take my new poll, I want to hear from you!

Before church a couple weeks ago (2 and a half months old)

Chillin out with his notty pooh bear (2 and a half months old)

First time in his bumbo seat (2 and a half months old)

Mason watching our favorite show 19 kids and counting, (The duggars) a couple weeks ago


Please take a moment to take my new poll that I added to my blog.The topic is one that I have been wondering about for a while. I was curious how others were handling this.While on some bloggers blogs it is quite obvious how they do things on others it isn't as obvious so here is your chance girls let's hear it.Do you keep your blog world and personal world separate and if so to what degree the poll will be open for about a week.Feel free also to leave a "comment" on how you personally handle things in this area I am genuinely interested,thanks so much hope to hear from as many of you as possible. Also I added a few pics of Mason when he was 2 and 1/2 months. I need to take his 3 month ones yet. Hope every one is doing well.

God has been good to me

Well I thought I would share some pics from my oldest sons 7th birthday yesterday on saint patricks day so here they are. We had a very nice day just with the five of us we chose to just celebrate with our immediate family for now. Gavin had a good birthday he didn't have school due to a teacher in service day so his daddy,my ex came and picked him up and took him to lunch since he didn't have school.(remember his daddy,DH and I are all very good friends no hard feelings there)They then went to the store where Gavin got a birthday present and apparently insisted that he needed to get me roses while he was there so on his birthday he came home with flowers for his mommy! What a sweet boy! My ex said he insisted on getting them for me I was so touched I guess he thought mommy could use some roses.You should have seen my little man beaming when he told DH that he bought mommy flowers he was so proud.What a wonderful little boy I have!My ex would have stayed and joined us to celebrate Gavin's birthday but he works 2nd shift and had to leave after dropping him off that is why he took him out to lunch instead.We are on a budget but I still try to make things fun for the boys so here was our day first I made Gavin's birthday cake,we had a mini photo shoot with their new "brothers" shirts, I made homemade pizza for dinner, we then set out for a budget family movie(local radio station sponsors it for a few different family friendly movies for the next couple of months) where the kids get in free and adults are only $3.50 each we saw a cartoon movie called "Planet 51" the boys (all three, yes even mason went) enjoyed it, we then came home ate cake and ice cream, he opened presents that I had bought ahead on black Friday for a great deal and that he loved!In the pictures you will notice that his cake is green that is something that I have been doing since his first birthday since he is a saint pattys day baby it has become tradition.Even though it may look a little weird to you it was a butter moist cake so it was very good! I wondered if we had done enough but got my answer this morning when I was getting ready to take him out to the bus and he said "momma, I had a good birthday yesterday" I tell you girls it melted my heart.I took a few black and whites of my little guys hands and one with his and my hand with the roses he gave me, the sentimentality inspired me.Also I can't stop thinking how good God has been to me when I see these three beautiful little boys in these pictures together they truly are precious and these big brothers are amazing with Mason just amazing!! I am so proud girls DH and I keep saying when these three grow up and the girls come around we are in trouble some day because we have some good looking boys on our hands.

Mason 2 month pics and Mederma for stretch marks

Here are the 2 month pics of Mason I have more to go through here are just a few I did not do a lengthy photo shoot like I did for his 1 month but I did get a few cute ones. Also I have decided to try the new Mederma for stretch marks cream that is out. I had a $4.00 coupon which I printed off the website for it (it also came with one in the package for my next purchase).I took before pictures of my pregnancy stretch marks(yes I did get them,but not until about the last trimester)and then I will be able to see if there was any real difference. The product says it takes 4 weeks to show noticeable difference and 12 weeks to show optimum difference.It also goes on to say that you may need more treatment depending on the individual. So we will see girls I will have to let you know.The product itself is hard to find but there are stores listed online to find it at. I got mine at wal*greens.Targ*et is listed but I was unable to find one that had it yet.Is anyone else using this product? And if so are you seeing results?

Finally happy to say I feel a lot like me and "My three sons"

Okay maybe I am bit young to remember the 1960's sitcom "My three sons" but I was old enough to grow up with it on nick at nite as a child.Moving on.... :-)

I am glad to report that the PPD has passed which I can't help but wonder if it wasn't sticking around longer before due to the breastfeeding. I have to say that since I quite breastfeeding and quite beating myself up about not breastfeeding or not making enough milk or not being happy enough or not......it goes on and on. I feel sooooooo much better it is as if two sumo wrestlers have been lifted off my shoulders. :-P I am enjoying baby boy tremendously I love his coos and smiles.I have even learned to take his colic/high needs in stride but even mothers without PPD struggle with babies with colic/high needs so I don't feel bad.I have even began to find the humor in situations like when I finally had to put him down today(which he absolutely hates)to get some housework done, I was vacuuming , he was screaming as usual and every time I would walk in front of him he would completely stop like he wasn't even crying at all I could do was chuckle.He has started finally sleeping a little longer stretches at night so that helps a bit.I have to say that I never knew that I would have to fail at something in order to feel better it seems so opposite of what you would think. But the breastfeeding just wasn't working out and I hate failing so it was killing me to fail at it. In retrospect with a much clearer head there were several things working against me: Horrible labor and birth experience, bad breastfeeding experience, extreme weight gain, migraines, lack of outside friends or family etc support, complications during pregnancy, history of IF, money struggles,sleep deprivation,complications and long healing time of tear and stitches,high needs colicky baby and unsympathetic OB. All of these things made for a very very depressed stressed tired me who could not even enjoy her new baby boy to the extent that she could have. Now I can and it is wonderful.I needed help way before it was offered to me and in the end I never took any medication for depression.(Not that I am against medication, I by all means am not at all, the timing just was not right for me since it was not offered until things were already better by 60% or more, at that point it's like what's the point? And they were continuing to get better with each passing week) My OB did not offer it until about 1 and a 1/2 weeks before I told you girls about the PPD which by then the worst was passing. I had hid the worst of it from my OB partially because she seemed unsympathetic when I told her about my bad birth experience so I closed down emotionally to her.(remember she was not there the night I gave birth)In the end giving up breast feeding and pumping,going back on my migraine preventative medicine and going for walks for exercise with my husband and the boys around our local mall is what helped me.And now my little monkey is also letting me get 4-5 hours in a row of sleep instead of getting up every 2 hours like he was that was very hard to do by myself plus get everyone else up, make sure hubby is up for temp job at 3 am, son for school and toddler and baby boy.It was maddening I am adjusting since I am able to have more sleep and am not up every 2 hours and also have more time since I am not breastfeeding and pumping.And on top of it all in the last 2 weeks without much more than watching what I eat a bit more and a few walks I have lost 8 pounds and I am hoping to lose more which will help me to continue to feel more like me. I have several more pounds to go to get to my pre pregnancy weight but I will continue to work at it.I have few more than those to get to my pre fertility med weight as those alone put 15-20 pounds on me ugh! As the weather gets better we plan to walk as a family outdoors several nights a week. My weight got out of control while I was pregnant because no one knew I had gained as much as I did because my OB's office apparently had a defective scale. I thought it was strange that I was not gaining very much I felt huge but shrugged it off since all pregnant women feel huge and was happy that my SCH had healed and that my baby was doing well. Unfortunately I thought it also meant that it was okay to give into cravings since I wasn't gaining weight. I figured if I wasn't gaining weight what was it gonna hurt? Right? Wrong!! Apparently their scale was defective and they did not know it so all of my readings were way off on the low side. Try 20+ pounds off yikes!! I didn't find this out until after I gave birth and came back in for a check up and they had a new scale they said theirs apparently had been broken for a long time (at least my entire pregnancy) and when they got their new one they saw all their patients weights jump up. Try being 2 weeks postpartum and weighing the same as you did when you were full term pregnant ,I cried when I got home,logically I knew why but it was hard to see the number be higher.Especially since I had no idea I weighed that much to begin with.So between the bed rest,no exercise allowed my entire pregnancy due to the SCH,the extra months of PIO and estrogen from before pregnancy throughout my 2nd trimester due to the SCH, and me having no clue because of a broken scale, my weight was doomed to be high and that it was.On a different note we got our taxes done not as big of a refund as it would have been if DH had worked the whole year but we are just glad that we didn't owe.I also made sure to put Mason in his tax deduction onesie just for our tax lady and I flashed her with it when she least expected it ,she laughed so hard.She has been doing my taxes for about eight years now so she is more like a friend then just my tax lady, she was sooo excited when Mason was born before the new year LOL. And before I go I thought I would share my inspiration with you all I have yet to share pics of my two older sons(Gavin 6 years soon to be 7 next week and Ayden 4 years old ) but I will today. I have been conflicted about doing this in the past but I have decided to share I may take it down later but for now I will post it. I am including one that has all three of my beautiful boys Gavin,Ayden and Mason on one of our mall outings, actually the first one as a family to go for a walk and we also let the older boys play at the play place. It was a good day and mommy found herself smiling ear to ear!I think that's it for now girls I have lots of pics to share of our day at the mall and Mason rockin his tax tee lol.I want to thank you all for your support on my last post about the postpartum depression your kind supportive words were greatly appreciated and meant a lot to me.

Breast feeding has come to an end, birth story part 3 and well just keep reading

I was planning on doing this post as the third part of my birth story until I realized that it is pretty much told. So now I will move on to why it has taken me so long to post after his birth and why it was so sporadically.First I want to share with you my experience with breast feeding which to be very honest I was not one of those "blessed" mothers who every thing went picture perfect for.It is truly and honestly one of the hardest things I have ever done.There are so many variables and things that have to be just so or happen at a certain point for it all to work out. And even then there is no guarantee that you won't hit a road block and have to start all over figuring out what went wrong.For me it started at the birth center right after he was born with them taking him away for several hours before I could even try to breastfeed him and continued with nurses that were less than helpful with getting me started. They were more threatening and uncaring than helpful. They would make statements if he was 15-60 minutes past when they thought he should eat like,(nurse vicky) "did he eat yet?" (me) "no, I have tried but he refuses to wake up." (nurse vicky)spoken sternly "well I will be back in 30 minutes, by then you should have him fed" 30 minutes later...(nurse vicky..again sternly) "did he eat yet??" (me) "no I tried 3 times he still refuses, he is just so tired from the birth early this morning" (nurse vicky) "well you have to give him a bottle then or I have to stick him to check his sugar and he will cry because it will hurt!" (me..in defeat)"I guess bring me a bottle" I gave him the bottle which he completely threw up after he ate it.These exchanges we not uncommon between me and the nurses.I was reduced to tears feeling backed in to a corner on a few different occasions I knew that to ensure proper breastfeeding I should not introduce a bottle so soon but they did not care and acted like I was starving him. For the record when he did feed it was on his own schedule not theirs and he did well.It was going well until we got home and he just quite.He had developed a bad latch which I sought help from lactation counselors to correct. Their help only frightened him causing him to go on a nursing strike. The one lady was very hands on and gagged him with my breast multiple times. We may have had a bad latch before but he least he took the breast willingly. Meanwhile the pump that I had that we saved money to get as you all know things are tight did not work for me at all. It was a double electric lan.sinoh pump.That was devastating as that meant that if he wasn't taking the breast and my pump was not a good one for me that my milk supply was going to be very reduced. And it did go down. I was put on reglan to help bring production back up and borrowed a friends medela which worked way better for me (and yes I did have a new tubing, horn kit etc for it)My milk did come up as long as I was using that pump and on the reglan but the medication is not a long term drug it is only meant to get things going.So I am off it now and for weeks he has been getting mostly formula. He did nurse really good while he had RSV but as soon as he got well he quite.On top of all the issues my migraines have returned, I had them before pregnancy but was on a preventative medication that I had to stop before our transfer. They got way worse during my first and second trimesters and were gone my last trimester. About 2 weeks after I had him they returned and are continuing to get worse.I was going to just tolerate them but since my breastfeeding experience is coming to an end I have decided to go back on my medication.I saw my family doctor today and I may decide to start it as early as tomorrow. So there you have it girls there are several struggles and tears I left out but you get the gist of it. I felt like a failure for weeks and now I am numb.But I think in the end this is the right choice.

Now for the hard news I have been diagnosed with PPD.I have been hiding this from all of you and I am sorry.Recently a fellow blogger of mine that gave birth 5 weeks after me announced she had it. She is the reason why I have decided to share this with all of you, by reading her post I realized I was not alone and that it can happen to me EVEN if I have struggled with IF actually from what I have researched especially if I did. It seems that IF'ers have a higher incidence of PPD as well as women who have a bad birth experience and any other stressors like financial struggles "ding ding ding" that's all me too.My bad breast feeding experience has only compounded things.Lets not forget sleep deprivation,extreme weight gain and lack of family support.DH and I only have each other and he has recently (2 weeks ago)taken a temp job, due to his layoff, that they have him working 60 hours a week at. He has to get up at 3AM which means I am the only one taking care of the baby at night to mention getting my oldest up for school and my 4 year old too.Plus the other chores,meals,milk pumping,bathing, bills, cleaning, pets you name it goes on. Dh is literally exhausted from the hours he works and so am I. The PPD weighs on me like a ton of bricks some days. Don't get me wrong I love all of my children and I am very happy to have my little mason.They all can make me smile on days I thought I wouldn't. I have tried to hide the tears from the children and for the most part I have.I am not on medication for the PPD as it can not be used with reglan and I have been hoping it would pass.And it is slowly starting to. I am convinced that if I could just get sleep at night that I would feel even better.The PPD was at the worst 1 week through 6 weeks after his birth. I have noticed that with each passing week or so things seem to be fading. But there are still bad days complete with tears,impatience and frustration but they are not as plentiful. I have to say the one of the worst parts of it was that I would feel sad or guilty about feeling sad or guilty so it fed into itself. I was scared how it would be received by the blog community of fellow IF'ers but I know that all of you will achieve your dreams of a baby someday and I thought that if by sharing my story that even one of you is helped then it is worth it. Because the feeling alone and hiding it from all of you only magnified it for me.I will end this post by saying that if you have nothing nice to say then please have respect and keep it to yourself.There is no way a informed,intelligent,caring human being would attack a fellow human being while they are down and if what you want to do is hurt me then follow someone else's blog your are not welcome here.That said I know that my girls on here are all caring,intelligent,informed and loving so I have no worries about all of you.Just for a heads up I may be turning on comment moderation because I will not allow mean people to get up on their soapbox and hurt me I have been through enough.So now you all know my secret and why I was missing a bit more those earlier weeks.I hope you still will continue to follow and be my blogger girls. Hugs to you all...And God Bless!!

Mason is home

Some pictures of our little miracle while he was in the hospital :-(






Mason's crib while in the hospital, DH and I felt it looked more like a cage "cringe"





Mommy feeling happy because her baby has no cords or tubing connected to him and it was time to get ready to go home after one last feeding!



Mason resting comfortably tonight on valentines day


We were released from the hospital about a week ago.Mason is getting better with each passing day.He was released a bit earlier than some who have RSV due to the fact that his pediatrician prescribed him a nebulizer for home so we could do his breathing treatments ourselves and he could continue to heal at home instead of in the hospital.Sorry that it has taken so long to update but his treatments are every 4 hours and he eats every 2-4 hours (sometimes 6 hours) and his breathing treatment schedule has not been lining up with eating. Needless to say between those two things,my other 2 boys and them getting sick with the crude mason has, the housework, major lack of sleep,me getting sick too, getting my oldest up in the morning and off to school, 2 dogs and some how finding time to get my self dressed and fed along with everyone else it has been tough finding time to update until now. Thank you all so much for your kind words and prayers.All of your comments always mean so much to me.I will be adding the 3rd and final part in my birth story very soon.

Mason hospitalization update

Well the test came back positive for RSV.The doctor said he will not be going home today, probably not tomorrow and honestly he does not know when. I hate having to split our family up like this. DH and I stayed up there last night and we are going to tonight but after that I have no one to watch my other boys. It is so hard to see him struggling to breath and in pain. He had a temp over 101 degrees last night.He is on breathing treatments every four hours.And on oxygen and a pulse oxygen meter 24 hours a day.Hard to believe all of this started out looking like the sniffles, even the doctor thought that it was a simple cold but also said to watch for it to get worse as RSV was going around.It started with a couple of coughs on Monday, we saw the doctor on Tuesday as we already had a well check that day. It got worse with stuffy, runny nose on Wednesday and and larger cough and small temp.By Thursday morning I was calling the doctor, got a sick appointment scheduled for that day and then at the appointment the doctor said he wanted him admitted.So here we are. Here are a few pics and pardon me and my just woke up after only 2 hours sleep look. I still have part of my baby weight that I would love to lose but it is slowly coming off. Everyone says be patient it will happen so I am trying. Thank you everyone for your kind words and prayers.God bless you all!