A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words....

....And This is the Picture!

Oh boy is all I have to say at this moment. As you can probably guess by the lack of recent posts, we've had quite a week or so with our little one. Andy and I have both been fighting slight colds (luckily it doesn't look like Sara has gotten it) and I have some mystery stomach bug that will not go away (going to the doctor tomorrow before anyone yells at me).

On top of all that joy, Sara has had quite a week too. She doesn't seem to be sick at all, but she is not having good nights this week. She has gotten progressively worse each night with last night being terrible. She pretty much screamed despite all our efforts all evening, which is great for Andy since that's the only time he sees her. I nursed her once an hour to try to calm her down. This worked for about 10 minutes each time with her sleeping, but she woke up shortly thereafter screaming. Andy tried to sleep with her on the couch for a while, which worked for about half an hour around 11. I fed her again and slept with her on me in bed for about an hour and a half before the screaming started again. I got her to calm down and she slept on Andy until about 4:30. I fed her again around 5 and we put her down in her swing out in the living room with all the lights off. This seemed to work and she slept until almost 9 - her longest stretch in a while. I just hate putting her in the swing all the time because I feel like she'll never learn to sleep on her own in a bed if we don't keep trying to put her down in one at night. However, desperate times call for the swing and this little family needs sleep! It may be used all night tonight if she repeats the same behavior just so we can get some rest.

After such a great night, Andy still got up at 5 and went to work on no sleep. This has been such a horrible experience with Andy's work. For those who don't know, his plant is in a MAJOR turnaround where they shut everything down, refurbish/replace parts, and then start back up. This hasn't been done in something like 8 years to give you an idea of how massive the project is. Of course this started a week before Sara was born and Andy has been working non-stop since his two weeks off with us. He's had to go in almost every weekend and this one appears to be no different. He's working so much on such little sleep and I am with a newborn all the time with little break. It's so stressful on its own and now we're both not feeling well. I'm sure everyone who has children can empathize! At this point I'm just praying for a break of some sort - hopefully the doctor can figure out what's wrong with my stomach tomorrow and at least get that under control since we clearly cannot control our newborn!

While this week has seemed endless and not so nice, there are a few positive things to talk about. Sara had her second set of visitors this past weekend when her Nana and Grandpa came to see her. Of course they were smitten with her and really enjoyed spending time with her. Nana was even excited to change diapers - she clearly had not had to do this for a while to be so excited about it!

Sara also had some friends stop by and got to meet Dottie, Jason, and Cambria for the first time (they've been fighting illness too!). Andy and I were shocked to see how much Cambria had grown in just a couple months - she is walking and talking a bit too. She is definitely going to be tall like her mom. It will be so fun when the girls are old enough to really play together!

Fred, Katie, and Lily also stopped by for a visit. Lily really digs her exersaucer and is all smiles these days. I'm so jealous of how well she sleeps in the crib - even when it's Sara's crib she's in! There will be a serious celebration in the Athon house when Sara really sleeps on her own consistently and only gets up to eat at night!

It's so great when we get to see friends and I'm able to talk to other moms about all kinds of baby stuff. I feel really lucky that Dottie and Katie had their babies first so that I can ask them all kinds of questions. They are such a great resource - I hope I can pay them back someday with some great tip I've discovered!

Also this past weekend, we really started to see some new developmental changes in Sara. She could always focus on a face, but now she is really looking at people for long periods of time and studying what they are doing. She tracks people when the walk across a room - even turning her head upside down a bit to follow someone. She has also started to turn and look at a person when they come into the room and sit down near her. It's neat to see her becoming so aware of her surroundings.

She also appears to be able to see quite a bit better these days. We think she's looking at pictures on the wall and other objects that are approximately 3-6 feet away. She seems to be able to really look at these things now instead of just glancing around sort of in a daze and objects catch her attention more than the ceiling now :)

The most exciting development is that Sara is starting to really smile now. She's still working on it, but just this weekend she started to respond with slight smiles when being talked to. She's starting to do it a bit more each day and it really seems as though it's intentional now and not random like it was before. We're looking forward to more smiles and less crying for sure!

Well, the little creature is starting to stir again so I better go for now. I added some more pictures to the website - the ones of Sara in the purple outfit are from her one month birthday. I had planned to add them that night but things just have not worked out lately. We also have a few more videos that we hope to upload soon. They take such a long time to load that I've just been focusing on the pictures for now. Hopefully we'll all get healthy and happy soon and I can get a bit more things on the site!

Hope you are all doing well - we love the comments and appreciate everyone checking in on us from time to time. We miss you all and hope you can all come to see Sara sometime soon!

Lots of love,

Andy, Valarie, and Sara

Our Chunky Baby

Wow - Sara is one month old today! Andy and I can't believe it's already been a month since she was born - she'll probably be 15 tomorrow and we won't know what happened.

We just got back from the doctor and quick meal at the local IHOP and thought we'd give a quick update on how things went. I thought Sara would be somewhere around 8 1/2 pounds since I could tell she was getting heavier and knew she was eating well. Andy thought she would be 9 pounds just from how heavy she felt. Well, we were both underestimating our little chunky baby....

Sara now weighs 9lbs 10oz!!! She is also now 21 1/4 inches long. This puts her in the 62% for weight and 55% for length.

I knew she was eating well but I am still shocked that she has gained so much weight. Dr. Gray says her weight gain is perfectly normal and is a good sign that she is healthy and happy with the breastmilk. So, we are happy parents.

Sara had to get one shot today for Hepatitis B, but this was much better than the heel prick she had to have last time. They had to prick her heel three times and squeeze on it for several minutes to get all the blood they needed for that, but this was a quick shot and went over much better. There was still screaming when the shot when in, but I was able to calm her down within a few minutes and she was off to sleep again in her carseat so we could get some breakfast. I'm not thinking next month's visit will be quite as nice since she will have to have four shots all at once, but hopefully it won't be too bad.

The doctor also told us that Sara is ready to start sleeping in her own bed now, so we will try to start the transition to her crib soon. I still feel a bit nervous not having her in the room with me, but I suppose there really isn't any difference in her bassinet and her crib. We have the baby monitor all charged up so we'll get to test that out too. I'm pretty sure I can hear her cry even without it, but hopefully the monitor will wake me up before she gets too upset and awake for a night feeding. If she'll go down in her crib, I'll start feeding her in the rocker in her room so she isn't dragged across the house and woken up at night. This will be good for her but not as fun for me since I've been able to stay in bed and feed her so far.

On another note, Andy and I found that there are some seriously scary people hanging out at the IHOP on a random Wednesday morning. Anytime I'm out in the middle of a weekday (hardly ever when not on maternity leave), I always wonder how there can be so many cars and people out and about. Doesn't most everyone else have to work too? Well, today I think we saw the type of crowd that isn't at work too - and there were a ton of kids out with these people - don't they need to be in school? It was a little disturbing for sure - be sure to check out your local IHOP sometime in the middle of a weekday and see for yourself :)

Happy Wednesday....

The Miracle of the Pacifier

After a month of complete rejection, Sara has finally decided that maybe the pacifier is not such a bad thing after all. This has pretty much been a miracle for me since I was her pacifier until now (which meant I got little sleep when she just wanted to suck on something). The pacifier is helping her to make her three hour intervals between feedings that the pediatrician had told us to work toward and it's also calmed her in the bassinet at night and she's doing a bit better going down for the night.

Sara has started to get tired of being swaddled and wants to sleep with her arms either up in the air or up over her head. I'd been putting her down in the swing during the day without bundling her up and she seemed to like it, but we couldn't get her to do the same at night. Yesterday I decided to try putting her down in the bassinet during the day with her pacifier to see how she would do. I took the sleep positioner out of the bed and just put her down with a blanket lightly around her and her arms free. She wasn't sure at first, but the pacifier seemed to calm her and she took a nap in there long enough for me to take a shower and get dressed. We decided to try it again for the night and she actually did pretty well. We got out one of the sleep sacks to put her in since she wasn't bundled up tight and stuck that pacifier in when she started to stir. That helped her go down for her first round and she didn't need the pacifier at all for the stretch in the middle of the night. She seems happy to not be swaddled but she does wake herself up more frequently when her arms are free to flail. The baby books say they get used to having their arms and legs free to roam at about two months, so hopefully we're on our way to her not waking herself up everytime an arm moves!

This past weekend also brought us our first real extended outting. Andy and I both desperately needed haricuts so we went to one of the quick places and took turns with Sara while we got our hair cut. I was able to feed her in the car while Andy finished up and then we headed down to Rice Village to eat lunch and go to A Woman's Work. A Woman's Work is a great store for moms and babies - especially for nursing supplies and I needed to get some nursing bras now that my milk supply is well established. Sara slept most of the time in her stroller and they even had chairs and magazines for dads to wait in. Lastly we hit the grocery store briefly on our way home to get a few things. Andy went in to shop and I changed and fed Sara in the car again. The one bad thing about traveling is that the carseat seems to promote pooping and the way she fits in the seat causes her to blow out her diaper out her back every time. Luckily I've been smart enough to remember outfit changes each time we've left the house because we've needed one each time she has been in the car!

It was so nice to be able to leave the house for the whole afternoon and be outside for a bit. It's fun to go out as a family too - I can't wait for Sara to start getting interested in her surroundings and really enjoy going to new places.

Hope everyone is having a good week - Sara goes back to the doctor tomorrow for her one month checkup so we'll find out how much our little chunker weighs now. I'm betting over 8 pounds for sure as much as she's eating! I know she has to get one shot tomorrow, which I'm not looking forward to. Think happy thoughts for Sara and hopefully the shot won't hurt too much.

Until next time,

Andy, Valarie, and Sara

PS - Thanks for the comments on the blog - it's fun to see who's looking at the site and have some comments to read!

A Good Night

We got our one good night for the week last night - we were able to get out of the house for a quick Valentine's dinner at a local pizza place and Sara did pretty good. She doesn't like being strapped into her carseat if the car isn't moving, so she woke up at the restaurant after a few minutes. Luckily she was calm once we picked her up and could take turns holding her and eating. She did manage to have a nice diaper blowout at the restaurant and we got to change her entire outfit in the car before we left for home, but it was still really nice to get out of the house for a while! The good night continued at home when Sara went down in her bassinet at 10:30 and slept for four hours. She went back down in the bassinet two more times and got up around 7:30 to eat. She seems to wake up when it gets light outside just like her daddy. It will be nice when she's on more of a sleeping schedule and stays in her bassinet or crib all night regularly, but we'll take the good nights we can get for now.


Sara did pretty good today too and is eating constantly. I think she might be having one of her many growth spurts - she's going to be a big chunky baby soon! I'm glad that she's eating so well, but it is hard being home alone with her all day when she needs to eat all the time because I can't get anything done. I barely got a shower today before she started screaming to eat again! Hopefully she'll be done with this growth spurt in a day or so and will go down for some longer naps again during the day!

Happy Valentine's Day

Today is off to a nice start with my little Valentine, so I thought I would put a quick post and picture of Sara in her Valentine outfit.

Sara had her second real bath today and still seems to like the water. She started kicking her feet half way through and splashing against the side of the tub. She probably wasn't doing it on purpose, but I think she likes the feeling of the warm water and is very calm and alert each time she gets a bath so far.

She's back to snoozing in her swing after a brief interruption when the mailman rang the doorbell and the dogs went nuts. She doesn't mind the doorbell, but barking dogs will wake her every time and she gets upset. Luckily I was able to get her back to sleep for a bit and put her back down so she can finish her nap. Things go well when she gets plenty of sleep, but the screaming starts when she gets too tired and then it's hard to get her to go to sleep at all.

I hope everyone has a good Valentine's Day - I'm hoping that the day goes well and maybe we can all get out of the house for a quick dinner tonight to celebrate our first Valentine's Day with Sara!

Welcome to Parenthood

Well, it's official now - we are parents! Sara Katherine Athon was born on January 20th at 12:54pm after a long and painful 12 1/2 hour labor that mom somehow did without pain medication like she wanted. Sara weighed 7lbs 8oz and was 20 1/2 inches long. She had some trouble breathing at first and was taken to the NICU at Texas Children's Hospital for treatment. It turned out that she just had some left over fluid in her lungs that she hadn't gotten rid of, which was the best case scenario because it meant there was no infection or other more serious problem to worry about. After three days we were able to bring her home and begin life as a new family.

Seeing as it's taken me just over three weeks to even have a moment to add something to our website, parenting a newborn has taken over our entire lives. I finally have a few minutes where she is actually sleeping in her swing, so I thought I would try to write some words about life so far and what Sara has been up to. We will try to update our website with news and fun things that Sara is doing often, but please be patient with us as life is still very chaotic and some days are spent entirely trying to settle her down when she's crying. We often don't have time to do much more than take care of her and breathe so no complaints when it takes a long time to get a new post!

After leaving the hospital, Andy was home for the first two weeks with us (and that was fantastic!). He was able to help take care of me and Sara as we recovered from our hospital stays and really spend some time with us. He's now back at work for his second week and that is very tiring for all of us. He has to get up early on little sleep to go to work and I am home alone with Sara all day which is a lot of work too!

We have spent many sleepless nights trying to figure out how to keep Sara happy and I spent lots of time with Sara establishing nursing. Luckily all the pumping I had done in the hospital when she wasn't allowed to nurse worked well and my milk came in right on time at about day 3. Sara was able to pick up nursing well despite not being able to start right after birth which was a huge relief for me as I want her to be an exclusively breastfed baby and didn't want to have to give her formula at all.

We are now starting to settle into a bit of a routine with eating and sleeping, but Sara is still too little to be on any exact schedule. She eats every 2-3 hours during the day and goes 3-4 hours at night before waking up hungry. She does have day and night straightened out and sleeps for 3-4 hour increments starting about 10pm most nights until morning comes. Unfortunately, she really hates to sleep by herself and will only go down in her bassinet when she is extrememly tired at night. We've been having to start her off at night sleeping on one of us either in bed or on the couch and then try to put her down in her own bed after the next feeding. We're lucky if she'll do two full sleep cycles in her own bed, but that doesn't happen most nights. We keep trying to put her down on her own in hopes that she will get used to it, but she's still not having any of it and we pick her up anytime she gets upset since she is too little to let her cry.

Sara had several sponge baths while her cord was still attached and luckily seems to like the water unlike most newborns. She finally lost her cord at almost three weeks and had her first real bath yesterday in the tub. She also seemed to like being in the water and was very calm for the whole bath. Hopefully that will continue and bathtime will be fun for her. It will be neat when she is old enough to enjoy splashing and playing with toys in the bath.

Sara is awake when not eating about 2-3 times throughout the day for about an hour or so. There isn't a whole lot to do with her right now since she is so little but we make faces and hold toys in front of her to look at. We have play time on the floor where we help her touch toys of different colors and textures and she also does some tummy time on the floor each day to help her develop her neck muscles. She can already hold her head up really well for about a minute at a time and can look around on her own briefly too. This past weekend we bought a play mat that has toys hanging down for her to focus on. She will eventually be big enough to reach the toys and they can be pulled down easily to play with.

Sara had her first family visitors this past weekend when her Grandaddy and TruTru came for a few days to see her. They were able to hold her and play with her and we're pretty sure that Sara had a good time :)




Sara also had her first real outting since coming home from the hospital this past weekend where we went to Target and out to eat. She did really well and likes to sleep in the carseat as long as the car is moving. I brought along a pillow and was able to nurse her in the car in between stops and that kept her happy for the duration. It was nice to be able to leave the house for a while and get out into the world since we've pretty much been staying home and inside except for daily walks around the neighborhood. It will be good to start going more places as she gets older and get out of the house more often!


Well that is a good highlight summary of life so far with Sara at home. We are two very tired parents and some days are better than others but Sara is doing well and we are looking forward to all the new things she will start doing soon as she gets more interactive with us.


Lots of Love,
Andy, Valarie, and Sara