Yea!!! I’m SO excited, tonight (just after eating half of an old doughnut that I bought while STARVING at WalMart the other night), I felt the baby move with my hand!! Not once, but 6 or 8 times!! Wondering if the sugar had something to do with it???

Daddy is depressed – ha – he never gets in on the first movements. He did get his hand there in time, and I KNOW it moved while he was there, but he’s not sure he felt it. He might’ve had his fingers spread apart or something?

I’ve since tried to poke and prod it to move again, but it’s disappeared deep into my tummy, never to be found again tonight. It was SO close to the surface, and I felt what must’ve been an elbow BULGING out of me. This is SO fun!! As I’m typing, I’m starting to feel the flutter of little kicks too, not with my hands obviously.

I was trying to push on it the other day, to see if it’d move so I could feel it, and our oldest was VERY concerned about him/ her. He quickly cautioned me not to hurt the baby!

Our current ‘baby’ boy learned to say ‘ba-ba’ last week, for baby. The older two are still set on different genders – older brother wanting a girl (because of the ‘patter-in’), and sister wanting a boy (not sure why, maybe cause that’s all she knows?). The name Newt is still stuck with them though….

“Little Mommy”

Sorry for no post since the visit…. My oldest began throwing up Friday morning, leaving us in a bind! No one to stay home with him, so Daddy had to use his afternoon off to see the baby to stay home with a sick little boy (and his very upset sister).

ALL week long we’ve been talking about how exciting seeing the ultrasound together would be, only for me to have to go by myself (leaving behind a disappointed Dad and crying big sister). Yep, that was hard, and I was having to fight tears at the doctor…. Must be a pregnant thing, cause I’m still sad that I was alone, and they had to miss.

I know we’re supposed to be content where God has us, but I sure struggle with having no babysitters around! Everyone has someone it seems – but us…. I’m glad DH was taking off, so atleast our son had someone to take care of him, but I know how excited he was to be a part of this (or so he thought).

Well, 20 weeks into it, and I’m finally feeling the baby a good bit! I weighed in at 131 lbs. – not sure how that equals to my first thing in the morning weighing at home.

The dr. didn’t even do anything, just walk in for a minute, then walked out. The ultrasound checked everything I guess…

The lady was really nice today, doing an extra long ultrasound for me (video for the family). I think she pitied me being by myself. I only say one leg kick one time, and that was at the beginning. For the rest of the time, I turned away so I wouldn’t see the gender – until she’d go back up to the upper half.

I got to see what looked like a wave, a yawn, moving or sucking it’s mouth while there. It’s arms were stretched out above it’s head pretty much the whole time, coming down only a little here and there to cover it’s face.

From what I can tell, it’s not near as big as our last boy was on his ultrasound (what I saw of the leg and it’s arms).

I’ve been right I think in saying I’ve thought I’ve been feeling the baby move, but it was too high. Turns out, the baby is higher than ANY of my others ever were this early. I don’t even think the books/ charts show baby’s being this high this early!

They usually do the ultrasound on your lower abdomen, but there was nothing there on me! The baby was up around my belly button (she even mentioned having a hard time seeing it’s heart because my belly button was in the way).

So, the flutters above my BB have been it’s arms. The kicks I’m starting to feel are just below my BB. I saw one BIG kick on the screen, but didn’t feel it… So I’m wondering how active this little one really is, which I guess I’ll find out in the next few weeks as it grows and I can feel it more.

DH is a little disappointed that I still can’t feel it with my hand yet (meaning he can’t either). He’s usually getting to feel it by now too, and is hoping to get the chance any day now.

I’m really getting the ‘baby’ feeling now, especially seeing this one particular newborn at church. I can’t wait to hold a little one again!

As far as dreams, 3 dreams for a girl, and 1 dream that it’s a boy. I’ve had a couple where I realize DAYS after it’s born that I haven’t nursed it yet, seems I have those dreams with each baby…. wonder what that’s supposed to mean??

Due to having so much to deal with regarding our new land, I haven’t had time to research cloth diapers yet… but hope to soon! I know a good many women using these now and LOVE them – there’s gotta be something that I don’t know.

In case I don’t have a chance to post again for a few days, I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

“Little Mommy”

Oh, PS – the baby weighs 11 oz.

Sorry, I’ve been behind this week! A LOT has been going on – getting a contract final on some land, calling all the necessary people in regards to that (water, address, clearing, septic tank, well, etc…)

AND

The other exciting news being my preschool site, Sonbeams, got it’s first shipment of it’s first “hold in your hands” product designed and produced under my so called leadership. Anyway, I’m so excited Sonbeams is really seeming to launch – and also just as thrilled that there will be a line of Christian products for children that I KNOW are good!

To celebrate the new product, a dry erase plastic board – Chore Chart/ Responsibility Chart – for Christians, I’m holding a giveaway on the blog. One commentor will receive a FREE chart of their choice!! Visit www.Sonbeams.com for more information on how you can sign up to enter.

Well, baby news this week is big – I go for my 20 week visit this Friday! As far as I’m planning, we’ll just have the tech write the gender down and seal it up. IF we open it, I’m thinking it will be Christmas time, but not sure just yet….

We’ve gotten some really cute pictures of our daughter (almost 3) kissing and rubbing my belly. She’s bonding quite well with someone she can’t see! She’s constantly carrying around a baby doll now too – it’s so sweet!

I’m not sure if it’s the fall air or what, but we all have been eating more lately. The other day, I was particularly hungry, as was she. She wanted something I was eating. I had to use the baby as my excuse to eat my own food… and it made sense to her.

Now she constantly references me having to eat because the baby is hungry – ha! I’m bad not sharing, kinda, but I DO have to eat for two!

I’m amazed that I still rarely ‘feel’ pregnant. I’m not sure if I’m just so busy that I don’t have time to think about it or what. I think part of it is that I’m not showing much, I really haven’t gained but maybe 9 lbs. – but I’m just 1 or 2 lbs. over what I weighed when I got pregnant the first time (and still below what I should weigh anyway….).

This baby is just going to show up one day, and it’ll be a shock – ha!! I am starting to wake up to go potty at night, just once – and around 4:30. This is better than my other ones, which were between 12:30 and 2 AM. Because once they were born, that’s when they woke up every night to eat! I’d LOVE another easy sleeper through the night.

I’ll post stats on Friday or Saturday from the visit,

Little Mommy

Still a little confused exactly WHEN each week moves up… According to the dr., it’s on Fridays, but on the ticker, it’s Thursdays.

Either way – great news to share! I was 100% sure this morning that I felt the baby!! Yea!! I thought I’d never feel it move.

All afternoon, it’s been thumping around here and there… I’m so excited!! Just wanted to let you know….

It’s busy here, between calling banks about the land we’re buying… Did I mention that yesterday? Our offer on 10.43 acres in the country/ mountains was accepted, and we’ll be the proud owners in a month – yippee!!

Well, that business, trying to get our house ready to go on the market, and Sonbeams – I’m pretty tied up!

For any readers that might not know, I am working on Christian products for preschool/ elementary age children. For more info on that, click the button below!

We just heard the sweetest blessing by our 4 1/2 year old son….

….Please give us a baby named Newt, but if You don’t, that’s okay, we will name it somethin’ else…

HOW CUTE! This big brother is ready for a baby!

Picking up today with my series on breastfeeding vs. bottle feeding, I’ll share my experiences with my second born – my daughter.

From the beginning, I knew she would have a different routine than my first. I believe I fed her every 2 1/2 hours… She was born at 7 lbs., and her weight gain was good – until around 3 months old.

People think I’m crazy, but I believe there IS a difference in the RX prenatals and the OTC prenatals. When she was around 3 months old, I switched from the RX to the Walmart brand vitamins. Within a week or two I’d say her weight gain slowed very quickly.

Now, I can’t blame it 100%, because today at almost 3 years old, she’s still a TINY girl – only weighing 26 lbs. or so. BUT, I still think that did change things. I noticed the layer of fat in the bottles I’d pump was almost non-existent after changing vitamins. I’m not someone with a high fat diet, so maybe there was something in them that I missed in a cheaper vitamin?

One thing I forgot to mention about Baby #1 was he seemed to have a milk problem. When he would nurse lying down, I noticed milk would come out of his nose! Turns out, that it took us until he was almost 10 months old to realize he had reflux – poor baby!!

All this time his Daddy wanted us to teach him to cry to sleep – but it never worked. He cried and screamed forever and it was heart breaking. Not as heartbreaking as when we discovered he had reflux, and all the time he was crying at bedtime – he was in pain!

Zantac was a part of his life for the next 2 years, despite my gut about it.

Well, with baby #2, she really had more ‘signs’ of reflux, but didn’t ever seem as fussy or a screaming baby like #1. But after each nursing, she’d throw up most of what she’d eaten – projectile vomiting. They told me to feed her less each feeding, that maybe she was getting too much.

Huh??? Last baby I wasn’t feeding enough, and now they’re telling me I’m feeding too much. Needless to say, I was pretty confused and frustrated. I did try shorter feedings with her, but it didn’t help – plus we were back to more frequent nursings again (since she was eating less at each one).

Probably around 3 or 4 months, I noticed she was getting a lot of red, rough patches on her legs – really bad. Okay, I thought, what’s different all of a sudden? That was easy – I had just discovered my latest craving/ satisfaction was honey buns.

I quit eating these every day, and her rash cleared up! I didn’t have 100% knowledge in this area yet, but was just starting to realize how processed foods affected me. I paid attention, and noticed they made me itch too…. But I wasn’t sure at the time what was in them exactly that bothered me.
(More on that with baby #3)

When she was 5 or 6 months old, I became pregnant again, and she began weaning herself – not wanting to nurse anymore. I began cramping and spotting, and that alone was stressful – without even taking into consideration that my ‘baby’ was weaning much earlier than I wanted her to.

I had a new OB that go round, and he was very adament about weaning her immediately. I knew that many moms nursed while pregnant, and was frustrated that most OB’s seem so against it. She was still a baby!

I HAD to really buckle down on it though, cause the bleeding would pick up after nursing her. Sadly though, our baby went to be with the Lord just before reaching 7 weeks gestation age. We were blessed to be able to see it one Thursday, it’s heart beating – before I miscarried on that Saturday.

We grieved, I experienced the hardest thing I could ever imagine. I’ll touch on this subject another time, since I know there are mothers out there going through this too – and needing comfort.

Now I was left with an empty womb, barely a milk supply left, and a baby that refused to even try to nurse – I was devasted.

My only consolation was that maybe her weight gain would improve on formula, but that never happened either. I wish I could say how we figured that one out and fixed it – but she’s still tiny, and I’ve just accepted (long before the drs.) that God designed her to have a tiny, lightweight frame.

My lessons learned with #2? No processed bread foods – these caused eczema in a nursing baby. Reflux in two children now, but since she never seemed fussy about it, she was never on Zantac.

Next Monday, with baby #3 I finally seemed to feel like “I have it!”.

Little Mommy

Welp (that IS a Southern word, not really sure what words make it up, except for well??), I am STILL not sure that I can feel this little one moving. Several days this past week I would think it was moving like crazy, only to put my hand on the exact spot and realize it was above my belly button…. Oh well! I don’t think the baby could be up there yet??

I was kinda bummed to see the scales read 120.5 last weekend, after I had just mentioned I was gaining a little. But was excited to see 124.5 this morning! It’s so weird, I’m still wearing some new clothes I bought on clearance at the end of last winter. They fit last year, and I’m having to use a belt or clip them up with safety pins now….

Did I LOOK 18 weeks pregnant when I bought these things??!!?? Hubby won’t say a word…

No breaking news to share, except, have I mentioned I found a cure all to my cold/ stuffy nose?? After a HUGE ordeal with a B’ham ENT (BTW- I would recommend to NEVER visit Dr. Douglas T. Lowery), him wanting me on 15 days of steriods and doing procedures on me – not telling me they were outpatient surgery procedures (until I got the $100 bill!)…. I finally found some natural solutions that are safe in pregnancy!!

I just couldn’t believe that steriods were my only option – plus the fact that this particular one isn’t even tested on pregnant women because of the risks!! Did the dr. tell me that? NO! I’m so grateful for a pharmacist that questioned that!

This ENT told me that it was okay, since he asked my OB’s office and they said okay. WHAT?! So the OB saying it was okay meant that my baby wouldn’t be hurt?! This drug is KNOWN to cause cleft palate! Needless to say, he won’t receive any business or recommendations from this patient.

I guess my frustration did pay off, since I ended up spending hours searching online for natural, safe remedies for nasal polyps online. I struck oil when I came across an article on Candida (yeast overgrowth).

I can’t remember if I shared on this before or not, so I’ll just give an overview. But basically, I have most every symptom of this! Fatigue, sleep disturbances, always hungry/ cravings, sinus conditions, etc…

I was disappointed to read this, since my diet is mainly foods that you should avoid to help manage Candida. I read about probiotics, which I had in the fridge and started taking again. Also about Spirulina, which I had packed away – and that helped some too. Remember that itchy rash on my leg? It started clearing up!

Then I saw it – GARLIC! Garlic is a natural antibiotic that helps kill the bad bacteria in our bodies – Candida! I tell you, I’m telling everyone I see about this stuff!

I found an odorless Garlic pill at the store, and from there, here’s the amazing story…

I had a particularly bad sinus day, knowing I’d be back at the dr. with an infection. So that night, I took the Spirulina, Probiotic, and Garlic. Would you believe the next day, I hardly had a sniffle! I couldn’t!

I ran out, and within days I was back to not being able to breathe, runny nose, facial pain. Within a day or two of restarting the garlic (tried a cheaper capsule this time), BETTER! I’m hooked on garlic for life now – just wondering what I’ll do when the baby comes, since I’m sure it’ll affect the taste of my milk??

In other news for the baby’s reference, we made an offer on some land today – 15 acres. It’ll be a big change from our 1/5 acre lot in a subdivision that we have now if they accept it, but the county life would be so much more peaceful for our family!

“Little Mommy”

Just for the baby’s records, today – November 4, 2008 seems to be the biggest, most controversial Presidential election in my lifetime! The race is between war veteran, Senator John McCain (R), and half-black, Senator Barack Obama (D). His race being only part of the ‘bigness’.

His opponent in the primaries was Sen. Hillary Clinton (D), wife of former President Bill Clinton of the 1990′s. The running mate of Sen. McCain is Alaska’s governor Sarah Palin.

So, we could have our first elected ‘somewhat’ black President, or our first elected female Vice President. Neither of which I’m exactly wild about.

My biggest thought to share today is from my baby’s point of view. I WISH someone had thought of printing a t-shirt for this election (for pregnant women) with a big red circle with a slash through it over the baby belly – Obama’s name inside of course.

I am thoroughly dismayed with the fact that this man, who claims he is a Christian, can say he WILL allow innocent babies to DIE!!! Either through partial birth abortion or after birth for abortions that didn’t take.

I am heartbroken and tears coming to my eyes to think of those poor little babies lying there on a table, all alone in a room…. Their mother didn’t want them, tried to kill them, and it didn’t work. So now, Mr. Obama will help the mothers STILL try to kill their baby.

That baby will lie there until it dies – and that man won’t think a THING about it. How sick our nation is becoming!! I cannot fathom the wrath of God on this, I can only see how FURIOUS I am that someone would allow this to happen, sign his name on it – even saying he would support this happening to his own grandchild should his daughter one day ‘make a mistake’!

Dear Lord, PLEASE don’t allow such an evilness to happen in our nation!

“Little Mommy” – and PROUD of it!!

(Right click the title of this post, and select copy shortcut to be able to copy/ paste and spread this message to all you know!)

Picking up on the discussion from last week, I’ll briefly cover my main points. I’ve tried 3 different methods of nursing with 3 different children, being most satisfied overall with my last.

This week I’ll cover my first baby. He was a healthy 7 lb. 12 oz. baby. When we took him in for his 1 month visit, he weighed 7 lb. 13 oz. – not good.

If you recall, I mentioned following a baby book someone had given me – a book that outlined the ‘ideal’ schedule for a baby. This time frame had feedings scheduled every 3 hours. That ‘might‘ work for some babies, but it didn’t for mine – at least not as a newborn.

Seeing him day in, day out – I didn’t realize how skinny he was. It’s so hard to look at those first pictures – especially from 3 to 4 weeks old. He would cry, and my husband would say he was hungry, but ‘the book said’ they’d learn and do well on this schedule.

He had a latching problem as well, and I had to wear shields for MONTHS on end. I’m thinking he was over 6 months (?) old before I got sick of that and wanted him to nurse himself. It took a lot of work, but he soon got the hang of it.

Back to those first few weeks, the dr. told me at his 1 mo. appt. that he had to be fed EVERY 2 hours – around the clock!! Not fun at all! Plus, we had to take him in for weighings quite frequently – to be sure he was gaining weight.

Looking back, I can see that they were also concerned that there might’ve been a health concern. Some diseases/ conditions have a main symptom of low weight gain. I remember sitting at the hospital in the lactation consultant’s office – having them ‘have’ to watch me feed him. Quite embarrassing indeed!!

They would try and help me read his cues – when he was finished on one side, ready for the other. Baby #1 was a SLOW eater, it would take AT LEAST 45 or 1 hour for each feeding. So, you can imagine how tired I was – him eating for almost an hour, then having to feed him again in another hour – 24 hours a day….

So, what did I learn from baby #1?? Forget the 3 hour schedule – more frequent is better. Maybe every two hours wouldn’t have been my 1st choice – but that was a result of not feeding him often enough from the start.

Sometimes you just can’t follow the books perfectly!

By 9 months old, I was pregnant with baby #2 – so around 10.5 months my nursing slowly ended. I began spotting and cramping, so the OB had me wean #1. At the time, I didn’t have any concerns about formula – I just hated he had to be on it for another 1 1/2 months until old enough for milk. Not even mentioning the costs!!

Next Monday, I’ll share my lessons with baby #2. Until then….

“Little Mommy”