Life With Hannah

In case you were hiding under a rock this past month...
Hannah Josephine Chiodo was born on March 4th at 9:24 a.m. She was 5 lb. 14 oz. and was 19 inches long. And she has red hair to boot. Three redheads...that is one strong recessive gene we each have. She was tiny compared to the other two...I questioned the nurses and doctors a lot about it. They just said, "She's full term and 100% healthy. She's just tiny." She is eating like a champ though, and I'm guessing she's well over 8 lbs. by now.


Here she is!

Bonding with Mom...

Going home (Abby's favorite picture of her)

We've had several questions about her middle name so here's the scoop on it...We just like the name! I have loved the name Joseph for a long time. If she was a boy, his name would have been Joseph. And Jason and I both put a lot of stock into the meanings of our children's names as well. Abigail means "a father's joy"; Benjamin means "my son"; and Hannah means "grace of God." Just for the record, picking a name for your third kid is hard. At least it was for us. For awhile, she was going to be Emma Claire. But I (the non-dreamer) woke up in the middle of the night when I was about 8 months pregnant and had this deep, all-knowing dream/feeling that we needed to give her a Biblical name. And after all of my hours spent on talking, debating, wondering, and googling of names...just like that-I got up that morning and said, "We should name her Hannah." And it was a done deal. Abigail and Benjamin are Biblical names but we didn't really start off with going the Biblical name route. It just kinda happened. Somehow we like to combine classic and Biblical together to get our name choices. For a middle name, we had talked about Joseph early on for a boy's name. It means "Jehovah increases" which I think is very meaningful for a third child especially. One thing led to the next and Josephine (same meaning) was our favorite pairing with Hannah. So there you have it.
Our sweet Hannah is four weeks old today. And it's April 1st, which means March was a big ol' blur to me. I am determined that this child will have pictures and a scrapbook and all that fun documentation that somehow starts off strong with the first child and completely disappears by the third child. So here's some blurry details about life with our new addition...
1. My c-section recovery with this kiddo has been way easier than my recovery from Ben's birth. Granted, he was almost a 9 lb. child and she was almost 6....I'm thinking that made a difference on my body. I thankfully didn't have one ounce of the joint pain I had after Ben. My incision has healed great, and my energy is back to full force.
2. I think the BIGGEST difference for me was having lots of help afterwards. My mom and stepdad were here for 10 days so when I came home from the hospital, I had extra hands to do the laundry, cooking, cleaning, chasing after Ben, and playing with Abby. Plus when those good ol' pregnancy hormones went crazy on me a few days later, I had my mom here to listen to me blubber and cry for no apparent reason. You know you are loved when you are a complete mess...you cry and you have no idea why and then you apologize for crying and then you cry for knowing you look like a complete mess for apologizing for crying because you have no idea why you are crying. Right?!? Gotta love those hormones. Thanks mom for being there for me! Jason is thanking you too. :)
After they left, Jason took the next week off. Having him to get Abby to school, take Ben out in the morning, help around the house...it was like the cherry on top of it all. I was a little nervous about him being off and home a lot...let's just say my hubby likes to be on the move. But it was great, and at the end of the week, he sat down and said, "I have no idea how you do this all the time! I gotta go back to work to get a break!" :)
My third blessing is that our wonderful friends have been bringing us meals a few times a week. That is such a huge help, and we feel so blessed by all the yummy food coming our way. I'm in complete denial that it will stop at some point. :) After it does, my crockpot won't know what hit her. Strange, my crockpot is a girl in my mind.
3. I almost don't want to say it out loud, but Hannah is a really good baby. Shh...don't tell her I said that. Don't get me wrong..Abby and Ben were good babies, but they also did their fair share of crying and fussing. This girl is one content kid. She sleeps, she eats, she poops, and she cuddles. Not a lot of crying. Not a lot of fussing. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop but so far, so good. Is this what a laid-back personality is like? See, I don't really know what that looks like so I'm not quite sure what this is?!?
4. Abby and Ben have been awesome with Hannah. I was a litle nervous that Abby would be trying to pick her up and put her in places like her doll bed. And I was very nervous Ben would be jealous or rough with her. Abby has been wonderful. Having a 5 year old daughter with a newborn is a mother's treat. She is a big helper and bosses everyone to wash their hands before touching her. She gives her lot of head kisses and says, "I just love her, Mom. I just really, really love her." So far, there's been no picking Hannah up or putting her in a doll bed. :) Ben really doesn't pay much attention to her at all. He's like, "Yeah, that's nice. I'm gonna go play with my trucks now." He is all into copying Abby these days so he will give Hannah kisses on her head like Abby. Other than that, he's just mildly curious is this new lifeform.
5. Now for the crazy part of life...when the clock hits 5:30 p.m., I feel like life turns into a disaster in our home. The kids are either running around after each other laughing like hyenas or fighting over something silly. Hannah is wanting to eat and/or be held. If dinner is not brought to us from a dear soul, then I'm trying to finish putting something together one-handed while hollering at the two older kids to "slow down!" "be nice!" "watch out!". Having dinner as a family is important to us, but if Jason is running late, those 20 extra minutes feel like 20 hours. By the time we sit down, and I hear Abby say, "Eww, this is disgusting. I'm not hungry," I basically want to go lock myself in the bathroom and go visit Calgon. Amazing how a good day can instantly go bad in a matter of minutes with Mom losing her cool. So....definitely haven't figured it all out yet. Still working on it. A lot.
But for the record, I will say that going from 2 to 3 kids has been much easier than going from one to two. (Going from 1 to 2 kicked my butt). You just do everything faster. Everything. You even pee faster. You are used to the lack of privacy. You are used to multi-tasking. You are even used to eating while standing up. Now, you just crank it up a notch and away you go. And now I'm off to change my shirt that just got baby spit-up all over it, roll the toilet paper back on the roll, and pick up my kindergartener at the bus stop. It's a little crazy, but I love it. And I wouldn't have it any other way.