The Horrible Rash

 First of all, I just wanted to send a huge thank you to all of the supportive comments and phone calls I got after my last post on breast feeding. It was an amazing help to have such an outpouring of love and support, so thank you to everyone for that!!  I took some photos to chronicle the horrible rash that Oliver got on his face to remind me of why I am not complaining about a dairy-free, soy-free, egg-free, wheat-free existence. THIS is the rash that freaked me out and had me calling the pediatrician. I literally google searched "can infants go into anaphylatic shock from breast milk". I was super worried, which was interesting because I noticed that I don't tend to freak that bad with the second baby. =)


So Oliver's rash got to this point....This was last Tuesday morning.

 THIS was by Tuesday evening. Yeah, I FREAKED out. His poor eyes and lips were so swollen. My poor poor little man! Had to put mittens on his hands to keep him from scratching the hell out of his itchy little face.

This photo was two days ago, Saturday. The rash was starting to clear up but a bit scabby from where the bumps were a little bit oozy. =( His skin still felt really rough.

 

This is today, Monday. His face is finally looking better. It's a bit dry and scaly but thanks to several message boards on BabyCenter (Food Allergies, Babies with Eczema, Elimination Diet)  we discovered the cream CeraVe for eczema and it's been working wonders on his delicate little cheeks. 

 

I hope I NEVER have to see that scary rash again! So when I try to remind myself why the hell I'm subjecting myself to the "Air Diet", well, that face is not something I want to see again. We had decided to do formula while I pump to help Oliver's face clear up. That lasted for three whole bottle feedings! He took SOOOO long to drink the bottle and then by the time I pumped and cleaned up, I MAYBE got 30 min sleep before the whole process started again. Sleep deprived AND hungry were not an option so we went back to breastfeeding and have thankfully seen a major improvement already. He's back to my sweet, happy go lucky little man!

Emma Meets Oliver

I still love you Sleepy Wrap!

The Sleepy Wrap will never let me down! Emma on the left and Oliver on the right. Ahhhh. =) Ironically the picture is taken right around 5 1/2 weeks for both of them, when they enter that "please please mommy hold me all the time!" phase. I don't mind....who wouldn't love starting at that sweet face...but it is impossible to get anything done. Until I throw him in this and he's sound asleep in 5 minutes or less and will sleep for 90 minutes as peaceful as can be. =) Looking at him today reminded me so much of Emma, although I am seeing so many of their differences already. (i.e. Oliver sleeps and Emma didn't want to waste time doing that!).

Emma, 5 weeks

Oliver, 5 weeks

 Clearly the little mister has more of an Asian persuasion than Emma. Smaller eyes, totally different mouth and chin. Same exact Lui nose and daddy ears! =) Oliver is a bit darker complected than Emma and as a boy apparently has no problem rocking the "barf on the shirt" look! I just love them both so much! Stay tuned for the video I keep meaning to upload when Emma first meets Oliver at the hospital....

The Milk Truck

Pregnancy, childbirth and labor are all things I would be willing to go through over and over again. Seriously. Larry says I was made to have babies. While that may be true, breastfeeding is NOT something I was made to do. Read no further if you can't handle a little TMI about my boobs and some profanity. Well probably a lot of profanity...

Breastfeeding is a complete mind fuck. "It's the right thing to do." "Your baby will be healthier." "It's an amazing bonding experience." All fine and dandy until your 5 week old angel has the gnarliest face rash from something you ate, barfs up everything that he just sucked out of you and cries and curls up like his tummy is killing him. It fucking sucks to see your baby in pain and to know it has SOMEthing to do with your diet but you have no fricking idea exactly what it is yet. I told Larry that if Oliver had food issues like Emma did when I was breastfeeding then he was getting a ticket to the formula train. Well I haven't had the heart to do that. And if he has a milk protein intolerance like I suspect then formula will cost more money than I am making right now. That isn't saying much since California sucks for new moms and I'm 1week away from getting paid nothing to stay at home for 8 more weeks to take care of my son. But that could be a whole other blog post. Back to the boobs.

Let's rewind to 5 weeks ago when my sweet little angel was born. Actually, let me rewind to 3 1/2 years ago when I was pretty much in the same mental shit hole that I am in right now. Barfing, green poop, face rash, rashy booty, refusing to nurse like my boob had toxic acid coming out of it....these were all things I experienced with Emma. This was in addition to her shitty latching which led to bleeding, scabs and pain for more weeks/months than I can remember. After a couple months of troubleshooting, I somehow began surviving on the "Air Diet"...you know the amazing ass diet where you can't eat dairy, soy, or wheat. Essentially this means I ate a shit-ton of oatmeal, Amy's Black Bean Tamales and steamed chicken and veggies for NINE months. Quite honestly, I never loved the whole experience, which is why I swore my next kid was NOT going to put me through that shit again. After Emma had a bagillion ear infections, all I could think was, "What the eff is this bullshit about breastfeeding making your baby healthier?" Crock. Of. Shit. I threw in the towel after pumping was no longer outputting enough to really feed her, followed by Emma biting me with one of her new teeth and drawing blood, followed by the extreme selfish need to have a deep dish stuffed Chicago style pizza with a mother load of cheese for my 31st birthday. I wish someone would have told me before that awesome adventure (insert extreme sarcasm) that a) Breastfeeding is WAY harder than anyone will ever tell you buuuuut b) if it is still pretty painful after a few weeks, then something is wrong. Yeah, would have been useful information before I mentally committed to "doing the right thing".  They tell you all the ins and outs about how to give birth to a baby but no one really prepares you for this!!

I am the milk truck. I can comfort my son in a heartbeat by plopping a boob into his mouth. I can't really console him if he is just fussy but not hungry because if I hold him anywhere near my rack, he will start rooting and become horizontal, even if he isn't really hungry. He smells me from across the room and will go from calm to ravenously STARVING in a heartbeat. Speaking of rack, I shrank down to a negative A cup after Emma and have returned to a hearty D cup for the sake of my son. The first two weeks of breastfeeding with my barracuda eating pork chop was well, really fucking painful. When the lactation consultants tell you it shouldn't hurt, they are lying. Because no matter how perfect the latch is, it ALWAYS hurts at first until your boobs get used to being tugged on for 10 hours a day. To his credit, Oliver is much better at nursing than his sister. He doesn't dilly-dally, goes to town and is finished in 10-20 minutes. Awesome. I fortunately recognized the symptoms of overactive letdown/oversupply (oh yeah, I had that shit with Emma also!) by the second day after my milk came in so I switched to block feeding (basically only giving him one boob per feeding) and that rectified his fussiness and green poops pretty quickly. I went easy on the dairy at first and never really consumed more than cheese on a sandwich or a few slices of pizza during the first two weeks. Week 2, Oliver started getting a slight rash on his cheeks. "Baby acne" they say....so common in boys. Okay, whatever. After a week of the rash getting worse and seemingly more red in the evenings and after eating, my mommy instinct said it was something more. Lactation nurse confirmed yesterday that his face rash is most definitely an allergic reaction, not baby acne. No shit.

I cut dairy out of my diet about a week and a half ago and decided to be safe and cut out soy as well. Oliver continued to have serious tummy issues in the evening and after further investigation, I discovered that my prenatal vitamins had soy in them so I cut those out a few days ago. Eggs were on my radar as a no-no after a projectile, mucousy vomiting day but I had also eaten a hot dog that day, which had hydrolized soy protein. Took a chance and ate Larry's delicious homemade turkey noodle soup the other night (with homemade EGG noodles) and boy do I regret that! Oliver's poor face is a hot mess. It was starting to look a wee bit better today. I didn't eat anything out of the ordinary today (pinchy nasty ass oatmeal with almond milk for breakfast and grilled chicken and apples for lunch) but boy has his tummy had some ish today.

We both had our breakdown by 7 tonight. He cried and puked while I cried. I want to quit. I want to give up. This is just too hard. Yet I find myself nursing him again, with his hand on my chest and those big brown eyes looking up at me and I find the strength to persevere. No one else gets these moments with him except me. What if he's my last baby and I regret giving up? Yep, it's a constant everyday mind fuck. I keep telling myself just not to give up on the hardest days. The milk truck must stay in business.

4 Weeks

One of the highlights of the past four weeks is this photo. Pure innocence. Emma loves her brother so very much. It just melts my heart.

Overall, being the mommy of two is an unexplainable journey. It is one that brings me so much love and happiness. I am blessed with a calm, sweet little boy that sleeps about 22 hours out of the day. He eats ravenously and at frequent intervals but eats quickly and doesn't dawdle like Emma did. Last Friday he was up to 9 lbs 1 oz already. He is a freaking porker!

I am also blessed with a loving, helpful daughter that is helping me practice my patience. (Yes, she has been a bit needier than usual).

Halloween, my Tinkerbell and my tiger

She has ridiculous poses

Oliver's first real bath. Oliver LOVES The Blooming Bath from my co-worker Heather. He thoroughly enjoys bath time and never ever complains. He just sits back and relaxes!

Sibling love. Notice the gnarly face rash that my guy started getting. Seemed to be beyond "baby acne" so I have gone dairy free for the time being to see if it helps.

One month old already. *Sigh*

Not sure where exactly he was trying to go. While he isn't awake much, when he IS awake, he is very active and loves chatting with mommy!

Mommy's Beefcake

Time is flying by and Oliver is already two weeks old today! At his one week checkup, he weighed 6 lbs 14 oz so they wanted me to bring him in for a weight check at 2 weeks (to make sure he was gaining appropriately) and to make sure he no longer had any signs of jaundice. Well, this little pork chop really likes to eat and weighed in at 7 lbs 14 oz today, meaning he gained a pound in just a week! Clearly he has no problem in the food department! He seems to be handling things in my diet okay and his spit up is very limited so I will keep my fingers crossed that he does NOT have ridiculous tummy issues like his sister did! We do not have to continue waking him up at night to eat every 2-3 hours since his jaundice is all cleared up (although I let him sleep the past two nights and he gave us a 5 hour stretch one night and a 4 hour stretch last night....Hooray!)

Poor Emma came home with a fever on Friday and was laid up with an icky cold all weekend. She was more upset that I wouldn't let her hold her brother than she was about feeling bad. We kept her home from school yesterday and she seemed back to her feisty old self so she returned to school today. Today is Larry's last day home before he goes back to work tomorrow. =( I have an adorable video of Emma singing to Oliver but it is being lame about uploading from my phone so I will post that once technology decides to cooperate!

Oliver's Birthday

 After several days of false labor, I knew Monday night was going to be the night to head into labor and delivery. After all the contractions I had on Sunday that ended in NOTHING, Monday rolled around without a peep from my little man. Walked a few miles and not a single contraction. This was playing out quite similar to my delivery with Emma. Just after dinner, I started to have more regular contractions and put Emma to bed around 8:30. I was still having some contractions at this point, but nothing too intense. Since I knew the whole check in process took some time, we finally decided to head in to the hospital around 10:30 pm. Contractions were about 6-7 minutes apart but I could still talk and walk through them. I was worried that I wouldn't be dilated enough to get to stay but was at 4 cm upon check-in. Since they wanted contractions to be stronger and closer together, they sent us up to the looooooooong hallway on the labor and delivery floor to walk for awhile. They suggested I walked for an hour or two and return to triage to get rechecked to see if I was dilating any further. Well, the cervical check when I arrived was TORTURE. Seriously one of the most painful things I experienced while at the hospital, so I was bound and determined to walk my ass off and not return to triage until the contractions were about to drop me to the floor. Larry walked by my side for almost two hours. I stopped as needed when the contractions were getting more painful but was determined to keep walking. We probably walked a good 4 miles, baaaaack and foooooorth. The scenery was getting pretty boring. There were 16 sets of turquoise and purple tiles amongst the white tiles on the floor, 6 white tiles between sets. Yep, I stared at the damn floor so much I counted tiles. Lol. We walked from 11:45 pm until about 1:45 am. I stopped and timed contractions on my phone and they were 3-4 minutes apart the whole time we walked but near the end were lasting closer to a minute and a half. My back was starting the hurt and my butt cheek was cramping so I decided to head back to triage and PRAY I had made some progress.

Once back in triage, they said they weren't going to check me and just send me up to the labor and delivery floor. They asked if I could still walk or if I needed a wheelchair. "Oh, I can walk still" I proclaimed. And then I got into the elevator with one of the worst contractions ever and thought that's what I was going to get for being pompous. We got to our room and they checked me. I was pretty disappointed to only be 5 1/2 cm along. I was hoping to have been at least at 6 cm. =( When I had Emma, things progressed so much quicker so I had a feeling we were going to be in for a long night as my little man took his sweet time making his way into the world. It was only 2am on Tuesday morning and I began to get worried that I wouldn't even have this kid until Wednesday.

My IV was put in at 2:30. For once it was not a horrendous experience from a bald paramedic intern so I was happy that the nurse put it in almost painlessly. Contractions were getting stronger so I requested an epidural about 2:45. While waiting, the nurse gave me some Phentanol (again, I never know how to spell this!) through the IV. She said it wouldn't take away pain but would take the edge off and make me feel like I had a few glasses of wine. After that, it took me almost 10 minutes to fill out the epidural consent form as I was a bit loopy. The anesthesiologist came in about 3:15 and gave me the magic medicine. I mean, I respect those that choose to go without medication, but good lord it made me so much more comfortable. The doctor came in to see me shortly after this. Oddly enough, the doctor on-call was the same doctor that delivered me with Emma (There are 5 doctors in my practice that I saw throughout my pregnancy but there are 3 nights a month where they rotate in a doctor out of the practice. I got this doctor both times...what are the odds!). She said she knew my labor went pretty quickly with Emma but she would be back around 6 am to check to see how I was progressing.

At 3:30, after the epidural had kicked in enough, the nurse went to put in the catheter since the epidural left me unable to get out of bed. She said, "Wow, that's a big jump" and low and behold I had reached 8 cm. =) She had me lay on my side and just as Larry and I decided maybe we should catch some shut-eye, my water broke. It felt like a giant explosion and thank goodness for the blanket over me or I probably would have soaked my poor husband like an amusement park ride. I called for the nurse to come back in. "I think my water broke". "Well, I wouldn't be surprised because you are having some pretty crazy contractions up there! I"m going to check you again". Voila, 9 1/2 cm and almost ready to have a baby. She told me to roll over to my other side to help that last piece of cervix move back and said she was going to go get the doctor to come up because I would probably have a baby within the next two hours. By 4:15, I was fully dilated and ready to push. The doctor came in and the nurse said, "Okay, let's set a goal to get this baby out exactly two hours after I put your IV in so push like a champ so he can be born by 4:30." Five or six good pushes later, Oliver was born....2 minutes late according to the nurse, at 4:32 am on Tuesday October 23. After having Emma, I thought it would be impossible to love another baby as much as I loved her. But the feeling was unexplainable and I was so in love with this little boy already I felt like my heart might explode. He laid on my chest for about an hour before they weighed and measured him. 7 lbs 5 oz and 19 1/2 inches long (about 1/2 lb bigger than Emma and 1 1/4 longer).

Not happy about being so cold

First photo of my red-faced little man

Proud daddy and his little boy

Our first family photo (Dang I look tired!)

Skin to skin with Mama

 

Can't help but stare at this little guy! Waiting for sister to come to the hospital to meet her brother

Emma is so eager to hold her brother for the first time!

Love at first sight

"Aw, he's so cute!"

"Guys, his eyes are so beautiful!"

Our new family of four

I was so overwhelmed with emotion when holding my two kids together for the first time.

Taking our little peanut home. He was an angel for his first car ride!

 Oliver turned a week old this morning and I can't believe how quickly time is flying already. I feel so very blessed because he is a wonderful, easy going baby. He still sleeps most of the time and eats like a champ. Fortunately breastfeeding is going much better with him than it did with Emma. I guess that's where the second baby is easier because you know what to expect. Emma adores her brother and smothers him with love whenever she can. She is super helpful and the best big sister ever. I am so filled with joy and love and am loving being home with my new little family. Larry will be home for another week and then I will be on my own during the day. I am excited to watch this little guy grow and to see the kids grow up together. It is such an unexplainable feeling but I want to ride this "high" as long as I can. =)