Ever since his 2nd Birthday, Nico’s been sleeping in his big boy room, on a twin size mattress we’ve placed on the ground until we get proper rails for the full size bed in his room and he’s a bit bigger.  Coincidently his Tata (my Mom) came to visit us for a couple mths at the same time, and since then Nico’s sleeping schedule has been completely wacked up.

Ever since he was 2 wks old Nico’s slept through the entire night, and right up to his 2nd birthday he was going to sleep btwn 9 – 10 pm and waking up btwn 8 – 9 am, without any night disruptions. You could say we were blessed and lucky. Then came birthday #2. Since then, he’s been waking up at 6 am crying, and we manage to get him to fall back asleep most night at least for another hour, but not without laying in bed with him and quietly slipping out once he’s finally crashed again. Of course it always comes at the exact time when I’m breastfeeding Victoria, and though he cries out for Mommy, 98% of the time it’s Daddy or Tata who run to the rescue. Then once he gets up after 7 am, it’s the same drill, and most times Mommy is still not available. I’ve been getting little sleep at night since Victoria’s been  colicky, and I’ve been lucky and blessed Mom and Julio have been holding up the fort and letting me catch an hour or two of sleep in the morning.

The situation’s gotten worst in recent days. In addition to what has already been going on, he’s now been getting up crying (like he’s freaked out) btwn 4 – 5 am. Lucky us, huh. It’s been crazy. But then came last night… woke up crying for Mommy at 5:30 am, I ran to his room and it was pitch black and I found him only by follwing his cry UNDER the full size bed. How did he get down there, beats me. I had to pull him out and he would not let go of me, clearly he was freaked out. Tucked him back into bed but he wouldn’t go back to sleep or let me leave without me cuddling with him. I slipped out when he fell back asleep, and he didn’t wake up again until 7 am. At that time, he called for me again and I went and told him it was too early, everyone was sleeping and Mommy needed to sleep more, told him to go back to bed and stay quiet. I didn’t think it would last more than 5 min, but I went back to bed nevertheless waiting for him to call for me again. To our surprise he didn’t make any noise or call for me again until 8:50 am. Halleluya! Hope is the last thing one loses… let’s hope his sleeping habits resume to being more normal and less erratic. For the sake of all of us. Especially mine. 

We welcomed our daughter Victoria Sofia on April 26th, 2010. She was born at 3:39 am, after only one push (and not even a very hard one).

I started real labor contractions around 9 pm Sunday April 25, progressed to back to back contractions 4-5 min apart in less than an hour, and we were at St. Elizabeth’s East hospital sometime between 11:20 pm and midnight. By the time I was admitted and taken to my private bedroom my contractions felt horrendous, so painful I cried through several of them. It was nothing like with my first, I can’t begin to describe the pain. Where the heck was that epidural?? It couldn’t come fast enough!

So there I was, 4 cm dilated, 75 % effaced, in real LABOR… pain pain pain! Talk about bad timing when they asked me, yeah the woman in labor and in tons of pain, to fill out stupid health forms about my medical history etc. WTF?!! Are you kidding me!?? I pretty bluntly told the nurses that was so stupid to be asking that kind of info at that particular time. I had to fill the damn things out between contractions, umm, giving me about 1 min between each. How come they didn’t send a pkg of forms to me weeks ago when I was happily pregnant and in no pain. Psstt! I swear I could have killed someone at that time.

Anyway, I progressed so quickly they had to bump me up from 5th in line to 1st for the epidural. Thank God they did, otherwise I would not have been able to have an epidural at all or one with absolutely no time to take effect. Unfortunately, even that didn’t prove to be fast enough because I got the epidural, felt some relief but progressed SO quickly that it couldn’t keep up with my labor. I felt PAIN all the way until the end! It was horrible, but I kept telling myself it could be a lot worst if I had no epidural at all. I went from 4 cm at midnight to a full 10 cm by around 3:20 am. I pushed a bit to test my ‘pushing skills’, and the nurse had to stop me before the baby came out. lol The Dr. was called in immediately. After a couple mins of prepping, and 2 extra doses of epidural meds I finally felt some numbing relief. After one single push, Victoria Sofia was born at 3:39 am. My first impression was “she’s tiny!…OMG look at that full head of dark hair!”  She weighed 6 lbs 7 oz and was 19.25” long. Nico was 7 lbs 5 oz at birth. She cried and cried, amazing such a little thing could have such strong lungs and vocal cords, haha. She had 10 fingers and 10 toes. Yes, I counted them. She was beautiful and perfect! :) It was an almost surreal moment. I have a daughter. I have 2 beautiful & healthy kids, a beautiful family. How blessed we are! God is great!

Here’s a few pics of our new princess (while still at the hospital):