A busy spring

Things have been fairly insane around here lately.

Occasionally, I work out of the house.  It's the same office Dusty works for and I take the littlest girls with me.  I do video and photo editing, which I'm good at and I enjoy.  I create documentaries and promotional DVDs to help them with their cause.  The busiest time of the year for this is April through June.  Which coincides with March for Babies, Dusty's wrist surgery, the end of the year activities at Kaitlyn's school, pretty weather and you know, life in general.

This is how my days have been going lately: Nurse Charlotte at 5:45 AM, get in the shower by 6.  Be out, dressed with make-up and hair done by 6:45.  Wake Kaitlyn up and empty the dishwasher by 7.  Get Samantha dressed, Charlotte dressed and fed again, put laundry in the washer and fold/put away anything from the night before.  Be out the door by 8:30.  Get Kaitlyn to school by 8:45 (we've missed this a few times) and go straight to my office.  From about 9 to 3 work while entertaining Samantha, changing countless diapers, nursing, cleaning up spit up, returning emails and making up songs to sing.  Some days, I do this from home.  Leave to pick up Kaitlyn by 3:35 and run by the store on the way home every couple of days.  Go home, work on laundry and then take everyone outside to play while I work on weeds and getting the pool area pretty.  We cook dinner when Dusty gets home, we eat, we clean up, we have bath time, we force Samantha to go to bed, get Charlotte ready for bed and I work on eBay orders.  By midnight, we go to bed too.  Some days, it's so easy.  Some days, it's absolutely exhausting.  But, I wouldn't change it for anything in the world.  Even if it means that I am seriously behind on writing and reading blogs.

Charlotte is doing great.  I tease Kaitlyn and Samantha that she's the easiest and best behaved most days.  She's pretty laid back and happy.  She's 5 months and just a doll.

Samantha is doing really well.  Her vocabulary impresses me each and every day.  She speaks in full sentences so clearly.  She has no problem expressing what she wants and or needs.  Or what she thinks she might want or need. 

Samantha is no where near potty training.  And it isn't for a lack of trying.  She just simply has no desire to go.  I leave her naked with the potty out and remind her every 5 minutes.  She'll sit on it and do nothing.  I'll put a diaper on her so we can leave the house and she'll pee as soon as it is on her.  She simply says she does not want to go on the potty.  She wants to go in her diaper.  I took her to the toy store and told her to pick out whatever she wanted.  I told her she could have the scooter, dolls and candy as soon as she went potty in the toilet.  She said no thank you.  Oh.  Ok then.  I'm not going to push it, but I'm going to continue to encourage it so hopefully one morning she'll wake up and be ready to do it. 

Samantha's sleep hasn't really improved and it has.  We've been using benadryl every night at the recommendation of her doctor.  I've tried weaning her off of it or skipping a night and she will stay up, ready to party, until well after 4 AM.  It used to be that we could just keep her in her room with the baby gate up and sleep, but she's too sneaky now, so we just don't sleep with her...  Yeah.  I don't care for that so much.  So, for now, we're going to stick with what works.  She is an entirely different person when she gets sleep.  She speaks more, she is happy, she started gaining weight and we seem to pass the constipation issues when she's rested.  And those things are important. 

Samantha is 2 1/2 now, we celebrated her half birthday earlier this month since she is obsessed with birthdays.  She knows all of her shapes, even the octagons, pentagons, rhombus and so on.  She knows her colors and recognizes her numbers and letters.  Her memory is fantastic and her ability to tell stories is impressive.  She is stubborn as can be though.  She loves team umizoomi and Dora.  She loves playing dress-up and pretending to be animals.  She is obsessed with babies.  She's growing so fast.

Kaitlyn just celebrated a half birthday as well and is now 8 1/2.  Her attitude is having more better days lately than bad days.  She is a drama queen and super sensitive some days, but other days she's incredibly helpful and a ton of fun.

Kaitlyn is a week (or so) away from finishing the third grade.  She did great this year.  Her biggest obstacle was long division.  I don't know if it was more stressful for me or for her.  I swear, I was almost ready to hire a tutor, keep her in the third grade again or see if she had some ADHD issues it was so bad.  But, then it clicked.  It seriously could not have clicked any later to preserve my sanity.  Her biggest concern for next year is having one of her 4 best friends in her class.  We really just don't know if that'll happen since there are 5 4th grade classes, and they could all end up in different ones.  But, regardless, they will still have recess.

Cheer season is getting ready to start back up and she's excited to participate again.  She really wants to be a flyer, and I just don't think that's going to happen.  She's tall and while she isn't overweight even the teeniest bit, she's sturdy.  She's super muscular in her legs and loves playing soccer during recess.

My on the side, graphic design business is going amazing.  I'm starting to get too busy to keep taking as many orders as I have been.  The last few months I've seen a steady 20% increase in sales each and every month.  And, I've been fortunate to have a lot of repeat customers and a lot of referrals.  I love it.  I love creating invitations, party supplies, home decor and all of that jazz.  It truly does bring a lot of joy and it's a great way to use some of that creativity itching to get out without having to go through my fabric stash...

Here's hoping things slow down and stay good.  And that I have more time for writing.  But, really, I've been spending a lot of time being in the moment, instead of concentrating on photographing it or documenting it.  I think we've all had a lot more fun that way.

Charlotte is 5 months old

I know, I know.  She's actually 5 months and 4 days old.  But, things have been crazy busy and I have yet to discover how to add hours to every day, so.  That's where we are at...

I know,  I say it over and over again, but I do not know how she has gotten so big so fast.  I am constantly torn by being so excited for her to get bigger so that she can run around and play with the older girls (or at least defend herself against Samantha forcing pacifiers in her mouth and toys in her hands) and trying to figure out how to keep her teeny tiny for as long as possible.

Charlotte is such a happy baby.  She just has the biggest smile and warms up to people so quickly.  When she smiles, she crinkles her little nose and squints her eyes.  And half the time her smile involves a screech of happiness. 

She is rolling all over the place and at the beginning stages of crawling.  She crawls around in a circle and tries so hard to go forward crawling, but just hasn't mastered the hand/leg combo necessarily to get where she wants to go.  But, she can get from one side of the room to another in the time it takes you to grab something from the other room.

Charlotte is a spitter.  Easily as much and as often as the other girls.  Always at the worst possible moment and never we do changes it.  The only time she doesn't spit up is over night.  During the day it doesn't matter if you hold her still for an hour after her feeding, if you lay her flat, if you keep her upright, if she takes a nap, it will still come up all over you.  Even if you are not holding her, it seems to have a magnet that will have it follow you wherever you are.

She is a hand/thumb sucker, still likes her paci sometimes and is a great night time sleeper.  She isn't the best day time sleeper, but that's totally ok with me.  I will trade that for a good nights sleep any day of the week.    She loves for me to hold her, loves to be outside, hates the sun on her, and finds Samantha to be the funniest person in the world.  She loves to be free on her belly to explore, as long as she can still see you there. 

Charlotte is no where near sitting up.  Kaitlyn and Samantha both were at this age.  But, she is a lot more mobile than they were.

According to my measurements, Charlotte is measuring at 14 lbs and 10 oz and is 27 inches long.  She is so long.  It's crazy.  She still has all of her hair, which is incredible to me.  She wears 3-6 months in clothes still, but is getting too long.  She wears a size 2 in disposables and is still in the smallest snap rise in cloth.  We're currently doing both.  Mostly cloth, but disposable if we are going to be out of the house for more than a few hours.  She nurses every hour and a half still, but before bed time, she will nurse both sides and then drink a 4 oz bottle of formula.  With the formula she sleeps better at night, and I'm totally ok with that.

Our littlest princess is on her way to being 1 before we know it!

4 months old

On Friday, Charlotte was 4 months old.

I just look at her, my sweet little newborn and am so amazed that she is already so big, so old, so strong and so on her way to being a big girl.

Charlotte still has all of her fluffy auburn hair, but it's getting a lot of golden blonde in there too.  Her eyes are bright blue, and show no intention of changing anytime soon.  She loves to crinkle her little nose and smile big gummy smiles.

She is just growing so fast.  I still have her weighing 13 pounds, but she's being ornery about my measuring her length.  She has her 4 month appointment tomorrow so I should have some accurate measurements to put in then.  She's stretching out of her 3-6 month clothes and when she wears disposable diapers, they are a 2.  (We use cloth at home and disposables if we will be out of the house for 6 hours or more.)

Charlotte is already rolling over front to back and back to front and sometimes will do a couple pretty close together to try and move around.  Then, she gets exhausted and wants to sleep.  And she is a good sleeper.  Not so much during the day, but 8 solid hours every night in her bassinet.  Which, I am very grateful for.

When she's on her belly, she reminds me of a little frog in the water.  She acts like she wants to crawl so bad.  I could see her getting close to figuring it out.  Kaitlyn was a really early crawler, I just hope Charlotte holds off a little bit.

Charlotte is doing just great.  She is showing signs of teething, but I do not see or feel any teeth.  She's nursing 95% of the time and supplementing with formula a couple ounces a week.  She's usually a pretty happy baby, has big belly laughs, says "mamamamamamama" when she's upset, and absolutely loves to be paid attention to.  She's starting to outgrow the paci, unless the conditions are pretty perfect, she's big on sucking on her hand, loves the outdoors and when she's done, she's done.

She's our baby.  She's loved, cuddled on and a big cousin.  She warms our hearts every day.

Busy Days and Sleepless Nights

The last couple of weeks have been somewhat insane.

Earlier this month, we had our first fundraiser of the year for March for Babies.  We had a spaghetti and Bingo feed that raised over $500.  Considering that it required only a little bit of effort and was a ton of fun, I'd say that's a good night!

The week of it though, was rough.  I didn't realize how much I had taken on having an infant, 2 year old and 8 year old, plus waiting until the last minute to do much of the work really took it's toll on me.

In the weeks since then, we've been busy every single day.  I've been cleaning the carpets every week, I've made 8 outfits for Rosie the Moose, I've been grocery shopping, errand running, low calorie and low fat dinner cooking, full time cloth diapering for two'ing, starting the landscaping and parenting 3 beautiful little girls.

I keep thinking, "Ok, as soon as this week is over, next week will be easier."  Who am I kidding?  Obviously, this is how I like things.  And that's ok.

What makes it hard is lack of sleep.  I love sleep.  A full nights is just amazing.  I adore everything about waking up rested to take on the day.  Kaitlyn is a great sleeper.  She can sleep anywhere and is out most nights by 9 without anyone asking her to go to bed.  She sleeps through the night and wakes up at 7:30 in a good mood most days.  Charlotte is a great sleeper.  She is asleep most nights by 9 and sleeps until about 6:30.  In her own little bed in our room.  She barely moves through the night.  It's great.  As I've wrote before, Samantha is a horrible sleeper. 

Samantha's sleep was getting better for a little bit and then got worse.  Last week, after going several days of her sleeping only 4-6 hours in a 24 hour period, I made her a doctor's appointment to discuss some options.
I had been considering utilizing melatonin, but read so much conflicting research on it for 2 year olds that it made me nervous.  It made our doctor a little nervous as well.  So, we decided for now to use a little benadryl to try and help her get sleepy at night and see how that goes after a month.  That was Monday.  Last night was the first night she slept through.  So, we shall see.  She also has these "spells" where she just stares into space and you cannot get her attention.  Nothing you do matters, she doesn't blink, she just stares.  I assumed it was because she was so tired she would just phase us all out.  I was unaware that it could possibly be a form of seizures.  Her doctor thinks it's unlikely but we're going to see a pediatric neurologist just to rule it out.

We went about a week and a half of full time cloth diapering both.  It was a lot more work than I anticipated.  Staying on top of the laundry with a little one who spits up constantly was hard enough, washing 20+ diapers a day made it only harder.  So, for now, Samantha is in pull ups and slowly working on potty training and Charlotte is in cloth.  If we're going to be out of the house for more than 6 hours, we'll use disposable.  I honestly prefer cloth, but I'm also all about saving some time lately.

Life has been busy, exhausting and just amazing.

25% of the first year is gone

Charlotte is already 3 months old.

She's growing so fast.  I know I say that a lot, I know I've been through this before and know how fast it goes, but it feels like the days are going faster than ever before.  This month, she passed a couple of milestones, not only did she get her ears pierced, but she's also now older than Matthew lived to be.

Charlotte is up to 13 pounds, a pound and a half from last month (67%) and 24.5 inches long (86%).  She nurses every 2 hours during the day.  I swear, the has it down to the minute.  The exception is in the morning, typically she eats right when she wakes up and is starving an hour later.  We do a lot of cluster feeding at night too.  She's a great little nurser and spits up like nobody's business.  She's outgrown her 0-3 month clothes.  2 weeks ago, I had to pack them all up.  More for length than anything else.  Some of the 3-6 month things look to short all ready too!  She's in cloth diapers full time now and doing great.  She's on the smallest rise, and let me tell you, we got some super cute new ones, I just want to take her pictures in them all.  It's hard to remember sometimes that they are made primarily for holding poo and pee...

She is such a good sleeper.  I mean, amazing.  At about 8:30, she goes to sleep on her own.  She stays that way until about 10:30 and nurses for the last time of the night.  Usually, she sleeps until about 7:30 the next morning.  LOVE it.  She just lays on her back in her bassinet, her head to the side and both arms up by her head.  She wakes up in just the happiest moods and lays there for about 15 minutes before she shares how hungry she is.

She is a happy little girl.  She shares her smiles, loves to hug and snuggle, does great when I put her in her swing, chair or sleeper.  She's just so peaceful.

She is incredibly sweet and finds her big sisters to be hams.  Usually Kaitlyn is fighting for her attention and Samantha is fighting to take away her blanket, pacifier, chair or whatever else, declare that she is the baby and then beg to hold her.  She's taken to holding toys, loving mirrors, rolled over once (by accident) can scoot herself from one side of a blanket to the other on her back somehow and has some super strong kicking abilities.

I'm pretty sure she has us all wrapped around those perfect little fingers.

Life with a toddler

Is interesting to say the least.

Samantha has a case of the terrible twos that is far different than what we experienced before.  She isn't necessarily bad.  I can count on one hand the number of tantrums she's thrown in her entire life.  Samantha has wonderful manners, says "I sorry" when she makes a mistake and is pretty laid back most of the time.

However, she cannot be left out of your sight for even a moment.  Seconds is all she needs to destroy a room.  Give her 2 minutes and you can find lotion rubbed into the carpet, right next to a pile of poo that she finger painted with.  5 minutes of quiet time and you'll discover that she has used hot pink, mood changing nail polish to cover her legs, feet, the carpet, her bed, her bedding and a teddy bear.  Give her more time and you're just asking for trouble.

Today, I found that she had not only figured out how to open the bathroom door (she's been doing this for a while now) but also figured out how to climb on top of the toilet to get on top of the sink to get into the top shelf of the medicine cabinet and bring a bottle of rubbing alcohol down with her.  Luckily, she couldn't open it.  She was shaking it though, trying to open it.  I asked her why she did it.  She told me that she wanted to take a bath.  That kid went from hating baths to wanting to take 4-5 a day.  She thinks if she poops or pees in the potty, stubs her toe, has a boo boo, or makes the tiniest (or largest) of messes), she deserves a bath.  With bubbles.  And toys.  And a tea party...

But, she is just so much fun.  She has so much to say, an amazing imagination, the sweetest voice and the silliest logic.  She loves to throw her little stuffed animals in the air, close her eyes, scream "1-2-3 Ready or not, here I come!" and then find it.  She sings Charlotte "Twinkle Twinkle" and gives off the biggest belly laughs when Kaitlyn plays with her.  One minute she thinks she's grown and such a big girl in heels with a Cinderella purse, and the next she's stealing Charlotte's pacifier, telling us that she's a baby and sucking on it while saying "Wahhh Wahhh."

Our toddler is quickly on her way to becoming a preschooler...

March for Babies- Kick off Luncheon

The March of Dimes is something that has been very close to my heart since my water broke with Matthew.  I spent a lot of time in a hospital bed with nothing to do but to think.  I had 4 channels on the TV in my room and since I wasn't allowed up, I had to depend on nurses or Dusty to put in a VHS (yes, it had a VCR) or a DVD in if I wanted to watch anything that wasn't the news or a judge show.  Weekends were the worst, it was infomercial after infomercial.

Thanks to my mom, I was able to access the internet while I was in the hospital.  I had to have internet on my phone and plug it into my laptop and since this was over 5 years ago, it wasn't as easy or as inexpensive as it is today.  I spent a lot of time on the internet.  I went on a few message boards, searched and researched everything I could think of, was active on a website of women who were going through the same thing in regards to pPROM and I spent a lot of time on the March of Dimes website.  It was such a wealth of knowledge.

I researched and researched prematurity, what it would be like to have a baby born before their due date.  I learned as much as I could about different NICU procedures and medications.  I searched for answers and success stories.  I became active on their share.org side and was able to communicate with other families that were facing prematurity or that had been down that road before.

I knew then that I wanted to be a part of the positive things this organization was doing not only for the community but for babies.  For mothers and fathers and siblings.  For the future of our children.  I wanted to make a difference.  I wanted more research, more answers and more support. 

It stared with a band.  It was created shortly after his death on the March of Dimes website.  It was something little that we could do to make a difference.  It was something that could be done instead of flowers.  It was something we could do.  With Matthew's band, $380 was raised by family and friends.

In 2008, we started walking with March for Babies.  This year, we were beyond honored to be asked to be the ambassador family for our local walk.  Yesterday, February 27th was not only my sister's birthday, or Charlotte's 10 week birthday, but it was also the kick off luncheon.  And I was asked to speak.  My mom and other sister joined Dusty and I and the girls.  My sister recorded it on her phone to share. 

I haven't listened to it or watched it.  It wasn't my finest time.  Charlotte pooped all over me moments before I went on stage, I have either a cold or allergies which left me feeling groggy.  While I don't like to take notes with me to speak, I felt like if I didn't I would have a deer in the headlights moment and ended up relying on them far more than I'd like.  But, I shared his story.  I shared our story.  We shared his memory.

In case the audio isn't the greatest, below the video is my "speech" in written form.

And as always, check out our team page here:  Matthew's Team

Hello.  My name is Denise Miller and I’m proud to be a wife and mother of 4.

In 2004, we welcomed our first baby.  A little girl we named Kaitlyn Reagan.  I can clearly remember the last weeks of a healthy pregnancy and being so ready for her to be born.  As I approached her due date, I tried every old wives tale you could think of to start labor.  3 days after we thought she should have arrived, she was born, screaming and healthy!  Today she is 8 and thriving.

When Kaitlyn was nearly 2 ½ years old, we found out that we were expecting again.  After having such a healthy and easy pregnancy, I expected nothing but the same. In early spring, I was 3 months pregnant when we found out we would be welcoming a little boy at the end of September.  We decided to name him Matthew Jackson. We had regular doctor’s appointments and regular ultrasounds to watch Matthew grow.  Aside from his umbilical cord only having two vessels as opposed to the normal three, he was growing like crazy.  

A normal pregnancy is 40 weeks long.  Babies born before 37 weeks are considered premature and usually need help learning to breath, to eat and to stay warm before they can go home to their family.  Babies born before 24 weeks are usually too small for doctors to even try to save and to help grow.  

During the first week of June, I was 23 weeks pregnant, nearly 4 months before my due date and my water broke in the middle of the night.  At the time, most of my experiences with water breaking had to do with what I saw in movies or television shows.  A woman with a very round belly has her water break in a busy store, hails a taxi, goes to the hospital and has a big, healthy baby.

In most pregnancies, once your water breaks your baby is born within 3 days.  Nearly all are born within 12 days.  Unborn babies need to be surrounded by amniotic fluid to grow, for their lungs to develop, to protect them from infection and to allow them to become big healthy babies.  Matthew weighed just over a pound when my water broke.  His lungs were not developed; he had so much growing still to do.  If he was born, it would be unlikely he would survive.  If we decided to try and stop labor to continue the pregnancy, there was a great chance that Matthew or I would develop a life threatening infection.  We decided to try to stay pregnant as long as possible and give our son more time to grow.

I was checked into the hospital for what would be a 10 week hospital stay.  For 10 weeks, our families took turns helping take care of our 2 year old, I had my temperature taken every 4 hours, I wasn’t allowed out of bed, I had injections to help his lungs develop faster and we had regular ultrasounds to see how Matthew was growing.  Because there wasn’t much fluid surrounding Matthew, there were no promises that he would live through birth.  

On August 6^th, Matthew decided he was ready to be born.  His due date was still nearly 2 months away, but he must have wanted to be born before our wedding anniversary the following day .  At 4:20 in the morning, Matthew was born crying.  He weighed in at 4 lbs and 14 oz, 18 inches long with a head full of dark brown hair.  He was absolutely beautiful.

Matthew spent the next 26 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the hospital.  He went from having a machine breath for him to slowly learning to breathe on his own.  He received medication to help his lungs develop.  He received another medication to help the small hole in his heart heal.  In those 26 days he went from being fed through a tube to learning how to use a bottle.  He even learned how to keep his body warm without the help of a heated little bed.  At the end of 26 days, at just under 6 lbs, Matthew got to come home to a very excited big sister and the loving arms of his mommy and daddy.  Instead of spending his days in a hospital, he had a vintage fire truck nursery waiting for him.

Once Matthew came home, we had to keep him away from germs to keep him healthy.  We managed to do so and still let him experience the park, pumpkin patch and meet a lot of his extended family.  He loved the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and would tolerate his older sister sharing her books and pillows with him.

With Halloween fast approaching, their costumes were all picked out and hanging in their closets.  Kaitlyn was going to be snow white and Matthew was going to be prince charming.  

On October  12^th, I took Matthew to have his pictures taken for the very first time.  He was not a fan of the camera, but in the end it was worth it.

On October 15^th, Matthew was 2 and a half months old.  He didn’t wake up for his 2:30 am feeding.  He had stopped breathing. Despite his daddy performing CPR and the emergency care given by the EMTs and Emergency Room team, Matthew passed away to SIDS. 

Once my water broke, we were told repeatedly that Matthew’s outlook was poor.  He likely would not live more than a few hours.  Because of the advances in medicine and research done in pregnancies and premature infants, Matthew lived with us for 70 days.  For ten weeks, he was cuddled, sung too, nursed, had his diaper changed, experienced the sunshine and cool fall breeze.  He saw pumpkins, train tracks, trees and falling leaves.  He forever will be a part of our family.

Matthew’s main risk factor for SIDS was being born too early.  Babies born too early are more likely to die from SIDS, suffer from sleep apnea, have problems with their heart and eyes, have a higher risk of infection and suffer from developmental delays for the rest of their lives.

Since Matthew’s death 5 years ago, we experienced 3 miscarriages before welcoming his little sister into the world.  Thanks in part to the research done by the March of Dimes, we were able to work with our doctors to help Samantha be born full term and healthy in November of 2009.  This past December, we were blessed to welcome another full term and healthy baby girl, Charlotte, into our family.  Today, his baby sister is 70 days old.

The Mission of the March of Dimes is to give every baby a healthy start.  In April of 2008, my family and I started walking with March for Babies.  We’ve continued to walk every year since.  This April, we will walk for the 6^th year in a row.  Together, we can help more babies have healthy starts and fewer families go through the pain of prematurity and infant loss. 

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