Alexander: Month One

I can't believe that one month has come and gone already. Here are little snippets that we want to remember...

• Hates to have lotion put on him.
• Very gassy, just like his daddy.
• Loves to sit up and look around.
• Loves to lay on our chest. 
• Is overall a very good baby, just fussy when he can't poop. 
• Loves to grunt and try to poop whenever he eats, which can make feeding him difficult. 
• Doesn't love it or hate it when it comes to tummy time. Sometimes he can last almost ten minutes, while other times he's done after two minutes.  
• Eats around two ounces at every feeding. Sleeps for about two hours at a time during the day and for half of the night, with the other half being one hour stretches. 
•  At a little over three weeks old, he started to outgrow wearing some of the newborn clothes and into zero to three month clothing.
• Loves to stick his tongue out.
• Hates to be swaddled because he loves having his hands up by his face. By the end of the first week, we stopped swaddling because he wouldn't sleep as well.  

***I tried to take a cute picture of him with his one month sticker but I couldn't get the lighting right, so I gave up and told myself I will try again when he's two months. Haha.

ONE MONTH STATS...

Weight: 9lbs 11oz

Height: 21.75in

Third Trimester Overview

Morning sickness?
Came back at 27 weeks and lasted on and off for the remindar of the pregnancy. Thankfully it wasn't as severe from when I had it in the beginning.

Birth plan?
My plan only consisted of one thing and that was to make sure I got an epidural. Haha.

Sleep?
Finally got use to sleeping on my side around 32 weeks, but was still waking up a lot, even if I didn't have to go to the bathroom.

Baby movement?
I really didn't feel him a lot and when I did it was always on both of my sides. At my 32 week ultrasound, I was told I had an anterior placenta and that was the reason I couldn't feel him that well.

32 week growth ultrasound?
Everything looked great still. Was in the 40 percentile for everything. (Thank goodness because I wanted a small baby. Haha.)

Work?
Work was a challenge during the holiday season with how busy it was (once or twice I thought work was going to put me into labor because I was always on the move), but afterwards it wasn't that bad since I wasn't doing long shifts anymore and because the craziness from the holiday season was done with. At the beginning of the year I stopped doing cashier shifts because the constant need to move was too much. So on average I was only working three days a week in the morning for five to six hours max. My plan was to go on maternity leave on February 16, but because Alex came two weeks early, I ended up getting an extra week of leave.

Alexander's Birth Story

Alexander Matias Ragland

Born at 11:41 AM on February 10

Weighing 6lbs 15oz

20in long

• On February 9th, my water broke at 11PM. (Story time... I was laying in bed and had been procrastinating getting up to go and pee. At 11, I felt pressure down below which was normal for me, but once the pressure went away, the need to pee was ten times worse. So I got up and rushed to the bathroom. Before I got to the toilet I started to leak a little but I just thought it was pee because I held off on going for so long. It wasn't until I got to the toilet and did my business and realized that it was more than normal did I start thinking something wasn't right.)
• Got to the hospital around 11:30 and was back in labor and delivery by midnight. (Brandon was down in D.C with a friend so I had the in-laws drive me. Brandon ended up getting there around 1.)
• Got my epidural at 4:30. 
• At 6 I was given a low dose of pitocin to help things move a little faster since I was only at a three.
• Around 9:30 my epidural started to not work as well. So two different times before I started pushing I was given a shot to help with the pain.
• Only had to push for twenty to thirty minutes before Alexander made his grand appearance almost exactly thirteen hours after my water broke.