samuel 1:27

I prayed for this child, and the Lord

has granted me what I asked of him.

Wow, it is hard to put into words just how incredible August 9, 2011 was!  It was a day that I had been thinking about for my entire life and it was finally here.  The day that my first child was born!  The day started out bright and early.  I had a scheduled induction at 7:00 am at Ft. Sanders Hospital.  When driving to the hospital, I can remember thinking just how surreal it was that I was going to have a baby that day.  It would be the last time that John and I would drive through Knoxville being a family of 2.  When we arrived at the hospital, we checked in and then got placed in a room.  Lucky for us, we were in a large room with big windows and lots of natural sun light.  It was perfect, minus the fact that the room overlooked Tennessee's football stadium (John's dream and my worst nightmare. ha).  While sitting in the room waiting on the doctor, I can remember just looking around and taking everything in.  I was nervous and excited all at the same time.  It was like Christmas morning x 100 but I knew there was going to be pain along with my big present. ha.  When the first doctor arrived, it was Dr. Hayney Weaver, one of our favorite doctors.  She was on call the previous day and was about to end her shift.  Since my doctor (Erin Saunders) was technically on bed rest, Dr. HW was going to get us started and help out Dr. Saunders.  DR. HW went over the particulars and then told us that she was going to send in some of the nurses to go over paper work as well as get me going on my IV.  Not long after Dr. HW left, the process began.  The nurses came in and put in my IV (OUCH!) and started my Step Antibiotics.  I had to have two rounds of the antibiotics before Luke could make his appearance. After we were done with the nurses, Dr. Moffatt (another one of our favorites) came in to check my progress and break my water.  After realizing I am kind of a wuss, she decided to give me my epidural before breaking my water.  This was the part of the day that I had been terrified of!  THE EPIDURAL! I had always heard horror stories about how bad it hurt to get an epidural and how big the needle was, so to say I was nervous was an understatement! When the anesthesiologist came in, I was so scared.  I definitely wanted an epidural, I was just scared of how bad it was going to hurt.  To my surprise, it was not near as bad as I had expected.  It was not the most comfortable thing ever, but definitely not the worst either.  After getting my epidural in place, Dr. Moffatt came back in and broke my water.  At this point I was about 2 cm dilated having contractions on my own every minute.  While that may sound good, they were not regular and needed to be in more of a regular pattern.  At this point, they went ahead and hooked  me up to the pitocin and tried to regulate my contractions.   After the pitocin drip started, they told me I would have several hours of a "waiting period" in which I was just going to be hanging out watching the monitors and making sure they could get my contractions into a regular pattern.  Durning this time, I was not in any pain so family and friends were coming in and out of the room visitng with us.  It was so weird to see the monitor go off and tell me that I was having a contraction and not be able to feel anything.  It was kind of amazing actually.  Every so often, a doctor or a nurse would come in and check my progress but for the most part, the morning and early afternoon was a waiting game.  After the doctors came in a few times, they informed me that I was not quite progressing as much as they would hope.  Baby Luke was still sitting high up and not making his way into the birth canal or dropping.  It was around 3pm and I still was not dialiated past about 4 cm.  This was super disappointing to me considering I had been there a while and was not making a lot of progess.  I knew that there was the possibility of a C-Section all along due to how big Luke was and how little I was but I still was hoping that it would not come to that.  Dr. Saunders had warned me of that previously (which is also the reason I was being induced a week early) but for some reason I thought my body would work it out on its own.  They decided to turn up the pitocin and see if that would help push things along.  To my surprise it did but after several hours I was still stuck at about 6-7 cm.  Plus I all of a sudden felt a awful pain on my right side.  I informed the nurses and they had the anesthesiologist come in and give me an extra shot of epidural medicine.  While this worked for a little while, It soon became evident that they pain was coming back.  Once again, the anesthesiologist came back and gave me another exta shot.  Thirty minutes later, the pain was back!  At this point, the nurse suggested that we have the epidural replaced and have a new one put in.  At first I was not sure about replacing the epidural in fear that what if this one did not work at all?  What would I do then?  After thinking about it for a minute and feeling the horrible pain once again, I decided to go ahead with it.  A new anesthesiologist came in and replaced the needle and lucky for me did a wonderful job.  I no longer felt any pain on my right side but sadly I was already so sick from all the previous pain and medicine they had been pumping in my body trying to regulate the pain.  I was so nauseous I could barely see straight.  My teeth were chattering uncontrolably and I felt like I had to throw up everywhere.  It was honestly the worst feeling I have ever had.  I would gladly take feeling the contractions over how sick I felt.  The worst part was, it would not go away.  For the remainder of the day, I was sick as a dog.  I could barely think let alone talk to anyone.  At around 8 pm Dr. Saunders came in to check my progress and make the call of what to do (C-Sections or keep trying).  At this point, I  was ready to throw in the towel and just wanted a C-Section.  I wanted to Luke out and stop all the medicine.  I just wanted to feel better.  Dr. Saunders wanted to check me one last time before calling for a C-Section.  As she checked me, we realized that I still had about two centimeters to go if I wanted to try for natural child birth.  This sounded AWFUL to me! 2 MORE CENTIMETERS! UGH NO WAY!  But after a little bit of convincing from Dr. Saunders and John, I decided I would try just a few more things to see if we could get Luke to drop and dilate to 10 centimeters.  Lucky for me, Dr. Saunders is amazing and was able to accomplish both!  With a few pushes, Luke droped down and I was at 10 cm!  Now comes the hard part!  We began pushing and boy was it tiring!  I have honestly never felt more exhausted in my life!  Not only did I feel sick, I was using every bit of energy I had to try and get Luke out!  After 45 minutes of sheer exhaustion and throwing up on the doctor ( yes you read correctly, I threw up on the doctor) Luke made his appearence into the world at 9:29pm on August 9,2011.  He was a healthy baby boy weighing in at alomost 8lbs. 12 oz and 21 1/2 inches long.  The day was the longest day of my life but hands down the best day of my life!  God blessed me with the beautiful baby that I had been praying for my whole life.  It was amazing to see and hold this little boy that I had been carrying around for the past nine months!  I was finally able to see his little features and kiss his little face!  It was amazing!  Below are some pictures of the day and Luke's arrival! Hope you enjoy!