Rodrick Royal 3 Months

Rodrick goes by Rocky about 60% of the time. I love it. I sometimes punch his little fists in the air and yell "Yo Adrian!". He's also built rock solid (in that perfect squishy, baby way) and has hands and feet that are gigantic. I'm fairly certain he'll catch up on the growth charts with our other kids. He's stretching out of his 3-6 month clothes and looks deliciously chubby. 

He does a lot of unblinking staring. I love startling him. His already wide-open eyes get HUGE. I can't handle it. He is starting to smile so much more and does these adorable breathy giggles. He has a perfect, full mouth like his father and brother so when he smiles, his mouth gets gigantic. It makes me want to eat him. Actually, everything he does makes me want to eat him. 

He's been a bit more fussy than I remember my other two being. He really loves being held. I know that's not unusual, but I think he realizes he is in mortal danger in our house the times he isn't being held. If he's being held, he's pretty content. Rodrick can roll over, but has only done it a few times. He is intent on sitting up. It's so funny. If he's in a reclined position, he crunches right on up to sitting then immediately falls over. It's funny because he was doing little crunches in one of his early ultrasounds and we joked that he knew he had to prepare to be Lyra's little brother. Too true. 

Rodrick seems to have some tummy issues. My other two never projectile vomited, but Rocky does. He's done it a handful of times and it's shocking each and every time. The volume and the force behind it is impressive. 

He loves being outside. He'll calm down really easily if I take him outside for a few minutes. Rodrick blissfully takes a binky! It makes it so much easier when they do. Driving in the car with him is painful. He hates it. He cries constantly. We made the 14 hour drive from Omaha to Utah with him and it was better than I imagined, but still painful. He's starting to get really interested in toys and we luckily brought a baby toy that got us through a lot of the trip. 

I like being able to tell more and more what makes him happy. He will pull off over and over again while nursing when he really needs to burp. I can tell every time and I love being able to know what he needs without words. I've started signing milk each time and I'm already getting grateful all over again for sign language. He makes cute little desperate sounds when I ask if he wants milk to acknowledge in the affirmative. 

He sleeps really well and that makes all the difference. He starts in the pack-n-play around the kids usual bedtime 7/8pm and joins me in bed around 4am. I couldn't be more grateful for sleep. He takes a consistent morning nap an hour after he wakes up for about an hour and the rest is still just whenever he can catch one. 

The kids both still love him. Lyra is getting so much better at actually helping. She loves changing his diaper. They both sometimes fight over helping which is...unhelpful. BUT I'm not going to kill their helpful spirit. Rowan tells everyone about his baby brother and how old he is and that he likes him. They both do a good job holding him, but are luckily asking for it a little less than they did at the start 

Rocky also loves: bathes, when Lyra and Rowan make faces at him, having his warm, soft head rubbed,  cuddling with grandparents, a colorful bunny rattle, fans, sucking on his hands and feet

Rocky dislikes: getting changed, getting out of the tub, riding in the car, Lyra's voice (it's sad because she is so sweet and loves being able to help him, but she is SO loud)

Rodrick Royal Birth Story

It's already been three months since our littlest boy joined the clan. He is as sweet as they come and I've never wanted a baby to stay little more than this one. I just want him to stay so snuggly and soft for as long as possible. He's absolutely perfect in every way. He eats great, sleeps great, and is a content little thing. Time is determined to race ahead of me this time. I feel so sad I was more diligent in recording more information about Rowan and Lyra from the start. I've looked back on their posts multiple times since having Rodrick to compare since it's so easy to forget so much. I have a book for both of my older two that has pictures and blog posts about each month of their first year and I already missed out on it for Rodrick.
SO I'll do a three-month post right after I finally get his birth story down.
His birth was different in a lot of ways than our other two. 

I had geared myself up for a beginning of April induction, but at my next OB appointment we found out little mister was flipping around again. He was transverse which felt way more hopeful to me, but my OB still felt like he could go back to being breech. He wanted to schedule an inversion/induction, but I was so on the fence about it. I was really feeling at peace about letting this pregnancy go until 41 weeks. We had family coming then, Sel would be off and we would know he was pretty darn cooked in there by then. I was thrown about scheduling an induction before I was even 40 weeks and didn't really know what to do. After hours of discussion, we asked my mom if she could come twice and be here right before the inversion/induction. She could! Sel could get the day of and after off. So we decided to schedule the induction for 39 weeks and 4 days. We spent so much time fasting and praying while he was breech. Though it was a smaller worry than many have, it still stressed me out. I am grateful for the sweet moments that drew my family and I nearer to God as we sought peace to know what we should do.

I was told the hospital would call me the day before to let me know what time I needed to be there. 

By 4:30pm, I was wondering if they forgot about me. Sel encouraged me to call and I'm so glad he did. My OB had not actually scheduled me for an induction that day. He had scheduled me for the following week when NO ONE would be around including Sel. It was comical when we were originally trying to sort a time where Sel could actually be there for the birth and not surprising in the least bit that our OB had gotten confused. After a bunch of calls, we finally sorted it out and luckily got a spot for the next day. With both Rowan and Lyra, I had to go in the night before to get cervical ripening started. I hated it both times, but was super confused why they weren't having me do it this time. I was just as dilated at this point as I had been with Rowan and Lyra (aka NOT dilated at all), but the OB didn't feel like it was necessary.

We woke up early and drove to the hospital. They checked us into the room and I loved my nurse right away. She's a country girl who entertained us with her stories of hunting the evil beaver that lives on her property (that means exactly what I said it does), her son that is obsessed with fire alarms, and showed us pictures of her gorgeous 5 acre property. They did an ultrasound to confirm he was breech. He flipped! I was so incredibly relieved. I had been stressing over the idea of getting an epidural before I even started labor since my OB recommended it for the inversion. I hate being chained down. Even staying at home and watching Netflix longer than 90 minutes drives me bonkers. I started cleaning in the room where we are watching TV so being strapped to a hospital bed for an indeterminate time sounded like torture to me. My nurse was adorable and squealed and jumped for joy. They started me on pitocin quickly and told me to walk the halls.
I was JAZZED. I was super confident and happy that my body was going to do what it was supposed to quickly this time. We jammed out to Imagine Dragons for an hour of walking. I started to get tired and wanted to go back to the room. There was our nurse, a nursing student and a med student studying my contraction monitor. They just stared at us for a bit and told me to keep going. I was super confused. It turns out, Women's only assigns their nurses to one patient so I was today's only entertainment. All three of them were there to study JUST me. It was overwhelming and I hated it. I do not like attention especially when I'm in pain. I had a whole entourage who had nothing to do but stare at me allll day.

They told me to keep walking and they would just hang in our room studying my monitor for me. K.
So different than my other births where they acted like I was super high-strung when I insisted I walk around instead of lay on the bed all day. We walked around for a total of three hours and the contractions were really picking up. At one point, Mike sat on this little window ledge while I did step ups on it.  I finally decided I didn't care anymore that they stared at me because I wanted to watch some Netflix and bounce darn it. They checked me around 11:00am and I was a 3!! Wahoo! It normally has taken me about 12 hours to get to a 3. We were SO hopeful and optimistic. Sel was planning dinner with my mom and the kids that night since surely the baby would be here soon. Little did we know we still had 12 more hours ahead of us. I progressed slowly the rest of the day. I can't remember much of it now which is sad. I know we talked lots to my medical fan club, I didn't get to watch any of The Office like I envisioned, and I had lots of contractions. Around 6:00pm, I asked for an epidural. My nurse had me sit on the bed to wait while they gave me the necessary bags of fluid for an epidural. I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. And waited. Annnd waited. I had to pee every 15 minutes which was cute. They all stood in a circle around me while Sel hung out in a chair (he was very supportive. I was just super irked that I didn't also get to just stare at my phone like we had both planned) and assisted me to the bathroom. Every time a contraction came I would close my eyes so I wouldn't have to look at them looking at me. They would respectfully stop the conversation and wait for it to pass. Sometimes I would leave my eyes closed longer than the contraction because I seriously did not want them to look at me or touch me anymore. I got a little snippy at one point and my nurse pointed out to the students it meant I was getting close to transition.

After 90 minutes of waiting for the anesthesiologist, she called and we realized the message to him had gotten lost in translation somehow. He had not actually been paged and so we had to watch the screen that showed how far behind in line I was at this point. It was far. I tried not to despair. I had talked quite a bit about not getting an epidural this time around, but certainly hadn't done much to prepare for it. I knew I could get through contractions on my own, but pushing terrified me. I had heard from all my un-medicated friend/family births that pushing was the worst part and as fun as it sounds...oh wait! It doesn't. The anesthesiologist finally showed up and was cranky. I didn't love him. He was older and talked a bunch about golfing and how he'd love to be out on the green right now. Me too, brah. And I don't even like golfing. He was also not super nice to my nurse who was amazing. Not cool. He kept telling the nurses my back wasn't curved enough, but kept poking the needle in anyway. Super duper painful. My other ones were not painful at all, but this was enough to make me cry. Once it hit, I was loopy. I fell asleep really fast and my three observers went off shift. My new nurse came on shift and was equally wonderful, but luckily didn't want to stare at me the whole time.

They checked me again around 9:30pm and I was maybe a 6cm. Explosion of tears. With both Lyra and Rowan, I progressed really fast after the epidural. Within maybe a half hour of getting the epidural, Lyra was out. They had me do the leg raise, side-laying stuff and I started to feel really uncomfortable. Around 10:00pm, I told my nurse I was in lots of pain. She told me I would expect to feel pressure. Nope. I know what pressure is, this was pain. I mentioned it again a few minutes later to Sel that I was really, really not feeling well. It hit FAST. All of a sudden, I was in the worst pain of my life. I can luckily not remember much of it other than I know it hurt and I was delirious with it all. I wasn't screaming like I envisioned it would have been. I was just so. so. sad. I cried a lot and felt so awful. Not shockingly, I was at a 10cm and crowning. They told me not to push a lot and there was absolutely no feeling to do so. I was neeeevvver going to push. No natural instinct to push washed over me like I've heard happens. There was no way I was subjecting myself to more pain than I was in. That baby was staying in until someone could remedy this. It's blurry, but I distinctly remember Sel holding my arm telling my nurse he should have realized earlier how serious I was about it hurting. The face of my rescuer is super sharp too. He was Asian and incredibly kind. He grabbed my face and told me everything was going to be alright. He was right. He fixed it super fast and I finally felt like I could push. My OB was there and ready. He had been out to dinner earlier and debated about drinking in honor of his father-in-laws birthday since he was certain I would have had Rodrick earlier. Nope. 11:00pm exactly was when this little guy fiiiinnnally came. I blissfully felt nothing after the bolus and got to enjoy those first moments of cuddling his tiny, screaming self. He came out SO angry. Rowan was our quiet one. Lyra and Rodrick share being equally enraged at being pulled out of their warm home. I remember being so in love immediately. He smelled incredible and his skin was perfectly smooth.
He was 7 lbs 9 oz. I could tell before they weighed him that he was tinier than my other two. I felt a moment of guilt for having induced him before he was maybe ready. Luckily, he latched quickly and slept solidly for five hours. I needed that sleep. Poor Sel had to drive the 40 minutes of home to go to sleep and had to round the next morning.

The rest of the hospital stay was really nice. I had not forgotten how uncomfortable you are after having a baby. You just feel beat up. Or at least, I do. I ache all over. I feel exhausted. The beauty this time around was how much I appreciated the stay. I felt so taken care of. It almost felt like a spa stay with all these people taking care of me and cleaning for me and cooking for me. It was pretty amazing. I'm SO grateful for my mom and Sel taking over my usual life of taking care of small people and the house. Meals started the day we got home and didn't stop for weeks. I was so filled with gratitude. Rodrick brought such a sweet, easy-going spirit with him. He looked so much like Rowan at the start, but then sort of (and still does) look like a blend of both of our older two.
He is such a blessing to us and I couldn't love him more.