Wagon Fun

You can see me in her eyes
I thought that was kinda cool

CHEESE!

Jacob + H2O = FUN!

Since summer has begun, I have discovered how much 

I LOVE capturing water in motion

Since Jacob loves to play with water so much

I have gotten tons of practice hee hee =)

My Labor Story, The Sequel

I think it's about time that I write my labor story before I forget anymore of the details. 

It's not nearly as exciting as Jacob's. Truth be told it's rather boring, but I need to get it all out anyway.

Let me start by saying that my due date was April 6th. My birthday is the 7th, so I thought it would be cool to share a birthday with my little girl. April 6th came and went with out any signs of labor. . And April 7th too. Even the braxton hicks contractions had stopped. I was feeling really bummed about this because I wanted to try a VBAC (vaginal birth after c-section). I knew that the longer it took for my body to go into labor, the heavier my baby would be, the least likely the doctor would let me try to have the baby vaginally. It wasn't until April 13th when my body went into labor on it's own. I was SO excited because with Jacob my water broke so I didn't know what it was like to go into labor through timing contractions and that kind of stuff. So I started having small, far apart contractions in the morning. When I put Jacob down for his nap at 1 o'clock, they were starting to get noticeable I knew that this might be it. But I still didn't have my hospital bag packed because I didn't want to get my hopes up. I know that's silly, but I had had braxton hicks contractions for months that I was still a little worried that it might not by real labor. My intention was to walk around the house, but I took a nap instead. It was more of a relaxing rest in bed because I was so excited about the contractions. They were still only a few in an hour and didn't really hurt. So I went about the rest of the day taking care of Jacob. 

I didn't alert Josh at work because, again, I didn't want to get my hopes up. About 2 weeks before this I thought I was going into labor and I called Josh at work and told him not do worry, but just get everything wrapped up for a week or two off. And what does he do? He totally over reacts, called his whole family and told them I was in labor and ran home from work. I was totally annoyed and amused at his panic. When he got home and found me not getting my bags packed, he started packing for me and walking around the house cleaning like crazy! I didn't know that men "nested" but apparently they do! =)

I can't remember specifics from that evening, but I know I walked around a lot and my contractions kept getting stronger, longer and closer together and I finally packed my hospital bag. It wasn't until after Jacob went to bed when the contractions were starting to get painful and I practiced breathing through them. At about 10 I decide to take a shower to try to relax. That was great, but wasn't enough, so I take a long bath. I got out close to midnight cause I was one huge prune and I thought I might not make it to thru morning and I would need to call someone to be on stand by to come right over to watch Jacob just incase we went to the hospital in the middle of the night. We called Shelley, Josh's mom and she decided that she would just come over now and spend the night. She came over about 1 and things were going a lot faster then I thought they would. I was to the point were I needed to stop talking and breath through the contractions and they were about 5 minutes apart. I still didn't want to go the hospital yet because I wanted to labor as much as possible at home. There was no way I could sleep through these so the three of us relaxed on the couch watching a movie while we just waited till we felt it was time to go. Which didn't take long. By 3 my contractions were 3 minutes apart. Having never gone into labor this way, I thought that 3 minutes apart was really close and we needed to hurry.

We got to Valley at 3:30 in the morning, which means we had to walk through the ER. My contractions were so intense I couldn't walk through them and they were still 3 minutes apart. We went to the triage where we were stuck for the next 2 hours in a teeny tiny room waiting for the doctor to come in and tell me "yes you are in labor," which I already knew. My contractions were getting to be very painful where I needed to breath and really focus other wise I was a squirmy moaning mess. The Dr comes in to delivery very annoying news, I was only dilated to a two (UGH!) and she wasn't going to let me walk, use the tub or basically get out of bed!!! Because I was going for a VBAC I needed to stay in bed and be monitored at all times. Not the best way to labor and not what I was hoping for.

It was nearly 6 AM before I finally got to my room. The contractions were still 3 minutes apart and pretty intense. I really don't deal well with that amount of pain. It was really really hard for me. I can't help but wiggle around, breath super heavy and moan. It was so hard to focus. When I could focus only on breathing in and out in and out, it wasn't too bad but if I lost focus for even a split second and thought about how much it hurt, I would moan out the rest of that contraction. I tried to put off the epidural as long as possible because it really slowed my labor with Jacob. But it was all i could do to get to 4 cm dilated. I couldn't do it anymore, I was at my level 10 on the pain scale. Way more  pain then I experienced with my first labor. So at I think around 8:30 the Dr came in to give me my epidural. When I got the epidural with Jacob, it wasn't that bad. I was sitting up, bent over and honestly it didn't hurt very much. This time OH MY GOSH!!! I was laying on my side instead of sitting slumped over. My contractions were one right after the other. And the nurse was desperately trying to keep the monitor on the baby's heartbeat, which hurts like CRAZY to have someone touching your belly when your contracting! It's hard to describe this amount of pain, but the epidural felt like someone just hit every piece of my spine with a baseball bat! It was almost impossible to hold still. That on top of a huge contraction just started and the nurse is pressing the monitor into my belly, I'm embarrassed to say that I screamed "I can't handle this much pain!" My eyes were clamped shut and that's when I felt the nurse stroking my hand and it made me feel a little better. But when I opened my eyes, I saw it wasn't the nurse, it was Josh and I was so comforted. That might sound weird to some, but I had told him before I was in labor that I didn't want him to touch me at all and in fact if he didn't want to be there that was fine with me, I almost preferred to be in that much pain alone. Or so I thought. You never know how or what will comfort you went you are not in the situation. I thought I would be annoyed if he were in my face telling me to breath, but it was the exact opposite. 

Now things get really BORING!!! I wasn't in pain anymore, one leg was completely numb and dead to the world and I was dilating extremely slow. By the late afternoon I was dilated to 8 cm and there I stayed for the next 3 hours. So.... the Dr told me we had better be safe and do a c-section. I do slightly regret not speaking up and asking to try and wait another hour. She is a great Dr and I respect and trust her, so I didn't say anything.

If you read or know my labor story with Jacob, you know that my c-section with him was an emergency and I wasn't numb enough when they started and I felt them cut me open so they knocked me out instead of waiting for me to be numb, resulting in me missing the first 2 hours of Jacob's life. The first cry, all the goo of a brand new baby, the first bath and so much more. Needless to say, that was my fear going into the operating room. Thankfully that didn't happen this time. But it is incredibly unnerving being awake while your being operated on. I could still feel all the pressure. I was trying so hard not to visualize what was going on, which wasn't helped when the dr would call out for the scalpel and other various instruments, smell your flesh burning and hear the staples clamping you together. Yuck! But every bit of it is all worth it when you hear that beautiful cry of your little baby that has been wiggling inside of you for the past few months. I didn't get to see her all gooed up either. In fact I didn't get to see her for 20 minutes at least while they cleaned her up and gave her to Josh who held her somewhere in the room, I couldn't see. Then Josh sat back down beside me and put her cheek against my face. She was so warm and soft and beautiful. I was so shocked by her full head of black hair! Who knew Josh and I would have a carrot top and snow white who both had full heads of hair when they were born when we were completely bald till we were 1 and when our hair did come in, it was blonde. But we are so amazingly blessed to have to beautiful healthy children! We both never knew how much you could really love something. When Jacob was born we thought, "this was it, you can't possible feel anymore love with out exploding," but we were wrong, you heart grows bigger with every child =)

Thank you for reading

Thank you for all your support

And Thank you for all your love

We are blessed beyond measure

She sure has chunked up since she was a new born =) hee hee

Daisy

3 Months already

We are just LOVE getting to know this sweet little girl!

She is very social, loves to talk to you and smile at you

She just started giggling, which is the most amazing sound to a parent =)

She LOVES her brother!!! And I'm not just saying that to sound cute,

she watches him all day long and just smiles at him.

When we are at church or somewhere we have to sit for a while

I will hold her pointing at Jacob and that will entertain her

for a long time. It's great! hee hee

She has this ear piercing, high pitch squeal when she's up set and impatient.

She doesn't make that sound all the time, she usually reserves it for 

when I'm trying to nurse her with out exposing my self in 

the mother's room at church. Other mothers seriously hold their hands over

their babies ears!

Apparently, as you can see, I just don't make little babies cause she is a CHUNK!

And so was Jacob

She is in size 3 diapers and 6 month clothes, crazy

She already does not like to be cradled like a baby anymore,

she wants to be held upright so she can see what's going on

She does not like pacifiers, you can see if on her face when

you try to give it to her, she's thinking "what the heck is this?"

She lost most of her newborn hair and now it doesn't look so black as

when she was born.

She's starting to grab things and bring them to her mouth to suck on

She still gets up twice a night, sometimes more an a bad night

I don't know who loves her bumbo more, Jacob or Peyton! LOL

Peyton loves that she can sit up like a big girl and see what's going on

and Jacob is SOOO excited when she's in it cause it's like he finally

has the playmate he has been waiting for! It's so funny! Except you have

to watch Jacob really closely because he plays too rough.

But when Peyton's not in it, Jacob thinks its hilarious to sit in it!

And it is!!! When he gets out, it's still stuck to his bottom

That little boy loves to make you laugh

Well, I think that's it for now

=)

Jacob's new hobbies

Jacob has some fun new habits:

Picking his nose...

...And

SeeFood! Daddy taught him how to do it

Now we can't get him to stop

I mean really, I know that it's funny

but I think we need to try to get him to stop.

Do we ignore him so it gets old and he grows out of it?

Or

Do we give him the negative attention by constantly telling him to stop?

Any thoughts?

OH and how do you like that gap in the blinds???

Jacob has pulled 3 of them down! UGH!

Peyton's Blessing Gown

My mother made this dress for Peyton

So beautiful

Fun with Fam

Jacob and Riley had

WAY too much fun playing outside

AND

I had WAY too much fun taking pictures!

These 2 boys were hilarious!!!

They actually made me want twins