My Sweet Jack,

This past Sunday your daddy gave you the sweetest blessing at church! It was a beautiful Sunday and a beautiful blessing.

He blessed you to be able to help others, to serve a mission, to follow the Spirit and a bunch of other wonderful, wonderful things. I couldn't help but tear up at the beautiful things that were said (and neither could your dad which is very rare for him).

You truly have the best daddy in the world and I am so grateful he is a worthy priesthood holder who was able to give you such a special blessing.

You are also surrounded by family- grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who love you so, so much.

You are the absolute sweetest little guy and I honestly cannot imagine my life without you! The past three(ish) months have truly been the most difficult of my life but they have also been the very best. I love watching you learn and grow. I love seeing your sweet smile when I go to get you out of your bassinet in the morning. I love how chunky your little thighs are. I love how you laugh, how you smile, and even how you cry. I love looking into the rear-view mirror in the car and seeing your sweet face. I honestly love every single thing about you.

When I hold you and look at you, I can't help but get the sense that you will do amazing things in your life. I look in your eyes and I see a crazy potential. I believe you will be able to help people all along your life. I also know for a fact that you can do and be whatever you want- literally. You can be the very, very best. In fact, I believe you already are the best. You are a son of God with an unlimited potential. I hope you go out into the world and do everything you do with excellence, confidence and humility to your Father in Heaven.

I am honestly the luckiest girl in the entire world to get to have you and your daddy forever, because as I have quickly come to realize- just this life with you isn't enough.

I will work until the day I die to teach you to choose the right, to live the principles of the gospel, and encourage you to follow your Savior because I know those are the things that will bring you true happiness and because more than ANYTHING in the world, I want our family to be together eternally. I believe that is the most important work I will do in my life.

But, no matter what you choose to do, what you choose to be or where you choose to go, I will always love you with every fiber of my being. It is truly impossible for my love for you to ever, ever change. You will always be wanted by me. You will always be needed by me. You will always be loved unconditionally by me. No strings are attached to the way I feel about you. You will always be my little boy and I will always be your mama.

I can't wait to see who you become and what you do. We love you little man!

Our little man is already a two month old! I can't believe it!

Not going to lie, I have enjoyed the second month way more than the first! I felt so out of it the first week after Jack was born (honestly don't remember it much at all) and I was dealing with post-partum anxiety (never even knew that was a thing before but let me tell you, it's the worst) and I was just totally not myself! It was so rough. This second month I have finally been able to feel normal and enjoy my baby! Kody and I both got cold sores this past month and that definitely made the anxiety come back (thanks, Dr.Google). But other than that things have been so much better. It has been so fun!

Jack is starting to show off his cute little personality and it is adorable! He smiles/laughs whenever me or Kody talks to him. He is so wiggly and is constantly kicking his legs and swinging his little arms around. We got him a little play mat and he loves to lay on it and look up at all the little hanging toys that are on it. He is super good at holding his head up and when we stand him up, he can even put weight on his legs for a while.
At his two month appointment, Jack was in the 99th percentile for weight (15.7 lbs), height and  head circumference. He is off the charts! The doctor used the word "amazing" to describe him over and over and assured us that it is totally fine that he is so big. He is healthy and that's all we care about :) He is in 3-6 month clothes and even those are starting to get a little snug! :/ I am wondering how much money we should be spending on his clothes because he grows out of them SO FAST!

He also got his two-month shots and took it like a champ! He cried REALLY hard for about 30 seconds after but then calmed right down and seemed to forget all about it!

Remember how I said that nursing was super hard? Well, it never really got easier. In fact, it got a lot harder. Jack would get super frustrated every time I tried to nurse and so would I. I was constantly SO SORE and didn't feel like my big baby was ever getting enough. I met with a lactation consultant who told me I was doing everything right and told me to keep trying for about two more weeks. I kept going but it didn't end up getting any better so we decided to start formula feeding. Jack seems so much happier now and so am I! I could probably write a whole post on the whole nursing-experience because it was HARD but basically I feel a lot better since switching to formula. Jack got a good start with breast milk and now the formula is doing a good job of feeding him, Letting go of the "mom-guilt" I've felt for stopping nursing after only about 8 weeks has been hard but it is what it is.

During this last month Jack went on two airplane rides, 2 12-hour road trips, moved to a new apartment, got shots, went on a week-long trip to a lake house and took a few boat rides and was so good the whole time! We are SO LUCKY that he has been so good and easy to take places. He only ever cries when he is hungry or tired. Other than that he is either eating, playing or sleeping contently. LOVE HIM SO MUCH :)

Being a mom has already been the biggest growing experience of my entire life. Learning how to have faith and let things go has literally been the hardest thing I have ever done. It has been so hard for me to stop staring at him constantly at night and go to sleep, to not over-analyze and over-google every single cough, sneeze, poop, rash, etc., and to not shove people away when they get too close to him. Being a first-time-mom is so hard! Everything is so new and you suddenly have to take care of a vulnerable, tiny little person 24/7. Like I said last month, I have never said more prayers in my entire life! I am still working on "choose faith over fear" and it is a constant, conscious thing that I have to choose every day. I pray that Heavenly Father will let us KNOW if something is wrong and if not, that he will help me be able to relax and enjoy my baby.

Anyways, that's the little update for now. We love our sweet little man more than words can say!

xo

I can't believe my little baby is already a month old! We love our little Jack SO stinkin' much. He is the sweetest, cutest little guy I have ever seen. I still can't believe that he is mine! Sometimes I just look at him and cry because 1) I love him so much 2) I don't feel qualified to be mom to such a perfect little baby and I don't know how I am going to do it 3) He is so cute.

He is officially 13 lbs, in the 97th percentile for weight, 99th for head circumference and 92nd for length. He is a big, healthy boy and we are so grateful that he has continued to grow :)

He still gets confused and thinks his hands are his bottle, so when we feed him we have to move his hands away from his mouth so we can give him a bottle! Haha! It is the cutest thing. He smiles more and more every day, usually when we are looking at him and talking to him in a baby voice. It is probably my favorite thing ever!! He has the biggest brown eyes and the biggest smile. We have also caught him laughing a few times in his sleep.

Right now we are trying to figure out the whole "sleep schedule" thing and it is tricky! He is only a month old, so you can't really sleep train a whole ton at this point, but we are trying to get into more of a little routine with him. He usually wakes up around 2:30AM and then again around 5:30AM which is totally fine, except he likes to stay wide awake when he wakes up at 5:30 which can be a little exhausting for us!

I had big, big plans to breastfeed when I was pregnant. When I heard people talk about how hard it was, I was like "it can't be that hard." But now I totally get it. Right when Jack was born he latched on like a champ! I was so happy! But, my milk didn't come in for about 5 days. And being the big, 10.8 lb baby he was, he was NOT getting enough from just the colostrum and we needed to supplement with formula for those days. After that I nursed him and he still didn't seem to be getting enough. There was no way to know exactly how much he was getting. So I started pumping and just feeding him the breast milk through the bottle, and supplemented about 1-2 bottles/day of formula. That seems to be working well for us now! I feel a little bit of mom-guilt but as long as he is healthy, fed and happy (and he is getting breastmilk anyways), I am happy. Maybe with our next baby I will be better at getting the hang of exclusively breastfeeding because pumping 6-10 times a day gets pretty exhausting!

---

Not going to lie, this last month has been one of the hardest of my life! It has also been the happiest. So weird how that works, haha. The first week or so after Jack was born, my hormones were all messed up and the pain killers I was on messed me up even more, so I was a huge emotional disaster! Plus I wasn't sleeping, like at all, so that didn't help. That week is kind of a blur to me right now but I just remember crying a TON. My eyes were so swollen constantly and I was just a total mess. I am so sorry if you saw me that week. I was soooo out of it. I got off the pain killers as quickly as I could (even though I was still really sore, those things were starting to freak me out) and for week 2 I was a liiiitle more put together. Although, I would have my little crying sessions every now and then. THEN came my worrying-constantly-phase (which I am still kind of in). I couldn't sleep without constantly staring at him and making sure he was still breathing. I called the pediatrician about every little thing. I spent way too much time googling possible symptoms and scaring myself to death. And spent TONS of time on the phone with my mom asking, "should I be worried? is this normal? should I take him to the doctor?" Breastfeeding, attempting to sleep-schedule, and learning to let people be around/touch him have also been extremely challenging.

Being a first-time-mom can be so hard! It is so tricky to know what is normal and what isn't. It is SO hard to know if I am doing the right things and not to second-guess every little thing. It is all so mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting.

Needless to say, I have said more prayers in the last 4 weeks than in the whole rest of the 22 years I have been alive. I NEED help from my Heavenly Father more than I ever have in my life. I know He loves little Jack and that He knows what he needs. I pray that he will help me know what to do and know how to be a good mom to Jack.

However, when it is 3AM and I am worried and I am tired, I just look at this cute little face and I know it is TOTALLY and completely worth it.


xo

Ever since I was a little girl I have dreamed of becoming a mother. Four days ago, my dream became a reality and my sweet little Jack was born!! It was the absolute craziest, best experience of my life.

I was getting majorly ANTSY to have the baby. Mostly because I knew he would be big and I was worried about complications happening if he stayed in very long past my due date. But also because I was CRAZY uncomfortable! My due date (Tuesday the 13th) came and went and still no baby. I had been in false labor for weeks. Painful, real-like contractions would come and I would get excited but then they'd just go away. I was planning on being induced on Monday, so I eventually just gave up on trying to get him to come on his own.

Eventually Friday (my 22nd birthday) rolled around. Me and Kody spent the day hanging out and swimming. After we came home from swimming I started to feel some strong contractions in my lower back. However, they weren't anything new so I didn't think too much of it! We planned on going to PF Changs that night so we got all ready. The contractions kept coming and Kody thought it would be good to go to the hospital and get them checked out just in case. The hospital wasn't too far from PF Changs and we had a good hour and a half until our reservation so we decided to stop there on the way! When the nurse checked me I was dilated to a 4.5 which was really exciting because I had been at a 3 for 3 weeks! Yay progress! A few hours or so later, the nurse told us that we weren't leaving and we were SO HAPPY! We were going to meet our little boy soon!

Our first family picture while I got stitched up! Look at us!! I love this. Can you tell I am a little loopy? :)

I have always heard bad things about c-sections but I am so, so, so grateful they exist and I am so grateful for modern medicine. 100 years ago, who knows what would have happened? All the doctors and nurses agree that there's no way I could have pushed out that big baby without it. I feel so strongly that it is what Jack and I both needed and I would do it all over again if I needed to.

Holding my new baby!! Don't really remember taking this picture but I'm so happy to have it. Jack's little face was so swollen!! He had had such a rough night in there!

1-day-old Jack and daddy :)

He makes the CUTEST little facial expressions all the time...so dang sweet!! I remember being in the hospital and not even being able to look at him without crying. It still happens. I am an emotional roller coaster these days!

I am so also so happy that my parents and mt little brother were able to come up later that night and for the next few days to hang out with us! They are seriously the greatest and I needed them! Jack is their first grand baby and they are so in love with him! I am so sad they had to go home but we will see them again soon :)

Grandpa holding Jack for the first time!!

Grandma and Jack

Anyways, I could probably go on and on about that day and every day since then but I won't. I am so grateful for my sweet baby boy and for my wonderful husband who was by my side and has been every second since I had Jack. The first week has been so unbelievably fun, happy, exhausting and hard all at the same time! I feel so, so, so overwhelmed and humbled by the fact that I am the mother to such a perfect, sweet, innocent little boy. It is honestly the most intimidating thing I have ever done but I am doing my best to be a good mom and know that with the help of my husband, family and my Heavenly Father, I can.

We are sooo excited to snuggle him and watch him grow :)

xo