Hungry?

Emerson

One would think that we must starve our children since they felt the need to resort to eating snow. I assure you that we do feed our kiddos, lol.

Hayden

My Silly Boys

I have alot of catching up to do on the old blog. It seems that since I took such a long blogging hiatus during the pregnancy that I have a bunch of photos to sort through. Here are a few that I thought were particularly cute. The photo above is of the boys wearing their Valentine's shirts (Gymboree). Aren't those shirts just the coolest? The photos below are of Clayton with each of the boys. He took the pics himself so they were a little too close to the camera for good quality. I transposed them into funky colors for a fun scrapbook layout that I have in mind. There are more pics in that series but Clayton would probably kill me if I posted them on here for the world to see. They are quite ridiculous, lol.

Moo!!

No, that bottle didn't just come from my milk man. That's all me. Just call me a walking dairy. Baby girl seems to really like my milk. She didn't do as well on formula. She had to be supplemented with formula while I built up enough milk reserves to ship a cooler-full to her in NY. I sent 360 ounces of frozen liquid gold this past Monday via FedEx overnight. I hope to send her another cooler next week. Right now I am averaging 40 ounces a day. I think that it should be a little bit higher by now but the doctor told me that the antibiotics that I took last week can hinder milk supply. I won't complain though because I am making more than enough to feed her daily. She is currently drinking 20 ounces a day. Grow baby girl, grow!

The filled cooler ready for shipping

You would think that I had a new baby at home just by looking at my countertop, huh? It's insane how many bottles and pump items I have to clean on a daily basis. It's all worth it though. ;-)

The Blizzard of 2009

I knew that they were calling for snow today but this is wayyyy worse than I expected. I hate it when it snows here because life continues on regardless of how much snow we get. Well, not today. School was actually called out for the first time since we have lived here. Yay! I have now learned that it really does take a blizzard for my boys to be kept out of school, lol. Wouldn't you know that we tied the record high of 79 degrees just this past Sunday? Sheesh...

The pics are a bit dark but I chose to leave them that way. It is really gray outside and I felt that photoshopping them to make them lighter took away from the way it really looks out there.

I want to thank everyone who has sent me well wishes over the past few weeks. It has been crazy around here. I am finally on the mend and my family is doing well also. Thanks for keeping us all in your thoughts and prayers. Speaking of which, please keep my cousin Renae's family in your prayers as they just found out that her husband lost his job. The company he worked for just up and left without any warning. I hope that Ryan can find another job soon and that everything will work out for the better.

Sorry I am so slack...I have good reason though

I have been dealing with a nasty uterine infection and the pain has been unreal. I went to the ER on Friday and that is when I was diagnosed. I woke up that morning and couldn't move. My body hurt so badly. Clayton had to give me a Percocet and then move me himself by pulling my legs over the edge of the bed. At the time, I was both engorged with milk and had to pee really badly. It was a freakin' nightmare. After the pill kicked in and I was able to stand up, we headed out the door to the ER. The doctor that I saw was great as were the nurses. He checked me and told me that I had a tear on my cervix (yowsa!). He ran lots of bloodwork and did a urine test. Everything was fine so that is when he swabbed my cervix to test for infection. Unfortunately we still don't know the definite results because it takes a few days to run those tests in the lab. I see my OB today so she will hopefully know the answer. I have been doing better but I just had a relapse about 30 min. ago. I was taking a bath and began having the severe abdominal pain again. Sigh....Please Lord, heal me. I will post an update as soon as I know anything.

On top of all this, my kiddos both have fifth's disease. Emerson threw up his cereal this morning and is running a low grade fever. Both kids have the signature rash on their faces. Egad.

Welcome to the world baby girl!!

Sorry to have disappeared but the past week or so has been pretty hectic and I haven't had much time to jump on here to update. Baby girl was giving me much grief and comfort was a hard thing to come by. Well now I know why. She was devising a plan to come into the world a little bit earlier than expected.

On Thursday night, I went to bed early and woke up around 2am with super strong contractions. After suffering for about 30 minutes I drew myself a bubble bath and tried to relax. That didn't happen. The contractions just kept on going and they got way too close together for comfort. I waited a couple of hours to see if they were going to amount to anything before I called the OB. I called in and they had me go to the hospital to get checked. By the time I got dressed and out the door the contractions seemed to fizzle. Ugh! That was frustrating. I was still having them but they had went from 2 min. apart to about 5-6 min. apart. I was afraid that I was going to get sent back home upon arrival to the ER and Clayton was a little aggravated too. When I got checked in the nurse monitored me and noticed that the contractions weren't very rhythmic any more. I was embarassed until I got checked for dialation. I was between 4-5 cm dialated and 70% effaced. That meant that I wasn't going home. Whoo hoo! All I needed was to be over 4 cm with some contractions to get admitted for labor/delivery. Once I got the definite word I called my IM to tell her the surprising news. She was a little shocked to say the least, lol. The bad thing was that she had to run out of work, grab her hubby and then jump on the earliest flight that they could get on. She also brought her Mom along. After sorting through all the chaos, the earliest flight that they could catch put them getting here in CO at 8pm.

It took 3 nurses and about an hour to get all of my bloodwork drawn and the IV in. I am bruised all over my arms at this point. Hopefully no one will think that I am a heroin addict around here, lol. After the poking/prodding, I walked and labored all morning. My water was broken after lunchtime and then I got put on Pitocin to make the contractions come at regular intervals. Everything was going well until about 3pm. I had already expressed my wishes for an epidural earlier that morning but apparently that was forgotten. As I hit transition at around 8 cm I began to ask for it. I knew that things were changing and I was ready to relax in the jacuzzi. Well, unfortunately for me that was about the time that my nurses were going to have a shift change. My current nurse told me that I would have to wait until the next nurse was in to take care of that for me. Egad. It took forever for that to happen. My pain level was super high due to an incredibly sore cervix (my OB swept my membranes rather aggressively prior to all of this). By the time my new nurse arrived to care for me I was ready to go straight for the epidural instead. I was so mad. I should have been granted my wishes wayyyy before things got out of hand. I did not plan to do this birth naturally and I never meant to be pushed that far into the labor process without pain relief. She told me that anesthesiologist would be down in a little bit to take care of me. I about came unglued. It was 20-30 min. before he finally made his appearance. By that time I was very unhappy and I could not control the pain at all. Everyone was trying to help me focus but it was down right impossible. The guy started to read some crap to me about policies and I just said, "Yea, yea, GET ON WITH IT"! He began to explain what all he was doing and I let him know rather quickly that I didn't care. I just wanted him to hurry. Too bad for me that he had to stick me multiple times to find a good location to put the dang catheter in my spine. It was nutso. All the while I was suffering contractions that were one on top of the other and my body was bent over in an uncomfortable position. When I felt a contraction he would have to stop and wait until I was over it. I will never forget how awful that was. After he got the tube in place he had me lay on my side in a horrible position and then I began to have another horrid contraction. I mentioned that I was happy for that to be the last one and that I was ready to not feel anything else after it. That's when he made the worst comment ever. He said that the meds wouldn't knock out all the pain and that it wouldn't completely numb anything. I responded with a rather rude "WHAT?!". I argued with him and said that my previous epidurals did in fact do as I said. I was ticked. If I had just went through all that spine poking for meds that wouldn't even be worth a crap, I was going to kill him.

Thankfully he was wrong because I had no pain at all after 5 min. or so. That was good and all until we found out that he had double dosed me. The way that we found that out really sucked for me, lol. I began to get dizzy and nauseous. My ears became muffled. I just knew that I was about to pass out so I called my nurse. She came running in because she knew why I was calling before I even hit the button (she was monitoring my vitals on a computer at the nurses station outside my door). My blood pressure had suddenly plummeted causing me to almost black out. She immediately put a cold and damp washcloth on my forehead. Then she put some kind of miracle drug into my IV to counteract the dropping blood pressure. It worked rather quickly, thank the Lord! After just a few moments I was feeling good and I had no more pain. That was awesome, lol. Dr. Kozak came in and checked me right after that incident and I was almost ready to push.

The OB got suited up and so did a gal that was learning from her (I agreed to let her be in there as she had never witnessed a vaginal delivery before). Let's just say that the student gal will never forget seeing this type of delivery for the first time, lol. The OB, the student, Clayton and my nurse were all standing at the base of my bed when I was instructed to push. Suddenly a fountain of liquid shot into the air and everyone got sprayed (TMI-I know, I know). I stopped pushing and we all began to chuckle. I had just peed on everyone around me, lol. My nurse had forgotten to empty my bladder for me just before the pushing phase. Since I couldn't feel the urge to pee I forgot about it too. After we quit laughing and could compose ourselves once again, the nurse did her duty and we got back to it. Baby girl was born 12 min. after the fountain incident at 5:42pm. She was super easy to deliver and I believe I have maybe 1-2 stitches (though I have no pain at all down there). It was super simple and she came out with a perfectly round head. She is a gorgeous little gal. Her weight was 7 lbs., 7 oz. I couldn't believe that. She was bigger than both of my boys and she showed up almost 3 weeks early (I was 37 weeks, 3 days preggo). If she would have waited until the due date, she could have possibly been as big as my 1st surrobaby that was just over 9 lbs. Sheesh! I am so glad that she wanted to be early.

Clayton took lots of pics of baby girl and sent some to the parents over the phone. They were still on a flight so they had no idea that she was already born. As soon as they landed they saw her for the first time as the plane pulled into the terminal. My IM called me and thanked us for that. Now they were super anxious to get to the hospital so that they could get their hands on her for the first time. We took care of baby girl and got her ready for them. Clayton especially loved handling her as she was so content to be held. We waited forever but hubby had to go home because it was getting so late. They finally arrived exhausted but excited just before midnight. I was thrilled to see them meet. What a sweet sight that was. They took the baby and got a room down the hall so that they could get settled in for the night. I can't imagine how tired they were after the long day of travelling that they had just went through.

I have got to run and go catch come shut-eye (after doing a pumping session-that baby is one hungry little girl!). I haven't been home for very long tonight so I need some sleep. I don't feel like editing this post so please excuse any typos. My eyes are just too tired to scan everything over right now. I just wanted to update everyone with the birth story while it is still fresh on my mind. Hope you all have a wonderful night and I will post more updates soon. :-)