Life lately.

Life lately has been pretty great.  Cole has brought more joy into our lives that we could've ever imagined.  Our house is full of love and it's awesome.  But it's also really, really hard.

Around 3-4 weeks, Cole stopped being the perfect baby that he was during the first 3 weeks and started  screaming for 3 hours every night.  It was horrible.  We took him to the doctor, and sure enough, the dr told us it was textbook colic.  The thing about colic that sucks is that not only can you not doing anything to soothe your baby during their crying fits, but the medical world still doesn't really know what it is, what causes it, and why some babies have it.  What was really hard, is he would start right around the time Jon came home from work, and that's time to the go the gym, so Jon would be stuck with a screamer for an hour or two while I escaped and got my running done.  Luckily this phase didn't last too long....

Around 10 weeks, we were able to establish a good routine, and started to notice the night time crying stopping.  Around 8, he gets a bath with Johnson's bedtime sleep bath, then a full massage with their sleep lotion.  I swaddle him from the waist down, and then he gets his last feed of the day.  We keep the lights down, the tv low and talk quiet.  When he's done eating, I rock him for about 10-15 minutes to our nighttime playlist... Van Morrison "These are the Days", Simon and Garfunkel "The Boxer", "Make up Kisses" from the PS I love You Soundtrack, and the William Ross score from the "My Dog Skip" soundtrack. The room is dark and it's just me, cole, and the dog at our feet.  (Jon is usually downstairs during this time making dinner for he & I).  Cole falls asleep and I put him down right at 9, and usually (usually) don't hear from him until 3:30 a.m. when he wakes up to feed.  Then I get about an hour or 2 with my hubby before I'm too tired to function and have to go to sleep.  I usually wake up right on cue at 3 and pump.  If he wakes up before I do, I feed him and then pump.  After this feed, many nights I bring Cole into our room and he'll cosleep or sleep in the bassinet.  He does fine in his crib for those first 6 hours of the night, but for some reason after his middle of the night feed, he sleeps better in our room.  50% of the time, I'll get him to go back into his crib until morning. He usually gets up around 7.

He is such a happy baby now.  He doesn't really nap during the day... I'll get 20-30 min here or there and in that time, I race around and pick up, do laundry, sweep and mop, etc. I'm a chronic over-cleaner and especially now that he's here, I am constantly running around trying to keep the house picked up.  Sometimes i put him in the bumpo and set him on the counter and he'll just sit there and watch me clean.

When he's not eating, we're usually playing. He smiles, laughs, talks, babbles... this is his favorite toy.. He could sit under here and bat and laugh at the animals all day long.

Mady is really coming around to Cole.  She's very protective and keeping a watchful eye. And sometimes we catch her doing this....

Cole loves Mady too.  He watches her every move and laughs at her all the time.  And the other day he found out that her tail is quite fun.

That's pretty much our days around here lately.  We're hoping for some warmer days soon so we can take the stroller out and mommy can run outside. I have the best running stroller ever and I cannot wait to log some major miles on it.  We did break it out yesterday and took a walk into downtown for some lunch.  Our first family walk.

Oh and I can't forget! We had our first family date night recently.  Jon and I took Cole over to the bowling alley right by our house.  I dressed him up in his bowling gear and shoes and we played a game.  Cole was the hit of the alley and mom and dad had a great time having a cocktail and showing our little guy how to bowl.

It was a great, great time!  Love my little family.  

March goals.

March Goals!

Already a few days in, but here are my "goals" for March. Did pretty decent on my February ones, so I'm hoping that writing out this list every month will keep me somewhat motivated.  Some of these March goals are a continuation of what I didn't finish in February.

1. Get a redo passport photo for Cole and then take all of his documents that I gathered up in February into the post office and get his passport ordered.  I could basically be done with this one if that idiot at Costco had done his job right. grr.

2.  Get our taxes done.  Yippeee totally my favorite thing in the world.

3.  Print out Cole's 3 month pictures/pics off my phone for this month.  When I finally printed everything from my phone since his birth a few days ago, I had 900 pictures to go through.  Each month, I'm going to take my phone to Costco at the end of the month and print out what I want from that month.  That way, I stay on top of it, add them to his albums, and keep up with his baby book.

4. Make a date with Erum and Nicole

5. Go on at least 1 date with my husband minus the baby.  My parents will be back in town for Caleb's birthday, so hopefully they'll babysit. We don't have a babysitter yet besides Grandmas... we need to work on that.

6. Finish off the rest of the baby weight. I could probably knock that out with a 7 day cleanse but can't do that while breastfeeding so basically I need to cut out M&Ms for a month and I'll be fine. :)

7. Do at least 1 double digit run per week. I am running about 6 days a week right now, sometimes 5, sometimes 7. Most are about 6-8 miles.  When I was training, I was doing 10+ mile runs every single week and I want to get back to doing at least one of those per week plus my other days of regular 6-8 mile runs.  I'm not training for a specific marathon right now, but that doesn't mean I can't do some of the long runs.  I miss those so much.

8. "Start" figuring out when and how much I'm going to go back to work. Right now, Jon doesn't want me working and to be honest, I'm not ready to leave the baby.  But we need to start thinking about me getting back to the hospital, even if it's just a few shifts a month. I miss it.

February Goals- Update!

Update on my February Goals:

Last month, I blogged about my goals for February... Looking back at them, I actually did pretty good... Here's how I did for February.  My goals were:

1. Blog more!  I need to catch up on the last few weeks of pregnancy posts and then Cole's birth and first month.  I NEED to get those done before he gets any bigger and I get farther behind!  I've been great about keeping up with his baby book, but I also plan to do a birth post and then posts for each month.  I'm so sorry for the long zzzzz nap I've been taking away from the blog.  We're just enjoying our new life here as a family of 3. (well 4 if you count Mady).  Well, I did get his birth story written, and finished my pregnancy posts.  Not amazing, but got somewhat caught up.  I didn't blog a bunch of pictures of him... I put tons on Facebook, so check them out there. My FB name is Amy Nilles, so friend me if you haven't already, and you'll be able to see a zillion pictures of him.

2. Print out Cole's newborn pics and get them matted and framed  Yay!  Got this done this week.  Printed out a ton of pictures and updated his baby book, put together an album of pics I've taken, and did 3 different displays in our house of pictures... We hung shelves with black and white pics in our family room, I did a small gallery wall in our dining area, and then I did a larger gallery wall going up the stairs.  It feels great!

3. Get Cole's birth certificate and SS card and his passport ordered.... we are going international in a few months with our little guy... First family vacation will be to Mexico in June for my sister's wedding.  Got this halfway done. His birth certificate is on the way to our house, I have his SS card, and I got his passport photo taken.  Too bad the idiot at Costco didn't do the picture right and I have to go somewhere else and get it redone because Cole isn't looking at the camera.  Ugh.  Once I get his birth certificate and redo his picture, we'll ahead over to the post office and do his passport.  That's a March goal.

4. Get back into my pre-preggo skinny jeans.  Self-explanatory.  I'm getting there but still have some baby weight to shed.  It helps that I ran until the day he was born (with a few weeks of bed rest in there)...  it's been easy to get back into the gym routine... not so easy to shed those last few pounds though.  I still have around 10 lbs to go, but I did get into my pre-preggo skinny jeans and wore them last week when Jon and I took Cole on a family date night to the bowling alley.  Felt amazing!  I'm running 5-6 days a week and breastfeeding, but I haven't been the best with diet.  Breastfeeding and running makes me starving!  And sometimes it's easier to grab a handful of triscuits for lunch rather than make myself a salad or something. I honestly think I'm probably not eating frequently enough.  I'll go the whole day without eating b/c I'm busy and then have McDonalds or something for dinner.  I know what I need to do... eat small meals frequently, lots of protein and veggies and stop snacking on crap.  But I'm only 2 months post baby, so I'm feeling pretty good with where I'm at.  March goal will be to shed those last 10 and maybe another 1-2 so I'm in tip top shape for Jessica's wedding.

5. Have more playdates with friends.  I still have some close friends to meet up with so they can meet Cole.  He was born over the holidays, so that made it difficult and then the flu epidemic hit, so we've been waiting until everyone is healthy.  Excited to introduce my little guy to all of my buddies!  Did okay with this, but still need to do better.  Liz came over and we introduced her baby Beckett to Cole.  It was awesome and the pictures were priceless!  I had a girls night with my work friends and had a blast.  And I get together with my sister-in-law every week for wine night.  Wednesday, Cole and I are going to my friend Nessa's to meet her and Tenele, my besties from work.  Still need to get together with a few more of my friends so they can meet him.  Another March goal.

Here is Cole (on the right) with his best friend Beckett.  Liz and I delivered on the exact same day! We've been best friends since we were 5.  Pretty freakin' awesome. :)

Cole's Birth Story.

December 12th was a day that started out very, very ordinary for what was about to happen.  I felt decent.  Worked out, cleaned the house, added some finishing touches to the hospital bag... even got a mani/pedi.  Around noon, I was thrilled to learn that my best friend had her second baby boy.  I texted back and forth with her throughout the morning to see how things were going.  Jon and I even made plans to go surprise her at the hospital the next morning to meet her little guy.

Well, we never made it there, because we got our own surprise that evening.

Jon came home from work and then headed across town to get a haircut.  I was in the process of coming up with something for dinner, when all of a sudden I felt a very sharp, intense pain in my right lower abdomen.  It scared me, because it was right where one of my scars is.  I laid down on my side immediately and hoped it would go away.  I'd been contracting on and off for weeks, but this felt nothing like that.  It felt like my scar had ripped open deep on the inside.  Terrified, I called Jon and told him to get home right away.  Then my labor & delivery instincts kicked in, and instead of better, I felt worse... I thought about what I would tell a patient who was 37 weeks pregnant with 10 previous abdominal surgeries who felt sudden, intense, constant pain.  All I could think of was "abruption."  I wasn't bleeding, so that was good, but I knew abruptions could be concealed. (An abruption is when the placenta breaks off from the uterus, cutting off blood supply to the baby and resulting in hemorrhage of mom and baby, and death if not treated/delivered FAST).  I knew we were 45 minutes away from the hospital and Jon wasn't even home yet.  I made it upstairs to the bathroom and grabbed my doppler (fetal heart monitor)... again, I'm an L&D nurse....  I checked LO's heartbeat and breathed finally when I heard it thumping away.  Jon walked in and he started loading our stuff up in the car as I called the OB practice.  The midwife on call told me to get to the hospital immediately, and that my doctor was already there, as she happened to be the "on call" hospital provider that night.  God truly had set everything up perfectly for this baby.  My doctor is unbelievable, but she works in a group where she's the only physician and the other 2 are midwives.  They are both amazing, but they can't perform c-sections on their own, so one of my fears throughout the pregnancy was that my doctor would happen to be out of town or sick or busy or in another delivery when the time came to have Cole.  Obviously, if I made it to my scheduled c-section date, she would be there for sure, but if it happened unexpectedly, there was a chance that a different doctor would have to deliver him, and that was the last thing I wanted.  My doc knew the entirety of my situation and we'd had a plan in place for how the delivery would go down since the beginning.

When we got to the hospital, Dr. Y hooked me up to the monitors herself while the nurses started my IVs (two of them), and got all my consents, computer work, and paperwork signed in and prepped me for surgery.  I was contracting about every 1-2 minutes and the pain was still there, although it wasn't constant anymore.  My contraction pattern on the monitor looked like a classic abruption pattern, and even though the baby's heart rate looked good, my doctor wasn't taking any chances.  She sat down with Jon and I and explained that she was beyond thrilled that I'd made it to 37 weeks.  She never thought I'd get past 32.  There wasn't a point in playing games, especially with this weird pain.  She didn't know if I was starting to abrupt, or scar tissue was torn, or what was happening, and wouldn't know until she opened me up.  She pulled Jon aside and told him that there was chance they'd have to do a hysterectomy if the scar tissue was on my uterus and causing too much bleeding.  I didn't find this fun fact out until later.

She called in an extra OB, two additional surgeons, and a urologist.  She also got the top anesthesiologist in the room and called in her midwife, Nicole. I had 2 special care nursery nurses, the neonatologist, 3 L&D nurses plus the charge nurse.  Dr. Y was ready for anything. Blood was ordered and the decision was made to do the c-section in the main OR instead of L&D in case things went awry. I knew we were just being cautious, but when I got into the main OR and I saw all the staff, all the extra equipment, heard her on the phone with blood bank and saw her put in my catheter herself (usually the nurse does it), I started to panic. This all felt a little too familiar.

My nurses were friends of mine I worked with and I worked with my doctor and anesthesia as well, so I felt the love and care in the room, and they all calmed me down. I sat as still as I could for the epidural and Dr. Davis got it in easily. They laid me down, got Jon in the room, and started.

I felt like I couldn't breathe as I laid there and waited. Jon kept standing up and looking over the curtain and was fascinated. Dr. Davis and Dr Yockey were explaining everything that was happening, but I don't remember a word they said.... I just waited for the sound of the suction that I knew I'd hear when they'd break my water and the sound of the cry....

Very quickly, they got through the skin and uterus and I heard the suction. That's when the yelling started. They couldn't get the baby out.  Dr. Yockey literally climbed on the table pushing as hard as he could while Dr. Pozzi pushed from the other end. Because of the scar issue and some abnormalities on the side from nec fasc, Cole was wedged in there pretty good.  The pressure was immense, but I didn't even care.  I was about to try and reach down and grab him out myself when I heard a pop and a yell out of Yockey and then the sweetest, cutest baby scream you've ever heard in your life.

Jon yelled, and tears just poured down my face.  Never has a sound felt so satisfying.  I couldn't let myself believe I was going to have a healthy baby until I heard that sound. The last 8.5 months hadn't mattered... I need to hear and see him myself.  Dr. Davis pulled the curtain down and there he was.

Dr. Yockey was crying, Jon was crying, I was a hysterical mess.... the nurses were crying.  We all were in awe of this miracle.  6 lbs and 18  inches of pure miracle.  His head was covered in spiky dark hair (hello heartburn) and he had huge eyes.  And he was the cutest baby I'd ever seen.

9 & 9 apgars.  3 weeks early, but a little, tiny bundle of perfection.  Even the pediatrician told us he was the cutest baby she'd ever seen.  He had olive skin and highlights in his dark almost black hair.  He looked like a tiny version of Jon with my nose and mouth.  Every inch of him is perfection in my opinion.

Dr. Yockey was thrilled to tell me that despite the mess of scar tissue I have in my abdomen, my uterus was perfect... not one single inch of scar tissue.  I did have quite a bit of bleeding in the OR, but nothing that required major intervention.  All in all, she told me she couldn't be happier with how well my body had done.

And most importantly, he is completely and perfectly healthy.  I prayed everyday for a healthy baby and God blessed me abundantly.  I prayed that I would know how to love him how I was supposed to, and God put more love in my heart that I ever imagined I could feel.  Jon and I were absolutely smitten.

And here he is on the day he was born:  Colton Mack Nilles, born 12/12/14.

And here he is now... 11 weeks old!