Month Six

Ahhh, this boy! I feel like I start all of his posts this way, but seriously... I absolutely adore him, more than I could have ever imagined. He's my comfort and keeps me grounded. And he's half a year old! Crazy. Here are some details to remember:

• Sadly, he's been sick for pretty much two months now. He'll be well for a few days at a time before getting sick again for a week. But he's still so sweet! He has a rough time sleeping and has spent more nights in bed with us than I'd like to admit. And this past week, he spent a few nights on the couch with either me or Daniel because he couldn't sleep lying down. After another Saturday visit to the doctor, we got three prescriptions (two involving a nebulizer, which we also had to get) and a referral to a pulmonary specialist. We'll see what he says...
• He can sit unsupported for awhile before falling over. That just started happening!

• This baby is a rockstar. He gets crazy attention whenever we go out. People are always stopping to admire him and, of course, the second they smile at him he gives a big smile back. Then they gush even more about how cute he is. Today alone I had, like, five people tell me he was the cutest baby they'd ever seen. I know I'm biased, but these people are totally right. 
• His newest favorite sounds to make are "bah bah bah" and "rah rah rah."
• He's started wiggling his head back and forth when he's getting tired. It's my absolute favorite. And I finally got a video of it!

• He is really into his feet. They're his current favorite toy, and he's an expert at getting his socks off. Seriously, he can take them off with his hands and by just maneuvering his feet until they slide off.
• He's finally starting to show more interest in toys. He loves the pirate ring/rattle Nana gave him and is getting into the Exersaucer.
• He's obsessed with lights, especially the chandelier above our kitchen table. When we put him in his highchair, he looks up at the lights with a sweet look of wonder on his face. It kind of looks like this:

• He eats "solids" now and really loves pear. He also really likes carrot, just like his mommy. 
• Also in his food arsenal are butternut squash, sweet potato, blueberry, applesauce, banana, strawberry, and peas. He doesn't seem to be a fan of the peas, and I can't blame him. My favorite thing is that whenever he eats the first bite of "solids" at a meal, he makes a surprised face and quickly shakes his head a few times. Then, once the shock is over, he eats normally.
• When we feed him, he lifts up his rubber bib and gnaws on it, making a funny squeaky noise. He gets food all over himself in the process, too.
• He's very ticklish on his collarbone and at the bottom of his ribs. He belly laughs when I tickle him, and it's the best sound ever.

• Unlike Aubrey at this age, he takes great naps! All I have to do is put him in his crib with his zippy and a pacifier, and he'll fall asleep in a few minutes. He takes a morning nap and an afternoon nap. Both are usually more than an hour, and some are as long as two or more hours. It's awesome. 
• He's a total tummy sleeper. We've actually had to put diaper inserts into his nighttime diapers to prevent him from leaking up the front of his pajamas.
• He loves playing this game with Aubrey:

A late addition: Carter wiggling his bum during tummy time!

Month Five

Oh man, this boy. He owns my heart. He's the absolute sweetest! Here are some details about my favorite little man:

• He remains an awesome sleeper, sleeping for about 12 hours a night. I sometimes have to go in and give him a pacifier in the middle of the night, but he's finally done with night feedings. In the mornings, he often wakes up around 5:30 or 6:00, at which point I run into his room and bring him into bed with me so that he doesn't wake Aubrey. Like me, he'll fall back asleep and doze until 7:30 or 8:00 (or sometimes later). It's awesome. The only thing is that he doesn't nap for very long periods at a time. But if I snuggle him, he'll nap for hours. Obviously, this has led to many afternoons spent snuggle napping on the couch, which is so wonderful but not particularly productive.
• He laughs when I sneeze or burp, and he often laughs for his big sister.

• Seriously, he's SUPER snuggly. He's always warm, and he clearly enjoys and craves the snuggling. He likes kisses, too. D'awww.
• He's become quite a drooler lately. Perhaps teeth will come soon?
• He's still so chubby! He wears sizes 9- and 12-month clothing already. And check out these delicious fat rolls!

Sadly, his ginormousness means that he has already grown out of what was supposed to be his Christmas outfit. *Sigh.* At least I got a picture the one time he wore it...

• He has started babbling (mostly "Ahhhh" and "Mmmm"), and he loves blowing raspberries. 
• He's at the point where he'll sometimes cry if I leave the room. It makes me feel so special!
• When he's upset and I go to him, he'll arch his back and lift his head up in anticipation of being picked up. If I don't pick him up, he does the saddest pouty face and most heartbreaking cry.
• We started him on solids, and so far he's liked applesauce, rice cereal with applesauce mixed in, carrots, and butternut squash. Not sure how he felt about banana... we'll have to try that one again.

• He loves scratching things that make noise, such as his car seat, the couch, his sheets, etc.
• He likes to sleep on his side and occasionally his stomach. I'm so glad he made a super smooth transition to the Zippy so that I don't have to worry about him not being on his back.
• Overall, he's just super mellow. It's awesome. And he's really patient with Aubrey, who isn't exactly gentle. I seriously can't imagine a sweeter, easier baby! We are very blessed. 

Month Four

I'm sitting up in my bed while my sweet little man is sleeping next to me. Poor little dude has a nasty cold with a wicked cough, and he's having a rough time breathing and therefore a rough time sleeping! :( We actually had to take him to the doctor today, where they put him on a nebulizer for awhile and then sent us home with an albuterol inhaler.

So needless to say, his four-month "birthday" was pretty sad. I didn't get any photos of him today, so here's one I took a week ago before church.

The flash on the camera surprised him, hence the face. And oh, what a cute face it is! Now, here are some Carter facts:

• He weighs 20 pounds and wears 6-9 month clothing. 
• When I'm eating, he follows my food with his eyes. I think he's ready for solids!
• He's still one big smile! He'll smile for anyone. This makes him a favorite when we go out!

• Sometimes, when he starts to cry but hasn't begun to really sob yet, he babbles and says something that sounds way too much like "Mama." It breaks my heart!
• He used to cry whenever we would start eating dinner. We finally decided it was because he wanted to be with us. Sure enough, as soon as we started strapping him into his highchair and putting him at the table with us, he was so happy! No more sad baby during dinner.
• He's begun using the Exersaucer. He can't stay in it for long, but he does like it.

• He's a roller! He can roll from back to tummy well and from tummy to back sometimes. He gets mad when he gets stuck on his tummy!
• He has a stuffed moose that Aubrey named Otto. 

So naturally, I bought him a moose outfit and took his picture in front of a moose at the Boston Museum of Science.

• Like his sister, he doesn't nap for very long. Unlike his sister, however, he loves snuggles and will nap indefinitely if you snuggle him. It's my favorite.
• He leaks a ton when he eats and squirts the milk as far as a foot sometimes. That's not my favorite.
• He's almost too big for his bouncer and needs to be strapped in. Otherwise...

• His most common nicknames include the following: Snugs, Mr. Sir, Sir Snugs-a-lot, Snugalovie, Chubbalovie, and Babe-uh (which is what Aubrey calls him).
• He's a crazy bath splasher. I've had to start putting his bath inside the tub to contain all the overflow!
• He's begun to coo and babble. So sweet!

Month Three

Seriously, this boy is an absolute ANGEL. If there's a sweeter baby out there, I don't see how. I have never gotten annoyed or frustrated with him. I'm positive that won't always be the case, but it's really nice for now!

• He typically goes to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 and sleeps until 5:30 or 6:30. Then he eats and goes back to sleep on Daniel's side of the bed (since Daniel's already up) so that I can keep him quiet until Aubrey's awake.
• We often put him down when he's awake, and he falls asleep as long as he has his pacifier.
• When you hold him, he always grabs your closest exposed skin (usually arm) and pinches/scratches.
• He is completely fascinated by my phone, so it's hard to get a video of him smiling or babbling, because he immediately becomes slack-jawed when he sees the phone.
• He has become such a smiley dude! Often just talking to him gets smiles, but there are also a few other ways:
• When I sing The Wheels on the Bus and moves his arms or legs around.
• When I lift him up above my head as if he's flying
• When I brush my teeth in front of him
• When I sneeze or fake laugh

• He is very social and gets sad if he's left alone. Usually all it takes to make him happy again is for someone to come and sit by him or just pay attention to him.
• With how much Aubrey beats up on him, I think he's going to be one tough little guy!
• When he cries a lot and gets really upset (usually if he's waiting for me to make a bottle or if he's tired and needs a pacifier to fall asleep), he gets all red and sweaty. It's kind of sad.
• He hates tummy time and will cry and cry even after I've picked him up. He usually needs to fall asleep to get over the trauma. It's really sad but cute.
• If I'm holding him facing me but he wants to face out, he flings his head back repeatedly until I turn him around.
• He has started to grab the neckline of his clothes and put it in his mouth to chew on it when he wants a pacifier but doesn't have it.

Month Two

With all of our crazy traveling over the last couple of weeks, I almost didn't realize that my sweet, wonderful boy is two months old! He's incredible and perfect (as all babies are, I suppose, but he's even perfecter... yes, I said "perfecter"... anyway), and he must be memorialized. So here are some Carter stats:

• Weighs 16.75 pounds and is 25.5 inches long. That puts him in the 100th percentiles for both. He is an absolute chunk, and I love it! 
• He eats 7 ounces of formula every 3 to 4 hours, and he wears 3 month/3-6 month clothing.
• He is an even easier baby than Aubrey, which is really saying something. 
• He's sleeping through the night, from about 9:00 to 6:30 or so. It's awesome.
• He loves snuggles! I can't begin to describe how happy this makes me. I take advantage of his snuggliness whenever I can and sometimes wish I could hold him more.

• He is very social, so sometimes all you have to do to make him stop fussing is come over and pay attention to him.
• I like to call him Chubba-Love and Mr. Sir.
• He is giving for-real smiles now! He most often smiles at Mommy, Aubrey, and the ceiling fan (when it's on). Seriously, he LOVES the ceiling fan.

• Sometimes, when he's really upset, he snorts between cries. It's so stinkin' adorable. He also will start to make a whistling/wheezing sound if he gets too worked up; it breaks my heart.
• He's still very sleepy and spends much of his day napping. No complaints here!
• He was wonderful on his first flights. He slept almost the whole time and was just as sweet as can be.

Month One

This sweet, wonderful boy is a month old! From our first night with him in the hospital, we could tell he was going to be a good-natured little kid, and he hasn't disappointed! Here are some reasons we love our sweet Carter:

• Our first night home from the hospital, we swaddled him, fed him, and put him in his crib around 10:30, and he slept until about 4:00. At that point, we fed him and put him back to sleep, and he slept until 7:00 or 8:00. And that has been his general pattern for most nights since then. Daniel puts him down when we go to bed, I wake up with him anywhere between 3:00 and 5:00, and he goes back to sleep until 7:00 or 8:00. He sleeps in his crib in his own room, and we keep his and our doors open so we can hear him.
• In addition to sleeping for long periods of time at night, he also can be put down while awake. We have put him in his crib a number of times when he was still awake, and he's almost always fallen asleep without any help or anything from us. 
• He likes to sleep with his fists up under his chin, like a little fighter.

• He's slow to full-on cry, even in the middle of the night when it's feeding time. He always starts out just grunting softly and builds to a real cry. Sweetheart.
• He's so snuggly! Unlike Aubrey, he actually really likes to snuggle. But he thankfully doesn't need to be held all the time to be happy. He really likes changing up his position, location, etc. to keep things interesting.

• He's ticklish! He always jumps and squirms when I run my fingers along his spine or his sides. Why that's cute I couldn't say, but it is.
• He loves his floor mat and kicks around so cutely when he's on it. But he ignores the thing at the top that has the lights and music, opting instead to turn his head to the side and look toward the window or other people.

• Twice now he has rolled over from his stomach to his back. The first time was when he was not even 2 weeks old!
• He's much more of a pacifier baby than Aubrey was at this age. It's not our favorite, but that's okay. When we don't give him a pacifier when he wants one, sometimes he'll just go for his hand. 

• He's the first Mangum grandson to squirt on Grandma during a diaper change! Sorry, Mom. :)
• It took 25 days for his belly button cord to fall off. And when it did come off, it was because he grabbed it and pulled during a diaper change! Hey, he didn't cry out in pain or anything...
• He makes cute "Eh, eh" sounds when he eats. And he eats a lot! He's at 5 oz. every few hours already. He has a hard time latching on to the bottle (and pacifier) sometimes though, so I'm really glad I'm not trying to breastfeed! He doesn't know how to suck correctly (which sounds funny, I know).

• Given how much he eats and how much he weighed at birth, he's already wearing 3-month clothes.
• His little chin quivers sometimes, even when he's not sad, and it kills me!
• When he lies down flat, he turns his head to the side and reaches up with one hand to grab the hair on the back of his head.
• He loves being held like this:

Carter's Birth

When I went to my OB appointment on June 14th, four days after my due date, I was about 3 cm dilated and 25% effaced. I hadn't had any contractions, and baby boy wasn't particularly low down. My doctor stripped my membranes, and I left with an induction scheduled for the 17th. The rest of the day passed uneventfully, but then around 7:00 I started to feel some slight cramping. I was hopeful but not convinced that it was the beginning of labor.

As the night progressed, the cramps became more intense. And because they came and went like contractions, I started feeling like this was, in fact, real labor. I was able to sleep well from 11:00 to about 1:30, and then I went to lay on the couch and just wait. I kind of dozed off and on, but it was definitely not a restful night. Around 5:00 I went upstairs to tell Daniel he needed to find someone to cover for him at work.

At that point, my contractions were about 10 minutes apart. So I packed the rest of the things we needed for the hospital and took a shower. I went back downstairs to lie on the couch and wait for Daniel to be ready. He ate breakfast and I ate a small Hawaiian roll. My contractions were then 6 minutes apart.

We got in the car to drive to the hospital around 8:15, and the first thing Daniel did was queue up the song "Birthday" by the Beatles. I actually laughed! It's on the second half of the White Album, so we also heard songs like "Mother Nature's Son" and "Cry Baby Cry." The whole album felt very baby-appropriate. As we drove, my contractions started coming 5 minutes apart and then 3 minutes.

Daniel bruised the speed limit a bit and made the normally 45-minute drive (which would have been even longer considering it was the morning commute) a little less long. I took a wheelchair ride up to the maternity ward, and they were ready for me (Daniel had called ahead). They checked me immediately, and I was 6 cm dilated and 50% effaced, which means all those contractions had been doing their job. I was quite pleased with the progress I had made.

I had tested positive for Group B Strep, so I needed to get antibiotics through an IV. But because I had allowed myself to dehydrate overnight, they had a really hard time finding a good vein. They poked me three times before it finally worked, and each poke involved a lot of digging around in my arm. I wasn't a fan of the added pain, especially considering the contractions were continuing to come every 5 minutes or less. But eventually they got it to work, and I got my antibiotic (which made my arm ache) and fluids.

Around 10:30, the anesthesiologist finally came, and they sent Daniel out of the room. The nurse, whose name was Mary Jane (MJ), was awesome and helped me relax through the process (which involved two contractions). I was really worried after my experience with Aubrey that the epidural wasn't going to work, but it did! And oh man, it was so nice. I hadn't felt that relaxed in months! I was actually able to chat with Daniel, text friends and family, and doze occasionally.

When I received the epidural, I was at 7 cm. And once it started to work, my labor stopped progressing. So around 12:30, my doctor came and broke my water. That got me to progress to 8 cm by about 1:45, at which point they decided to give me just a little Pitocin to intensify my contractions. It worked really well, and the epidural made it so I didn't even feel anything! Again, I just relaxed and waited.

Unfortunately, the nurse we loved so much, MJ, ended her shift at 3:30, which meant she was going to miss the birth. She was sad about it and said, "This always happens to me! I'm going to just barely miss it. You'll be having this baby in an hour." She then said she'd have the other nurses text her the details when he finally came. (As a side note, they did text her, and she actually came to visit us and meet Carter the next morning.)

Not long after MJ left, I start to feel the contractions just a bit. But because I also started to feel some pressure to push, we opted not to replenish the epidural. And sure enough, they checked me and found that I was at 10 cm! Then, for some reason (probably because I was in transition), I started throwing up. That was fun.

My doctor was called, and while we waited the nurse had me do some preliminary pushing to get the baby further down the birth canal. It was very stress-free pushing, which was nice. Then, after about 10 minutes of that--with some long breaks in between pushes because the nurse was trying to get everything set up and we weren't trying to actually get him out yet anyway--my doctor arrived and had me push for real.

After about five minutes of pushing, I felt Carter's head come out. Then with one more push, the rest of his body followed (at 4:32 p.m., just as MJ had predicted). The gasps and exclamations of "He's huge!" were very amusing, and everyone started taking bets on how much he weighed. The nurses lay him on my stomach, and he was dark purple. It freaked me out! Everyone started rubbing him down and waiting for him to cry, but he never really did. He made some noises, but he never full-on cried.

We did skin-to-skin, which was new to me but very nice, and the first thing I noticed was that he had hair! That was also new for us, haha. (Poor bald Aubrey.) And while I was enjoying this new, wonderful person, my doctor stitched up my second-degree tear. And this time, unlike with Aubrey, I didn't feel a thing! It was SO nice to be able to enjoy the moment and not feel additional pain.

Finally I let the nurses take him away to clean him, weigh him, and do whatever else they do. The verdict came back--10 pounds, 1.2 ounces and 21 inches long. And I guess when they had him on his stomach, Carter tried to push himself up on his hands and knees. The nurses all laughed and joked that he was trying to crawl away! Daniel then got his turn to hold Carter, and I started drinking some water. That was a bad idea, because then I threw up a bunch (again). Not so fun.

And that's it! The experience this second time around was so completely different from my first experience, and in the best ways! This labor felt much more textbook and was so much more relaxing and meaningful. While Aubrey's labor and delivery were a blur, I was very aware and present for Carter's. I'm incredibly grateful for that and, of course, for this cute, sweet baby boy! We are very blessed.