One Month Old!

I wish the last month of my pregnancy had flown by so quickly!  I absolutely cannot believe that Carson is one month old already!

Carson's Birth Stats

Weight: 3.8 kilos

Height: 50 cm

Head circumference: Not sure

Carson's One Month Stats

Weight: 5.175 kilos

Height: 54.8 cm

Head circumference: 38.2 cm

What Carson's been up to:

This first month has been a little trying.  We were having some issues with breastfeeding, I was having pain and Carson was sucking in a lot of air.  After some googling I thought he may have a tongue and lip tie.  We went and saw the doctor and had it confirmed.  The frenulum that attaches his upper lip to his gums was a little tight and he wasn't able to flip his lip up properly to latch on.  When he was 8 days old we had that snipped by an ENT.  Then, he caught a cold from his brother.  Then, we found out he had thrush.  Now, everything is finally going smoothly!  He can still have a hard time latching on and sometimes sucks in quite a bit of air, but he doesn't seem bothered at all by it, thankfully!  The last thing I need is a colicky baby! 

Carson is a great sleeper!  He wakes every 2 - 3 hours to nurse, but since he's in bed with us I can get him started and then go back to sleep.  He rarely cries; I think I've heard him cry, cry once and mildly cry 3 -4 times.  Although, he is really babied so I don't think he has anything to cry about!

Henry has been a great big brother!  He constantly calls him, "My baby" or "Mina meme" in Henry language.  He asks to hold him on his lap (which usually consists of holding him, but completely ignoring him and watching tv).  He's also been extremely patient when it comes to waiting for something or not being able to do something because I'm feeding or changing  Carson or whatever.  

He's quite the sleeping beauty!

He can definitely get the crazy eyes!  This isn't even the craziest his eyes can get.  One of them can also be a little lazy, but I'm hoping that goes away!

I still can't decide if he looks like Henry or not.  He definitely looks more like than me than like Hannes though.

Birth Story

This is going to be short and sweet…just like my labor!

I started having braxton hicks contractions, and lots of them, around 32 weeks.  I think this also contributed to the insomnia of the third trimester because, of course, this mostly happened late at night.

My due date was March 11th, but I had convinced myself that since this was my fourth child and it was so close to my last pregnancy that this baby would come early.  So, in the weeks leading up to his birth I saw everything as a sign that I was going into labor, but of course nothing happened.  So, when March 11th came and went without so much as anything I started to think this baby was going to be late, like his older brother who came 5 days after his due date.

I took a shower and climbed into bed at around 11 pm.  In the shower, I had decided to do squats.  I was hoping that the up and down bouncing motion would get things started sooner rather than later.  Surprisingly, I fell right asleep.  I woke up around 1:15 am with not exactly a pain, but more of a feeling like I had just gotten punched in the stomach.  It didn't hurt, but was enough to wake me up.  Then, I had a wet sensation.  I immediately got up and ran to the bathroom.  A few drops of something dripped down my leg, but I wasn't sure what it was.  I sat on the toilet for a few minutes and…nothing!  I thought maybe I had just peed myself a little bit.  Hannes got a waterproof diaper changing pad and laid it on our bed, just in case, and I went and laid back down.  The second I laid down there was a gush and I was 100% sure that my water had just broken!  I was in disbelief, in all 3 of my other pregnancies my water NEVER broke.  I always had to have it broken.  Henry was almost born still in the sac.  I've always heard stories of people's waters breaking, but figured it would never happen to me; especially, since I hadn't yet had one real contraction.  Almost immediately after that the contractions started coming.  They were not painful at all and were only lasting 30 - 40 seconds, but they were coming fast, less than 2 minutes apart!  Hannes got up and started packing his things and I got my, already packed, bags ready.  I debated curling my hair, but opted for a ponytail since it was the middle of the night.  We called the hospital and let them know what was going on and then waited.  I kept going back and forth about leaving, but my contractions still weren't painful.  Then, I started to get the pooping urge and decided we needed to leave…like right that second!!  I remembered that right at the end of my labor with Henry I had this feeling too.  So, I got really worried.  At this point, it was about 2:15 in the morning.  The hospital is close so I wasn't too worried.  We grabbed all of our things, told Emily that we were leaving and headed to the car.  Since, we live in the city we park in a parking garage and of course, we completely forgot that the garage is locked from midnight until 6 am.  Like you cannot get in or get your car out locked.  We do have a special key fob with a code that allows us to get in and out, but…we didn't remember the code!!!!

We stood there in the parking lot behind the garage frantically calling every number we could to get them to either unlock the garage or give us a code to get in.  No one was answering.  I finally got through on one of the numbers, but they couldn't do anything and just told me to call the other number.  At this point, at least 15 minutes had passed and I was in a serious panic!  I told Hannes to just call an ambulance because I was worried I was going to poop my pants or have my baby in the parking lot, and the contractions were starting to get painful.  I had to bend over and breathe through them.  As soon as he got through to someone at the emergency number and began explaining our situation a security car pulled up.  What timing!  They unlocked the door and, like a man, Hannes froze.  He had been holding the car seat and a few bags and suddenly he had no clue what to do with them.  He set them down on the entrance ramp to the garage and then decided that wasn't a good spot and picked them up and went to put them on the exit ramp and then decided no and as he was wandering around I yelled at him to just set them down by me and to hurry and get the car!!!  A few moments later he came down and I jumped in and we sped to the hospital.

When we got there, they took me back to the observation room.  Before we had even settled in I mentioned that I had to poop and she rushed us back to a delivery room.  They hooked me up to a few monitors and checked my progress.  I was about 4 - 5 cm, but she said my cervix was soft and would easily dilate.  Then, I asked if I could go to the bathroom.  They took all the wires off and I was finally able to go!  I was in there for about 20 minutes when Hannes said the nurses were getting impatient and really wanted to check me again.  I came back and they checked my progress, I was at about 9 - 10 cm, but his head was high.  The contractions were almost constant and extremely painful at this point.  I took a few breaths of laughing gas, but it doesn't help at all with my pain so I dropped it.  I was really getting the urge to push so she helped to hold everything open during the next contraction and I pushed.  Then, I had the weirdest feeling in the world…he completely rolled around!  His head had been facing forward and he spun around so he was now facing my back.  Then I pushed through two more contractions and he was born at 3:26 am!  We had been at the hospital for about 45 minutes and my entire labor was less than two and a half hours long.  It was an insane, painful few hours, but I could not believe that it was so short!!

We had no idea if the baby was going to be a boy or a girl and after the baby was born it was lying between my legs and I kept yelling at Hannes not to look!  I really wanted both of us to look and see at the same time.  He could see the head of the baby, but I couldn't see anything.  When they handed him to me a few moments later and we looked and Hannes said it's a boy I thought I was going to pass out! Part of me was really hoping it was a girl during my entire pregnancy, but at that exact moment I couldn't imagine it being anything else.  A boy sounded just perfect.  We looked at him and Hannes said I think he looks like a Carson and I was like he does!  That is exactly what he looks like and that is how he got his name.  It wasn't on any list I had made and it wasn't even one I had considered, but somehow it just fit him.

Well…

This is embarrassing.  It has been a crazy long time since I have updated this blog!  Spoiler alert:  I was actually pregnant in that last post!  I just had no idea…yet.  Since then I have completed the entire pregnancy, birthed the baby and he is now one month old!  He is definitely going to feel like the fourth child when he sees that his entire gestational period was summed in one blog post.  Sorry, Carson!

I'll start with ALL the pictures.  They are in order, but I don't have one from every month and I am not sure exactly how pregnant I am in each of them.  Disclaimer - Some of these pictures were only meant to shared with family.

That chalkboard sat in our living room with 16 weeks written on it until a few days ago when I erased it and wrote one month on it, since Carson just turned one month old.  So much for the weekly pictures...

Pregnancy Recap:

Since I cannot even begin to remember what was happening every month during my pregnancy I'll just kind of break it down into trimesters.

1st Trimester:

I can sum this period up with one word…diarrhea.  I mean, I had incredible morning/all day sickness.  I did my fair share of throwing up, but I also had insane diarrhea.  Like to the point where one time I had to run home because I almost shat my pants.  Another time we walked to the beach and I ran straight to the toilet where I spent the first 20 or so minutes of our trip.  It was so terrible that I was afraid to leave the house because I had no idea when/where I was going to explode.  If you actually read all of that all I can say is sorry.  I found out later, a little too late in my opinion, that I had become lactose intolerant.  It was super weird!  It continued throughout my entire pregnancy.  I could not eat any dairy or I would have major bathroom issues.  I did start experimenting towards the end and I was able to tolerate more dairy and so far, I have not had any issues after pregnancy and Carson does not seem to have any issues with dairy.  Thank goodness!!

2nd Trimester:

The word here would be exhaustion.  I have never been so tired in my entire life (and that's saying a lot considering that Henry didn't sleep through the night at all until he was like a year old and even now will wake up at least once during the night so I haven't slept a solid 8 hours in years!).  I could barely function and relied a little too heavily on caffeine during this pregnancy.  I never exceeded my 200mg/day, but I was either having a Coke or a cup of coffee every single day.  With Henry, I avoided caffeine and rarely had any during my entire pregnancy, but I also remembered my vitamins with him every day too.  Sorry Carson!  On the weekends, I could easily wake up at 9, take a nap from 9:30 - 12, eat lunch, take another nap from 1 - 3 and go to bed at 7.  And I'd still be tired!

3rd Trimester:

Let's just continue with the one word theme, third trimester's word would be…insomnia!  This is where I never slept…ever!  Towards the end I could easily be awake until 5:30 am and then wake up at 7:30 with Henry, doze on the couch until lunch time, at 11, and then nap during Henry's nap - roughly 12 - 2 and then do it all over again the next day.  So, I was maybe getting 6 hours of sleep spread throughout the day.  Part of it was that I couldn't get comfortable and another part was that I just wasn't tired.  The last few weeks were definitely the worst and most extreme, but the entire third trimester the earliest I ever went to sleep was 1 am, and I worked until I was 36 weeks pregnant.  So, maybe exhaustion could also be my third trimester word.  Looking back, I think Carson may have been preparing me for his birth.

Summer Travels

Every summer for the last 5 or 6 years we have gone to visit Hannes' grandparents at their summer house in Sjællands Odde, Denmark...it's about an hour and half drive from Copenhagen.  They have a little house with a guest house in the yard.

You can barely see it on this map, but it's a really small peninsula sticking out into the ocean.

If the weather is nice, it's a great place to be!  They have some rock beaches and a nice sand beach.  We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner outside and enjoy the sunshine.  This is Henry's second time going and the first year he spent the majority of our trip in his stroller.  This year, he had so much fun exploring!  He found plenty of rocks, swam in his new pool and spent hours running around in the yard.  It wasn't hard getting him to bed since he was spending about 10 hours a day outside.  Our first day there was absolutely gorgeous so we took Henry to the nice sand beach.  You can walk out like 30 yards into the ocean and the water is never above your knees.  However, Henry didn't want to walk out into the ocean.  He only wanted to sit in this hole Hannes dug in the sand near the waterline and splash in what essentially was a puddle.  It was pretty funny though!

That was all we had planned for this summer, but after spending a few hours on google I found that Hamburg was only a 4 1/2 - 5 hour drive from their summer house.  The hotel wasn't expensive and it seemed doable, so I booked it!  Hamburg is an absolutely beautiful city full of old buildings.  Which is exactly what I'm looking for when I travel.  It is a little more calm and less metropolitan than Berlin, but not quite as beautiful as Amsterdam.  We pretty much only walked around the city, and ate.  We found this amazing Vietnamese restaurant, Quan Do and ate there twice!  I would probably go back to Hamburg just to eat Bún Châ from that restaurant.  We've already tried to recreate it once since we've been back.

This is central station.  Our hotel was just a short walk, about 3 minutes, from here.

This was an area called Alster.

The only thing we really splurged on was a trip to Hagenbeck, the zoo in Hamburg.  I thought Henry would absolutely love seeing the animals and I think I was right.  It was quite pricey to get in 30 Euros, which is about $50.  After living in St. Louis my whole life I have a really hard time paying to get into a zoo.  It was a really nice zoo, but like most places had some hidden costs.  Like using the bathroom...they had attendants that were looking for "donations".  I snuck out every time I had to pee and never donated, I mean, I already paid $50 to get in!  They also had food bags that you could get with a "donation".  Although, that donation was kind of worth it.  I literally had elephants eating out of my hands!  And baboons and alpacas.  Although, the baboons ate the food that we threw into their enclosure.  They may be a little too dangerous to hand feed.  It was the most natural looking zoo I have ever been in.  All the trails were made of a dirt/sand mixture and they had tons of trees.  It was almost like walking through a forest.  They also had quite a few animals that were free to roam anywhere they wanted in the zoo.  We didn't get a picture, but some of them were this weird mix of hare/deer/donkey.

Henry loved the bears and said "bear" over and over again.

This was the grossest animal I have ever seen!  I swear it was trying to figure out how to eat Henry.  It kept turning it's nose sideways and sniffing like it was smelling something tasty!

This walrus was hilarious!  It stayed in that exact same spot for as long as we could see it.  He kept going underwater, holding his breath, then coming up and taking another huge breath and then going back under.  It was so cute and we stood there and watched for like ten minutes.

One night, we went to dinner in this neighborhood called St. Pauli.  We didn't read much about it beforehand; but apparently, it was really lucky that we were there early in the evening.  You can read more about it here, if you want.  We ate at this burger place called The Bird.  Which, in my opinion, is the best burger I've had in Europe.  Although, nothing quite compares to Five Guys.  The kids and I ate there in Berlin and when I found out they had just opened one in Hamburg I knew I had to go.  They also have amazing hand cut fries and the best cheesecake I have ever had!  Plus, it's super cheap (compared to price in Sweden, especially).  Hannes and I each had a beer, a burger with fries and we shared a cheesecake all for 35 Euros (323 swedish kronor or $48).  It may not seem like a steal to some people, but when you're used to paying $30 for a kind of bad hamburger out, it's a huge deal!  While we were walking around we saw this building.

I made Hannes take a picture because it's my friend Amanda's last name.  I really hope it's spelled right, I think it is though.  The place looked a little sketchy, but it was still funny.

We didn't get a picture of the very best thing that happened the whole trip.  I'm still mad about it, but what can you do?  I am really bad about taking pictures in general, but I've been even worse lately.  I know I've said this plenty of times, but we don't have a camera right now.  We take all of our pictures on our phones.  Which usually works out fine, but when we travel we can't use our phones...it is way too expensive!  So, being practical, I always leave mine in the hotel.  Since I can't use it anyway.  Then, later when I want to take a picture I realize how stupid it is that I don't have my phone with me.  But the next day I do the same thing again!

Hannes loves taking these candid pictures of me, but most of them are too hideous to share.

Anyway, we had been walking around quite a bit.  We took the train down to the harbor and then walked about 45 minutes back up to the city hall, or rathaus in German (I found the name hilarious and called it the rat house the entire trip).  We decided to let Henry down so he could stretch his legs.  There was a big square with plenty of room for him to run without encountering any streets or cars.  There was a group of kids on a field trip sitting on the steps outside of the building. As soon as we let Henry out he ran straight over to the kids, turned around, backed up and sat down on the ground right in front of them.  It was hilarious!  Then, he turned around, smiled and said hi to all of the kids.  He sat right there for a few minutes.  Until he realized that everyone else was sitting on the step.  So, he did what anyone would do...he got up, climbed the steps and sat down right next to the last boy.  I almost died!  Then, he did the most Henry thing of all, he tried to take the boy's book bag...several times.  At one point, I thought about yelling to Hannes to take a picture, but then the kids got up and all stood in line to leave...and of course, Henry got in line right behind them!  He can be the cutest sometimes.


For anyone wondering...Henry did amazing on the trip!  There were a few times when he got fussy in the car, but I would just climb in the back and entertain him until he was ready to fall asleep again.  He had no problems sleeping in the travel cribs anywhere.  The only kind of tricky part was that Henry will not go to sleep if we are in the room.  So, we had to put him down for bed and then leave the hotel room and hang out on the steps in the hallway until we thought he was sleeping and then quietly sneak back in.  We covered the top of his crib with a blanket and watched TV with the sound off (Which wasn't a huge deal because they dub every show in German so we had no clue what people were saying anyway!  We did have fun watching 2 1/2 men one night and guessing what was going on.).  The only part that was kind of difficult at times was feeding Henry.  He's not a super picky eater and usually eats some variation of what we eat every night for dinner, but we didn't always eat food that he wanted.  He didn't like the noodles at the Vietnamese restaurant, I still don't know why.  So, he ended up eating what was basically a cinnamon roll for dinner that night.  He did have a pouch that contained fruits and vegetables so I don't have a ton of guilt over that, but it definitely wasn't the healthiest meal ever prepared.


For anyone who made it to the end of this post...you get a very special surprise!  Apparently, this is what Hannes and Henry do when they get up in the morning and I'm still sleeping.  Hannes found it so hilarious that he documented it.  I figured some people might get a laugh out of it too.

That's a lovely new necklace Henry, but you can only wear it in the house!  I also love that his shirt is off and in a ball on the couch.

One Year Old!!!

How did this happen?  How is my baby 1?!?!  It is crazy how quickly time flies!  We don't have a real camera...we take all of our pictures on our iPhones.  So, for Henry's birthday we asked Hannes' brother to take some pictures for us.  We haven't seen any of them yet so when we do I will update with some of those pictures.

Henry's Stats

Weight: 9.6 kilos

Height: 74.8 cm

Head circumference: 46.7

Teeth: 8, but we have 2 more trying to pop through on the top

Favorite foods: strawberries and watermelon (this boy LOVES fruit!)

What Henry's been up to:

Henry has been up to so much lately!  He's gone from walking to full on running...which means that when he falls (and he's always falling!  boys!) he lands a little harder than he did before.  I feel so bad for his hands, knees and head!  He always gets right up and keeps going though!  I'm sure his falling is harder on me than it is on him.  Henry  loves the library!  At home, he will sit down and read all of his books and look at all of the pictures in them.  At the library, however, he only runs around and pulls all of the books out.  He will not sit down or read a single book.  

Henry LOVES rocks!  I have never seen a child more obsessed with anything, ever!  If he's walking outside and sees a rock he has to stop and pick it up.  He really loves the big ones and will sometimes have 3 or 4 in each hand.  When we were in Denmark recently we stopped at a rock beach.  I think Henry was a little overwhelmed.  He wasn't sure how he was going to get so many rocks in his hands!  I swear he traded them out 3 or 4 times to make sure that he had just the rocks that he wanted.

I just had a little bout of deja vu and I feel like I've written some of this last month, but hopefully no one minds reading it again!

Henry has become quite the talker!  He talks almost nonstop.  His word for boo, bowl, bottle and button all sound the same, but we can usually figure out what he's talking about.  He also started saying something that sounds like "big ole, big ole, pickle or tickle" something like that, at least to me.  One day, he was hiding in his favorite corner and just talking and I was able to get some of it on video.  Normally, once he sees that you're taking a photo or video he runs over wanting to look at the screen so he can see what's going on...which makes it impossible to take a picture or a video!

Henry also had his first experience swimming when we were in Denmark.  Hannes' grandma bought Henry the cutest little baby pool.  It was just the right size!  He loved that thing!  He would climb in and out over and over again and then sit down and splash and play with his toys.

Thanks for the swimming clothes Aunt Jessie!

During my baby shower...a long time ago!  Everyone took turns writing cards to the baby in my belly.  At that time, we didn't even know it was going to be a boy...much less our wild, crazy Henry Tage!  Aunt Jessie got the first birthday card.  Henry was really excited to eat the card!  But I think it is going to be really fun opening these for the next, like 23 years!

Henry also had his first taste of sugar on his 1st birthday!  I made some really delicious greek yoghurt cupcakes with blackberry frosting.  At first, he was a little skeptical about eating the cupcake, but as soon as he had his first real taste he dug in!  Since then, he's rarely had sugar, but sometimes you get desperate when traveling.  We had a hard time finding food for him to eat at some of the restaurants we ate at in Germany so he ended up eating this cinnamon danish...basically, a flattened cinnamon roll for quite a few meals.  Now that we're back home it's back to real food for him!

What Mommy's been up to:

We finally had our first night away from our little guy!  For my birthday, Hannes' parents and grandparents got us a night at a fancy hotel in Copenhagen.  They watched Henry and we spent the night away.  Hannes' parents, grandparents, his brother - Henrik, his girlfriend - Ida, his cousin - Tim and his girlfriend- Jessica were all there to help!  We weren't worried at all.  Henry really loves people and with so many people giving him attention we knew he would have a blast!  While we were gone Hannes' brother posted this photo of my sweet boy on Instagram:

Of course, I was then worried about what was going on!  Just kidding!  It did make me miss that cute, chunky face though.

I'm still working on weaning this guy.  Every morning after he wakes up he gets into bed with us, nurses and then snuggles for about 30 minutes until one of us gets up with him to make him breakfast.  Some days, that is the only time he nurses.  If we're busy and doing stuff and he eats well then he doesn't even ask to nurse at all.  Some days, though, he wants to nurse every few hours.  Most of the time if I tell him no or go and make him a snack he just forgets about it and keeps going on about his life.  Other times, he will continue to beg and cry and try to pull my shirt up until I let him nurse.  I figure that whatever breast milk he's still getting is negating all of the brain damage he's doing by always banging his head!  I would like to wean him completely as soon as possible, but I am being patient and only nursing when he really wants to and can't be distracted by anything else.