Already a month?

Carl is a month old!! Seriously, a month old!

The past month has been super exciting and has been quite a learning experience.

I have learned that everything I thought I would do or be as a mother has been thrown out the window. I knew nothing and I am now learning somethings. And who is my teacher? My Baby Carl. He is teaching me how to be his mom. As soon as I realized that things became easier.

You see I am a perfectionist and an overachiever so I wanted to be the all out perfect mom. What that meant to me was; breastfeeding would come naturally, and I would love every second.

HAHAHA!! Yeah right. Breastfeeding is amazing, but it has not come without assistance. I never took into account that I might be too much for my baby. Thank God for nipple shields. I have heard nipple shields get a bad rap, but who cares. It is working for us and frankly he could stay on it until he's 12! LOL! But seriously it has helped tremendously and as he gets bigger it's a bit easier for him

Now loving every second of motherhood has not quite happened either. I get tired and I have realized that is okay. I like going on runs and to school without him, and I have learned that is okay.

The biggest lesson I have learned thus far is I cannot compare myself to other mothers. Why? Because they are not Carl's mom. I am. Loving him, listening to him, and being there for him is all I need to do.


Before I end this post, let me share with you what has been fascinating for me and John this first month.

1. His poop! The noises it makes is quite hilarious. We are just fascinated by how loud and how much he can poop. I am sure in time the novelty will wear thin on us.

2. His pee! He is a pee monster! There are days that every time we go to change him he will pee on his face or us. And the distance his pee has is pretty amazing!

3. Watching him sleep. He does not like to be swaddled he stretches and stretches until he get's himself out of it. Afterwards he is perfectly content and likes to put his hands over his face. He just makes the most adorable faces and poses when he sleeps.

4. Tummy time. He works really hard to lift his head and in the process his back legs will lift up too, so essentially he looks like he is break dancing!

5. He is smart! He is great at distinguishing who Mommy is and who Daddy is. He knows how Mommy feeds him, so when I am at school he does a great job taking a bottle from Daddy. But taking a bottle from Mommy is out of the question. He gives me a weird look then turns his face into my chest. His face says, "Give me the boobie!"

So the first month has passed. He is getting big and developing quite a personality!
The journey ahead of us is going to be amazing and I know I just need to buckle up and enjoy the ride!!

Welcome Mr. Carl

John Carlton Driskill IV was born March 26h, 2010!!

To set everyone on the record, we will be calling him Carl. Deciding what to call him was the dilemma since finding out we were having a boy. We already knew if we were having a boy we would name him after John. Then the next step was figuring out what to call him. John is John and for those of you that do not know this he is also known as JC. Growing up he was called JC because his Dad was John. So I decided I did not want to call our son John, and John said no initials. So that left his middle name. We sat with this for awhile because we did quite know yet. Then John's Aunt Linda sent out a book of the whole family genealogy. I found it quite interesting to read on my husband's family. In the book there are quite a few pictures. There is one particular picture in there of John's grandfather, John Carlton the first who went by Carl (who died before John/JC was born), as soon as I saw it I knew instantly that our son would be called Carl just like his great-grandfather.

So here I present to you Carl!

Born: March 26th, 2010
@ 5:29 pm
Weight: 6lbs 5 oz
Length: 19.75 in.

Now for the story.

If you remember my previous post "I Will Survive" I talked about being put on bed rest for Gestational Hypertension. So that is what I did, rested. My doctor wanted to see me that Thursday so it had only been a couple of days. As we were leaving for the appointment John asked if we should bring the bags. I said, "No this is just a follow up for my blood pressure and NST. And since I have been down for the last few days everything will be fine."

Boy oh boy was I wrong. After the NST Dr. Martinez-Poyer (amazing doctor by the way) was like I am going to send you across the street (St. Vincent's) and we're going to get you started to have this baby. So there it was; anything else that needed to be done would have to wait. There was not much longer before I would no longer just be Aimee, a wife-daughter-sister, I would Aimee a mother then a wife-daughter-sister.

So we went straight in, skipped past all the triage waiting stuff, and into our room. They started the inducement process around 11 am (I won't go into details about what they did). By midnight I was in active labor. My doctor came in around 8 am and broke my water (that was an interesting feeling). He checked in with me and I was still going with natural childbirth, after all I had been surviving for the past eight hours. Well. . . around 9 am I demanded an epidural. Do I regret it? No, tried natural it was painful. God created amazing people that developed amazing medicine.

After the epidural I was able to get some rest and everything moved quickly. By 4:20 I started pushing and at 5:29 Mr. Carl made his entrance. The emotions were so overwhelming. I cried, I laughed, and I praised God. The most amazing part was that first look at him. Every image I had imagined was shattered by the perfectness I saw. No image I could have made up would compare to God's creation. There he was Carl, my son. For the rest of my life my son. I his mother. As soon as they laid him on my chest he stopped crying and we just looked at each other. Nothing will ever make me forget that moment. The love I have for him is unexplainable. I have never felt this type of love.

Through out the whole labor and delivery John was right by side. Giving me words of encouragement. The look on his face when he saw his son was amazing. I do not know the exact emotions that he felt but at that moment we entered into parenthood together. Our love grew deeper that day.

And now we enter into a whole new journey.