Keep Moving Forward: One Fish, Two Fish

Here we are again, another great milestone in the Christensen Home. Melia is two months old today! Where does the time go? I mean, seriously, I can hardly believe it's been two months already. Let's talk a walk down the last four weeks, shall we?

Week five:
Melia is starting to be more alert. She understands how to keep herself awake and she is happy to keep herself awake. She is still eating like a champ and getting faster at it. I still usually have to spend 10 minutes feeding her, but that's better than the 20+ I had to spend in the first month. She is also sleeping better; it's not unusual for her to go 4-5 hours at night which we are more than grateful for. We got better and better at talking with each other, she started to really recognize that she could make herself vocalize and it was really cute. So for Melia, week five was fantastic.

For me on the other hand, it was not so great. I went to bed one night feeling not my greatest and woke up at 4:30 in tears. I hurt everywhere; I was achey, cold, feverish and my breast hurt like mad. I woke Scott up and asked him to feel the underside of my breast and tell me if it was hard. He said it was hard and warm. I was just dying; I felt like my head was going to explode and I couldn't get warm enough. Scott ran and got me some Tylenol and I pumped my right breast out completely. That seemed to help and I was able to sleep some more. Come (real) morning time, I wasn't any better. I was worse, in fact. Scott was nervous to go to work, but did anyway. I called my doctor around 11:00am and just continued going downhill; I was shaking uncontrollably with chills, I had a fever and was in just overall pain. Scott kept checking up on me, asking how I was doing and I just told him I was basically dying. We made the decision to have him come home right after work and miss choir since I hadn't heard from my doctor still and it was now 12:30, a half an hour before his shift ended. Once he got to Alpine, we would turn around and go straight to my doctor to see what they could do for me. Around 12:50, my doctor called back, asked me some questions and told me I had Mastitis. Mastitis is a breast infection nursing mothers get when their milk doesn't drain properly and clogs. We expected that, but wanted to know what to do. They sent a prescription into Walmart and I called Scott. It was just after 1:00, but he was already only minutes away from my parents. He left early to try and still make it to choir on time. When he got home, I told him what the deal was and he told me he was going to stay home with me; apparently I was THAT bad. He was worried about me and wanted to make sure I had nothing to do but feed Melia. The prescription wasn't able to be picked up until after 2:00 so when I finally got it close to 3:00 I was more than ready to take it....except I couldn't. I had just eaten some soup and the medicine was very specific: Must take 1 hour prior, or 2-3 hours after meals. I had to wait until 5:00 to take my medicine. Hadn't I gone through enough? I was so upset. Finally 5:00 rolled around and I took my medicine. After the second dose at 11:00pm, I was finally feeling a little better and was able to sleep pretty well. I just made sure to alternate breasts during feedings and even though it hurt like crap, I rubbed the infected area on my breast. I took the medicine for 12 days and I've been feeling great ever since!

Fun story about five weeks. All three of us went to campus one day; Scott had a dress rehearsal for his final concert and I decided to just be there with him. While he was in his rehearsal, I was down the hallway, kind of excluded from the rest of the building. Little did I know that there was a communications class down the hallway to my right that would get out about 40 minutes into my stay. I had just finished feeding Melia and she was happy as a clam when the class of mostly older women got out. As they were all walking by, men and women were ooing and awing over Melia, asking how old she was, her name, etc. She was being really good and cheerful so I was in a great mood to show her off. By the end of the trail of people, a woman who was obviously from some European country was pleased as peaches to see, "This beautiful baby girl!!" Oh man, she was so fun to talk to. She asked her name, how old she was, if she was a good baby, etc. Right as I was going to offer for her to hold Melia, she asked, "Oh, do mind if I hold her?" She was very excited to hold Melia and kept exclaiming, "Oh you are such a beautiful baby, so gorgeous. You are very blessed to be here, did you know that? You are very blessed. Your mama loves you, you have no idea how much she loves you." It was such a special moment for me to see this complete stranger hold my daughter and tell her how beautiful, special and blessed she was. This woman turned to me and told me how wonderful it was that we made the decision to bring such a beautiful life into our home and how we will be ever blessed by it. It really was such a special moment.

Week six:
With the Mastitis still lingering this week, I wasn't feeling 100%, but I could get around. I worried mostly about Melia and getting her sick. She seemed fine though. Happier this week than she had ever been. It made it easy for me to care for her even through my illness. She did give us a couple of hard nights, but what baby doesn't have a hard night every now and then? This week really was more about me; I had my six week checkup with my OB. I was feeling pretty good about everything except the bleeding. I started bleeding again after it slowed and eventually stopped by week four. I wasn't sure why and it seemed strange to me; nursing mothers aren't supposed to start their periods until at least three months postpartum and I should be done bleeding from the delivery at this point. When my doctor asked about it, I told her that it seemed weird that it came back. She told me it was likely my period back already. Lucky meeeee.....She then examined me to make sure my insides were all back to normal and confirmed that I had a period: everything on the inside looks great and my body was just healing faster than normal. Well, I couldn't be upset about that I guess. The rest of the appointment went fine, talked about birth control, gave me a prescription and sent me on my way. The rest of the week was okay, I finished off my medicine and was actually feeling good again.

Melia was good this week too, she got better around people; she's quite the social butterfly. She is happy even in strangers arms, as you may remember from our encounter with the English woman. Melia is also getting very chatty; it makes morning time easier to deal with. She is definitely a morning person; we're not entirely sure how she picked that trait up since Scott and I both love our sleep. I've gotten to the point where I will just let Melia sleep on my chest after her morning munching or Scott will lay her on the bed in his place when he leaves for work. It's our morning snuggle time and it is the best. Melia also loves bathtime. I mean LOVES it. It is the best part of her week when we put her in the tub. She is starting to get that if she kicks, it splashes. It's so fun to watch her in the tub. We seriously have the most perfect baby.

Funny poop story of the week. Scott and I were spending the weekend at my parents house and were chilling in our bedroom. Scott was holding Melia and I told him that he needed to change her diaper because it was wet and full. He agreed but played with her a little longer. Big mistake. She decided it was a good time to poop. Well, he let her finish her business and when he put his hand on her back (she was in a dress so he was on her bare back) he freaked out. "Ooooooooooooh!! Heeeeellllpppp!!!" He screeched. As he lifted Melia up, I saw poop everywhere; all over his pants, all over the bed sheets, everywhere. It was hilarious. I was laughing as hard as ever, I literally almost peed my pants I was laughing so hard. I couldn't handle myself and kept laughing. Poor Scott is sitting there with a poopy baby and poop all over his pants. My sister heard me laughing and came in to see what was going on; she joined in the laughter. Then my mom came to see what was going on and also joined in the laughter. So here Scott is still sitting with a poopy baby and everyone laughing at him. I took a quick picture and then took Melia from him to change her diaper and clean her up. Scott went back into the bedroom and took his jeans off and then we heard, "OOOOOOooooooh!!!" We turn and there's Scott, pants on the floor, standing in his underwear, traumatized at the fact that she pooped enough to soak through his jeans AND underwear. It was seriously hilarious. I laughed about it for days. I still laugh about it =]

It's hard to see in the picture, but I promise you, there is poop everywhere

Week seven:
It's unreal to think how quickly time is going by. I look at pictures of Melia a few weeks ago and she's not even the same baby. It's crazy; the time really does just fly by. This week, nothing too exciting happened for anyone. I guess that just means we're getting used to having Melia around. We did get a few good blowouts this week...that was exciting haha. Her poops are really funny. I guess the most adventurous thing that Melia went through was hanging out with her Opa while Scott performed in his final concert for the year. My mother and myself were in the audience and my dad walked around campus with Melia. He said she was really good through the whole thing, so that's good.

I guess we'll move onto week eight....so...
Week eight:
That's today! She celebrated her two month old birthday by sleeping from 12:00am-7:30am. That is right folks, our two month old slept through the night, a WHOLE night. Gave Mama and Daddy a good, normal night's sleep. It was wonderful. Except I woke up absolutely, grossly sick, and ended up sleeping until 11:00am anyway. Melia joined me after she ate some, got a diaper change and snuggled up to Mama. With it being her two month birthday, that meant she had a doctors appointment today. Oh that was sad. She got five shots. FIVE shots. Plus, she had to take some medicine orally. That part was actually kind of funny. They had a little dropper and had to give her this medicine and she just kind of looked at us funny like, "This is not the right stuff Mom, what are they giving me?" When they gave her her shots, man oh man was that an adventure. Two shots in one leg, three in the other. She wailed and screamed and cried really hard. I picked her up softly talked to her and she actually calmed right down. It took a minute or two for her to cry it out, but she was quick to calm down. Since the doctors appointment, she took a nice long bath and splashed away for ten-fifteen minutes. That was happy and good for her. Since her bath, she's basically just slept the whole day. Poor girl; she's so tired from that big day at the doctors.

So here we are, two months along and loving life. Melia is seriously an angel baby; I don't think I can say that enough. I love her so much and just can't get enough time with her. I love seeing her smile, learning to laugh and just kick and bounce away. I love my little Melia girl! We will see where life takes us and just Keep Moving Forward