Love is...

Holding baby so mom can nap

Falling in love with baby sister

Reminding me daily of how blessed I am.

Isabella is everything I could ever hope for in an eldest child. She is funny, wise, spunky, bossy, opinionated, loving, happy, caring, smart, sassy, and kind.

She loves her sisters and her family. We are so blessed to have her in our family. I love her so much. She can say the funniest things.

-"Mommy, I like Tinkerbell and all but she is not modest is hottest so I don't think I want to be a fairy when I grow up"

-"Iyla!! you can have some of my candy if you give it to me!"

-"Mommy, if you eat the breakfast I made you baby Imagin will think your breast milk is yummy!"

-"Daddy, where does poop come from exactly??"

- to the pharmacist when looking at a display of reading glasses " I need glasses! My mommy told me I am blind so I need glasses." The pharmacist asked "why did your mom tell you you are blind?" "Because whenever she tells me to get something and I can't find it and she does she says I am blind... Mommy said daddy is blind too but he already has glasses!"

Bella is one amazing kid! I am so glad she is mine!!

Baby Photo Shoot

I wasn't feeling up to much and we didn't have a ton of money to get fancy pictures taken of the baby so we decided to do it ourselves. Jacob and I rummaged around the house for some props, fixed up a little studio on the dining room table and had some fun. I think they turned out amazingly wonderful. Imagin is all of 4 days old in these pictures.

I love the idea of babies in baskets. This was the smallest basket we had. All of the others looked funny with a baby.

The next two pictures feature hats made by my dear friend Stephanie. She is extremely talented and all of her hats are super cute. You can find out about her hats here.

 Babies with huge flowers in their hair are too precious! I lovethis picture because we actually gother eyes open. For a 4 day old baby that is quite the feat!

"Imagin had a little lamb"

This one I am going to get blown up to 11" by 13" in black and white for our bedroom. It is amazing. Jacob's hands look so big! His finger is the same length as her entire upper arm!

 We do cloth diapers with our kids and this picture was inspired by the ubber cute diaper cover a friend gave us.


                                                      "Jungle baby"

                                           "A Daughter is for Loving"

we have this pillow hung up in the big girls room. we bought it for Bella when she was a baby and I just love it. I thought it went great with the colors in the flowers.

I just love our newest  little bundle of joy. She is an amazing baby. What a blessing she is in our family.

Coming Home...

To understand the total excitement of this post I have to first tell you a little bit about the circumstances surrounding going home with my first two children. With Isabella I was released from the hospital 3 days before Isabella was. So I went from my room to the Special Care Nursery to be with her. We stayed in a room there for 3 days until we were finally able to take her home. I walked, slowly, to the car and home we went. It was really hard for me to see the mom's with there babies being wheeled out to there cars holing there new babies and I didn't get to do that.

When we had Iyla, again we had to go to the special care nursery. On our way there I was a little tired and really sore and a nurse asked me if I wanted a wheel chair. At that moment the lady in the room next to us was leaving with her baby in a wheel chair. I broke down in tears and said "I don't get a wheel chair" I was devastated that once again I was not getting to go home as scheduled and I had to do the walk of shame to the nursery. Luckily, It was only overnight. Jacob knew I really wanted my wheel chair ride so he talked with the hospital staff and arranged a wheel chair ride for me. It was so thoughtful for him to have done that for me but deep down I really wanted to go home with my baby on the same day I am discharged. I know it's not the biggest deal in the world but I was sure it would never happen for me.

Now fast forward to this time around. Imagin is one healthy girl! She never once had to leave my side to go anywhere. She does have a bit of jaundice but not enough to have to go under the lights like Iyla did. On the day I was scheduled to leave Imagin was cleared to go home too! I was thrilled, shocked and very excited!!

Here is a picture of Imagin getting her hearing tested. She passes with flying colors by the way!

This is a first for us, we have never gotten a baby ready to go home in our room. They didn't even do the car seat stress test cause we were not leaving from the Special care Nursery.

 She is so cute with that cupcake hat. My dear friend Stephanie gave us the hat she made herself.

We cut off the bracelets and were free to go home. And guess what... I got my wheelchair ride.

Meeting the New Baby

The morning after we had the baby Kelly brought the girls to meet baby Imagin. They both love there baby sister very much.

It took Iyla a while to warm up to the baby but after about 5 minutes she came over and wanted to hold the baby.

 Isabella has been looking forward to the baby coming for such a long time and she loves to hold the baby. She is such a proud big sister!

It's Time... Whether your Ready Or Not!

Right before I was to go into the O. R. for the C-section I really had to pee. So they handed Jacob the IV bag and off we went to the bathroom. After I was done "taking care of buisness" I remembered that I hadn't gotten a blessing and I really felt like I needed one. I asked Jacob and right there in the bathroom of the Hospital Jacob gave me a blessing. I felt so much more at peace and I knew in my heart everything was going to be fine.

 Jacob getting ready for the C-Section. He is so cute in hospital garb!

The one and ONLY picture I am going to put online of my pregnant tummy!

Hand in hand Jacob and I walked to the O.R. I was lead into the room and they started getting everything ready. I had forgotten just how cold O.R.'s are. The nurses were so kind and gentle. The aneseteiologist was very persice and after he got the spinal block in he tilted the table so I was leaning a bit head down to get the meds flowing. When he did that the baby turned transverse! (That means laying sideways, not head down) Of course we didn't know that at the time. Jacob was brought in and they started the c-section. The Dr had a hard time getting the baby out. because the baby was transverse the Dr had to go fishing so to speak to try and get the baby out. The baby in turn twisted and the Dr. ended up having to take the baby out feet first!! "IT'S A GIRL" they said! She cried right away and did just fine from the start. They even let Jacob hold her the whole time they were sewing me up. She is the most beautiful baby. Her apgars were 8 and 9 which is very good. They were a little concerned about her lungs being matured seeing as how she was 13 days early, but they are just fine. They finished up and the Dr. came over to talk with me about the condition of my uterus. in another blogpost I talked about the desision we were going to face during this section in regards to if we are going to be able to have anymore kids. The Dr. told me that everything looked great and we are more then ok to have another baby in a few years is we would like to; that there is no medical reasons to no have any more children. We were very happy.

 Here she is right after she was born. Pink and screaming!

 She weighed in at a record breaking 6 pounds 12 oz. She is the smallest baby we have ever had!!

This is the first time I was able to hold her. She is so little! I love it!!

They wheeled me into recovery and it was not long until I was able to nurse her for the first time.

 

 

 

What a blessing she is!

What... I'm in Labor???

Tuesday, February 1st started out as most days around here. We got up, made breakfast ands got dressed. I was not feeling too well that day. Nothing sounded good to eat. I was kind of sick to my tummy. I managed to get down a half a bowl of oatmeal. most of the morning the girls sat on the couch watching movies. I had no energy! I put the girls down for there nap around 1 or so and got on Facebook to chat with one of my friends. Around 2:30 I started to have contractions. I thought it was just because I was sitting up on the couch. I adjusted a bit but they didn't stop I started to notice the contractions were pretty regular so I started to time them.  They were coming every 4 to 8 mins and were about a minute long. by 4:00 I was started to get a bit worried. I called Jacob. He was helping my mom with some stuff. I told him about the contractions and he and my mom rushed home. At Jacob's pushing I called my Dr. office. the Nurse told me to drink two big glasses of water and lay down on my left side to see if I could get them to stop. If they didn't stop I would have to go into the hospital. Well, I did as I was told and laid down after I drank the water. I had 6 more contractions at 4 mins apart being a minute or more long. So we called the Hospital and they told me to come in right away.

Now as you might have read from the last post this was not on our plan. This is Feb. 1st NOT Feb. 8th!!! I had already arranged for Kelly to take the girls for the time we were going to be in the hospital. I called her up and told her what was going on and she was awesome and said to just bring them over and we would work everything out later. I didn't know if the hospital was going to just give me a shot to make the contractions stop or if they would go ahead and deliver the baby early.

Jacob was running around the house packing up the girls and then I remembered I didn't pack for the hospital yet since I thought I had an entire week left before the baby was going to come. So Jacob stepped it up and got everything for me and the baby for the hospital. I didn't know what was going to happen but I had a feeling that I should just get packed. So I was on the bed contracting and Jacob is flying through the house packing frantically and the girls are freaking out cause the baby is coming! My mom was a saint and took the girls into the living room to play so they would be distracted.

We loaded everyone up in the car and off we went to drop the girls off at Kelly's house. We live in Bucoda and Kelly lives in Yelm so it was a 20 min drive to her house. Then on to the hospital in Olympia, another 20 mins. We finally go to the hospital at around 7:45ish. They hooked me up to the monitors and since I was in the car I didn't keep track of the contractions. They were 45 seconds apart and lasting about 1 1/2 mins long. They checked me again and I was still dialated to a 1. The nurses monitored me for a little while and they told me a Dr. from my Dr's practice was there and would come and see me. I was a little nervous about making the decision to have the baby or not without my normal Dr. I like all of the Dr.'s in the office but I REALLY like my Dr. To my relief and just by happy accident My Dr. walked in the room. It just happened to be her night on call!! I was so glad she was there. She checked me again and I had dialited to a 2 1/2 or so. We decided to have the baby that night.

After the call was made thing got moving very fast! I was so excited that our baby was really coming! And a full week earlier then planned.

My Last Dr. Appointment

Last Monday the 31st of January was my last Dr appointment before my scheduled c section on the 8th of February. For some reason the scheduling worked out that this appointment was only 5 days after my previous one. In that time I lost a pound and a half and dilated to a 1! I was stunned! Last week the Dr told me there was no way this baby was going to come early let alone anytime before my scheduled c section! I know being dilated to a one is not a huge deal. woman walk around dilated to a 1 up to a 3 for weeks before they have there baby. But I was still kind of excited. And a little nervous, this being my 3rd c section they did not want me to go into labor for fear the stress might rupture my uterus.  The Dr. was confident that the baby still had a while before she would want to come. I was 38 weeks and 2 days at the appointment. It was fun, We got to hear to baby's heartbeat one more time and talked about how we wanted to section to go. It was a very productive appointment and I left feeling very reassured that things were going well and I was looking forward to this last week to get things ready for baby. Little did I know what was to come next!!!