Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Big Brother Brayden

Tonight Brayden was upstairs watching TV and yelled downstairs for me to come up and talk to him. He told me "When I'm 4, I get to go back to BigDonalds (translation - McDonalds); when I'm 6, I get to go to Wal-Mart; when I'm 3, I get to go back home; and when I'm 5, maybe I can ride on a steam train." I have no idea what goes through that head of his, but he is hilarious...
I have been meaning to brag about how great he has been. I was terrified of how he was going to react to Cameron - I expected a ton of jealousy, him acting out for attention, and us to both go completely insane being here together all day since he is so used to being at daycare and playing with other kids all day. I have been pleasantly surprised...he has been awesome! I mean, he still has his moments, but he's still a 3 year old who has a ton of energy and is stuck inside b/c it's winter in Chicago. He has been an awesome big brother - he loves Cameron soooo much and wants to do everything with him. He has turned into a complete "momma's boy" and wants to hold my hand and "talk to me" and sit in my lap - and I'm loving it! I don't think I ever realized how much I was missing out on by working and not spending time with him. However, he is getting cabin fever and is going a little crazy not having someone to play with all of the time, so I have enrolled him in preschool and he starts next week so that should be good for all of us. We are really excited for him to get that social interaction and to start preparing for school, and it will be good for me to get a break and spend some 1:1 time with Cameron. I absolutely love my 2 (well, 3) boys and love being home and spending time with them!

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

3 Weeks

Well week 3 was pretty uneventful. My mom came back up and stayed the week to help me with the kids since I was told to take it easy (and couldn't drive). We pretty much stayed home and relaxed. Cam's umbilical cord finally fell off this week and he took his first real bath. I was afraid he would scream the entire time, but he loved it! He is still a great baby, but has been having some tummy problems this week. He constantly grunts and moans and groans and seems really uncomfortable - he seems to have the type of discomfort that would make most babies scream and cry all of the time, but he doesn't. We are experimenting with different bottles and I just switched him to the "gentle ease" formula for gassy babies so hopefully that will help. Poor little guy...

Thursday, February 19, 2009

2 weeks (almost 3 at this point)

Well, my plan was to update my blog weekly for at least the first few weeks/months of Cameron's life. I don't have a baby book for him (not that I would write in it if I did - Brayden's is pretty much empty), so I am going to try and document fun new things on here. He turned 2 weeks old on Monday, and we took him to the dr for another check up. He is doing great - very healthy and had gained a pound from what he weighed when he left the hospital. He has clogged tear ducts, so they get kind of gross at times, but they don't seem to bother him at all. I missed 3 days of the week with him b/c of me being in the hospital and it seemed like he got bigger in that small amount of time. It was really hard to not be with him, and it was definitely much earlier than I had planned on letting him sleep over anywhere else, but it's not like I really had any control over anything. Although I missed him, I wasn't in any condition to be able to take care of him either. It was so great to be able to hold him when I got home on Sunday night - I love snuggling with him!

Sunday, February 15, 2009

I am blessed...

I finally got to come home from the hospital late this afternoon, and for the first time in 3 days my headache is gone. I feel a lot better, but still am very weak and have no appetite at all. I've eaten some pringles and fruit roll-ups today and that's about all I can get down. Hopefully I can keep this headache under control and will feel a little better tomorrow.
I am truly blessed to have a family that loves and takes care of me. On Friday it took an army of people to watch the boys since everything happened so fast - I think there were 5 different people in shifts throughout the day. Rubin's mom watched both boys all weekend which was a huge help. When I got home today, Rubin's step-mom and her sister had cleaned my house, and my mom is flying back up here to spend another week with me to help me take care of the kids. Rubin HAS to go back to work - he just went back on Tuesday and already had to miss Friday so he can't afford to take any more time of to stay home and help me.
Things should get better each day from here on out. It will take me a while to regain my strength and replenish my blood supply. I don't really have any medications to take - they just said to continue with the prenatal vitamins and that I probably should take an iron supplement. They also told me I shouldn't drive for 2 weeks b/c of the blood loss so that should be interesting - I think I might go crazy.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

The latest Chrisman health saga...

So we can't seem to catch a break in our house. Yesterday morning I woke up bleeding pretty badly. I called the doctor at 5 am and he said that it was probably nothing to worry about - he said to lay down for a couple of hours and if it didn't seem to stop that I might want to go to the ER. He made it sound like it wasn't a big deal, so I sent Rubin to work. Shortly after he left, I decided I needed to go to the ER, so I got up to change clothes and felt a huge blood clot coming out of me. I went to the bathroom and took off my pants in the bathtub and a clot about the size of a volleyball fell out. I managed to crawl into the bedroom to get my phone and called Rubin, who called 911 and headed back home. He got there about the same time as the ambulance and I was barely conscious by the time they got there. I have never been so scared in my entire life - I seriously thought I was dying, and I don't think I was overreacting. The EMTs were all pretty freaked out by the amount of blood I had lost, and I pretty much had no blood pressure when I got into the ambulance. At the hospital they did an ultrasound and found pieces of the placenta still inside my uterus, so I had surgery (a DNC) yesterday to remove it, and while I was in surgery they also gave me a unit of blood. Things are looking much better now - I still feel like I got hit by a truck, but I'm off of the IVs and able to get up and move around. Please pray that everything continues to heal correctly, b/c if the bleeding doesn't stop from what they have done so far, the next step would be to do a hysterectomy. The doctor is pretty confident that I'll be fine and I should be able to go home tomorrow.
Oh, and I dropped my phone in the bathtub full of blood, so it no longer works, so if you have tried to call or text in the past couple of days I didn't get the message. I have a new phone now but don't have any of my contacts so I haven't been able to really keep everyone updated.

Monday, February 9, 2009

1 week


Cameron is 1 week old today - time has already gone by so fast! We came home from the hospital on Wednesday, and since then we have made 2 trips to Wal-Mart, been to the doctor, church, Rubin's mom's house, his dad's, and taken my mom to the airport....pretty busy first week! We have spent the day today relaxing and recovering - I think the past few days have been harder on me than they have on him! He is such a good baby, and Brayden is completely in love with him. He has been a pretty good big brother so far - he still needs to work on being gentle, and he doesn't quite understand that Cameron can't play with him yet.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Cameron Tyler Chrisman

Cameron is finally here! He was born today at 2:55 and was 7 lbs, 13 oz and 21 inches (and he was 2 weeks early!) and we are both doing great! He is so precious and we are so excited that he is finally here! Although I wasn't excited at first about having him on Groundhog's Day, it is pretty amazing that Brayden's birthday is 05-05 and Cameron's is 02-02. We will hopefully be able to post pictures tomorrow - we don't have the cord for the camera with us today...guess that's what happens when you don't think too much about what you're packing in your bag! Brayden came to see him today and he was so excited - he wanted to hold him immediately, and kept telling us to "wake him up". We will be going home on Wednesday and we are looking forward to raising our 2 beautiful boys!

Sunday, February 1, 2009

I'm here!

Well I finally started having regular contractions around 5 this afternoon (with a little help from disgusting castor oil), and we came to the hospital during halftime of the Super Bowl. Yes, I'm nice like that. I am dilated to about 4.5 cm and my contractions are about 6 mins apart. We're hanging out in the delivery room and will probably be here for a while. They are not giving me pitocin yet b/c I'm not technically considered full-term until Wednesday so they want things to move naturally. We aren't expecting anything to happen until tomorrow morning sometime. I'm going to try and get some sleep and hopefully things will get moving faster sometime soon.