Sunday, August 08, 2010

Ollie Pop

Oliver loves his pink vibrating hand-me-down chair. I swear he would hang out there all day if we let him. He even sleeps in it instead of his crib at night. He especially loves the heartbeat sound that it makes. I would much prefer he snuggle up with me on the couch at night but he's not having it. This is one independent boy who knows what he likes!

He looks a little yellow in this photo, but I love that he's smiling and sleeping...

He also loves this duck blanket. He goes to sleep much faster when he's swaddled in fleece.

I love that a good majority of his things are pink, including his soothers. He's not afraid to show his feminine side.

Grand kids are awesome.



Abby is an awesome big sister and is the first to come to his rescue when he is in distress. She knows how to restart the heartbeat and vibrating functions on his bouncer when the time runs out. She also knows to get his soothers or let mom know when he needs some milk. She is well aware that he is in "time out" while in this chair and we can't touch or wake him. She is very thoughtful of his sleep schedule and can play quietly when he is sleeping. Seriously, she is so well behaved (at least when it comes to the baby!)

Doesn't this photo remind you of the final scene of the Breakfast Club where the "rebel" thrusts his hand in the air and the awesome 80's song Don't You Forget About Me plays in the background? Yup, he's already a fan of John Hughes movies. I loves it.



Midwife Madness

The German healthcare system is the bomb (unless you need an epidural!). Included in your sweet hospital stay is a take-home midwife who comes to visit you 10 times after you have the baby. This means you don't have to keep trucking your baby to see the doctor over and over for the first month. I also don't need any follow up care for my c-section because she makes sure I'm healing fast and well.

Included in her services: breast massages to get out any knots (serious awesomeness), breastfeeding counseling, physical therapy (we do a lot of pilates and pelvic and core strengthening exercises), moral support (bringing lots of free samples and presents for me and Abby), well-baby checkups (including giving your baby its first bath and oil massages), etc.

My midwife is straight up hippy -- she's got the armpits to prove it.


Jeremy gave Ollie his first bath in water, olive oil and 1.5% milk. The water was good enough to drink.

He was happy for the first minute or two, but then he got a little angry...



Check out his "mom" curls.

Ollie getting his oil massage.

He's cute, even when he clearly wants to kill us.


While the Cat’s Away

Although Ollie is buckets of fun, Abby still has the corner on excitement and adventure. Here is how she's been keeping herself busy while I'm recovering...

Grandma and Abby shake the plums off the branches every morning. They spend the rest of the day eating them off the ground at their leisure. I'm fairly confident that Abby has no idea which are the new plums and which ones have been sitting in the lane way for the past two weeks -- pretty dang disgusting in my opinion, but Grandma and Abby think their setup is delightful. Needless to say, the yellow goodness keeps her pretty regular.



She's also spent a portion of the week singing in the rain.

And showing off her original fashion sense.

She also enjoys riding around town with Ollie, who loves the car.

Grandma and Abby spend a HUGE amount of their day exploring in the forest behind our house.

And riding the statues that you find around the city.

Could anyone be any sweeter?

Sunday, August 01, 2010

Home Sweet Home

It took a while to out-process from the hospital, so we took some pictures to pass the time.

Jeremy's work sent this super cute bouquet for us. I love all the bright fun colors.


Denna took Abby to church today. I couldn't help but snap a shot of my grown-up girl. She just gets cuter every day.

She quickly got bored of the fashion shoot and starting passing out the stank eye. You would be thrilled to know that Ollie already has the stank eye mastered. Don't even think of making him wait even a minute for his 80-times-a-day feeding...


Green Thumbs

Jeremy and Denna spent last weekend beautifying the yard. I'm go glad they enjoy gardening because I'm not a big fan. They did a fantastic job!


Jeremy also found the time to make a yummy dinner from the Julia Child cookbook he found at the embassy library.

And I got two dozen pink roses from my hubby. What a stud.


Friday, July 30, 2010

The Big Day

Late Monday evening we spent a super fun time exploring the Berlin Zoo. We walked around and explored the heck out of that place. We were exhausted when it came time to go home. Jeremy didn't even grab a late dinner; he went straight upstairs and crashed. With Abby in bed, Denna and I read and played on the internet until about 9.

I had just said goodnight and was walking upstairs when my water broke. UGH. I couldn't believe it. I was induced with Abby and never got the joy of the unexpected slash. At first I thought I had peed my pants, but I've managed to get that under control in the past 31 years so I was pretty certain something was up.

I knew Jeremy needed some serious sleep so I went about my business and waited for the contractions to come. I finished up all my packing, read the final chapters in my birthing book and notified all the appropriate people. Then it got pretty boring. Eventually I woke up Jeremy and we went to the hospital to check things out.

The nurse could see I was having contractions, but wasn't so sure my water broke since I wasn't dilated at all. Luckily, I managed to convince her and we were sent to this super awesome birthing room.

It looks like we were having fun, but we showed up about 15 minutes before the lady next door delivered her child naturally. Let's just say there were thin walls and it was a little traumatizing. It reconfirmed my original plan to get an epidural as SOON as possible.

Flash forward to six in the morning. My contractions were coming super close together, I could no longer Facebook and I was shouting loudly for the anesthesiologist. Unfortunately, I wasn't even half way dilated and no where near pushing Ollie out. They took pity on me and started the numbing process.

They tried, and tried, and tried, and TRIED to put the epidural in but couldn't find the spot. HOW CAN YOU NOT FIND THE SPOT? Do I need to draw you an X somewhere? They second epidural lady didn't have a much better go at it. At this point I was pretty upset and in a ton of pain. Not only was I having a ton of super painful contractions super close together but now my back is seriously jacked up and NOTHING is numb. Nothing except my ability to think clearly and/or the ability to control my bad attitude.

That's when the real fun started. All of a sudden nurses were coming in letting us know that something was up and they had called in the doctor to talk to us. This was all in German, of course. Jeremy was getting a super quick lesson in German birthing vocab 1o1 and I was looking around like a lost dog trying to find some relief and comfort.

The doctor tried to explain that the baby was stressed out and they needed to do a C-Section to get him out. They didn't know why Ollie was having problems but having him naturally was going to be a no go.

So Jeremy went to go get his super sexy scrubs on while I went for my spinal block. I was way more nervous to get the spinal block than I was for the C-section. It's pretty much an epidural and we all know how awesome and easy getting one of those can be....

I don't remember too much at this point. Jeremy let me know later that they made a small incision but since Ollie was wrapped around his body, neck and head with the umbilical cord they had to do some unraveling of the cord on the inside of my uterus in order to pull him out. It took longer than expected and they ended up ripping my incision quite a bit longer on both sides.

This is what they found inside:


The German midwives dress, change and bath your baby while you are in the hospital. I love the cute little outfits they bring him back in.

I love his hair crusties....

Being in the hospital with Ollie is fun, but I sure miss the spunk and excitement that comes with my Abby. I was so happy to see her.

She immediately jumped into the big sister role and began to pamper and primp her little brother.

The first hug...
Ollie pretended to be asleep the whole time, but he let us know how he really felt about the whole situation...
One proud papa...

Having a boy is so much fun. I couldn't stop snuggling him.


Welcome, Oliver Thomas.