365 amazing little seconds

1 second video Aug 20, 2015 - Aug 20, 2016

In the middle of the night I write the best posts while laying in bed and can’t possibly writing anything down and can’t remember any part of it. It makes me so sad. I had the best stuff going through my head about this and now I’m just writing this drivel.

Anyway I used the app 1 Second everyday to compile this video and I’m so glad I stuck with it. I love this video and can’t wait to see next years.

The most exciting Thanksgiving EVER, or Jake’s birth story

The day before Thanksgiving I told Waldo that he could sleep in Thanksgiving morning because I needed to make the rolls that we were going to take to dinner with us. However my body had other ideas. At 4 on Thanksgiving morning I woke up for one of my normal 4 or so nightly pregnancy potty trips. I woke slowly and took stock of my body to see if I really needed to get up or if I could fall asleep for a little longer. The only think I noticed was that Yes I did need to pee. As I scooted out of bed (I had to scoot or crawl to the foot of the bed because the bed is sort of next to the wall) I noticed a pain in my lower back and a…squishy squirt. Hmmm I thought, that’s not normal, I really hope I didn’t just pee. I got into the bathroom and checked the pad I thankfully had on and no in fact I hadn’t peed, either my water broke or I lost my mucus plug. Either way, NOOOOOOOOOOO I’m only 37 weeks, I don’t want to have a baby today. I want to go to term, I want to make rolls for Thanksgiving, I want more time to prepare, I want to feel my little man kicking me more, I want, I want, I want. But who cares what I want in this situation. I decided that I wasn’t sure what was happening so I was going to go back to bed and see what happened when I woke up in the morning. I was pretty sure it wasn’t my water, but thought it might be the mucus plug and I knew you could loose that and still go for weeks before the baby was born. I wasn’t having contractions so I figured maybe, just maybe I wasn’t in labor.

I laid back down and almost immediately I had lower back pain much like period pain. Great!

Mark was still asleep so I decided sine I wasn’t certain what was going on there was no reason to bother him so I tried to go back to sleep. Of course those occasional very much like period cramps that were now showing up in the front weren’t helping. A bit later Mark got up to go to the bathroom and I gave up on sleeping. Too much was going through my head so I grabbed my phone and googled mucus plugs. When Mark came out and saw the light from my phone he inquired what I was doing so I told him. His response was even more of a strong NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO than mine. He told me to go back to sleep. He did go back to sleep, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t. Too many thoughts running around my brain; what I needed to get done, what I wanted to get done, what I wished I hadn’t procrastinated on, making rolls for Thanksgiving sounded so fun, ouch damn these cramps aren’t going away and don’t feel good. So I eventually gave up and downloaded a contraction timer and the real fun started. I swear to you I really did think I was kidding myself with the timer. I mean the cramps weren’t that bad and they weren’t that regular and I’m 3 1/2 weeks early, no way both of my kids would be born early. I laid there from 5:21 until 6:30ish timing these not-contractions. 9 minutes apart, 16 minutes, 14, 17, 10, 12 and then I got up because really sleep isn’t happening and Lily came in so might as well let Mark sleep. And darn it I have rolls to make. I didn’t say anything to Lil as I continued to time these fun couldn’t-be-contractions. 11, 1 oh no, 11 oh good, 21, 10, 27, 1 crap, 2, crap, 4, ohhh, 2, 1 this is getting serious, 11 ok, I can eat breakfast now, 12, 9. So I decided to wait on the rolls not at all because I had at this point started needing to hold on to the counter and sway my hips during the couldn’t be contractions, no I waited on the rolls because my Kitchen aid might wake Mark up. Making scrambled eggs and toast for the two of us wasn’t easy and I wasn’t really hungry, but I did it. 8, 13, 28, 15 see these aren’t real, 5, 6. Mark woke up and after talking and telling him about my couldn’t be contractions we decided I should call the hospital to see what they say. They fricking said to call my doctor’s office. I had just been to a what to expect during labor class at said hospital and they said to call the hospital. I was annoyed. I called the office, since it was Thanksgiving they had to put a call into the on-call. I waited for the call holding on to whatever I could find and swaying my hips. The doctor called back and after my explanation she said I needed to go to the hospital in the next few hours to get checked because it sounded like my water broke, but since I wasn’t sure I was having real contractions or not I didn’t have to rush. I said that was good because I didn’t have a bag packed for Lil and it would take a couple of hours to get there.

And so this started the worlds slowest rush to pack. 5, 4, 2, 4, 2 oh this is getting real, 3, 5, 3. I had hopped to labor at home as much as possible, but because I was a VBAC they wanted me there fairly early. These could-likely-really-be-contractions were starting to get really painful, but I have a high pain tolerance so I was still doing mostly ok. I packed, instructed, dressed, texted all the while timing ok-I-give-they-are-contractions and swaying my hips. 2, 2, 2, and now they were starting to last longer than the 20-45 seconds of the good ole days, now it was more like 45 to over a minute. At one point I told Mark that it was like my body remembered the pitocine from Lily and recreated those hard on-top of each other contractions. 2, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3 I think you get the idea. At one point I also told him that it felt like my uterus was being ripped open by the hands of hell. Yeah, it was fun. Finally we were packed, but no way were we leaving without some pictures. I might be in hard labor, but I’m still me.

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20141127_114724 Having a contraction, this isn’t fun.

 

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Once I was done torturing myself and everyone else we headed out. Originally we were going to take Lil with us to the hospital and then if I was in true labor Mark was going to take Lil to our friends house. However he figured it would be better to take her first so he wouldn’t have to leave me and it turned out to be a very good idea.

Wherever I read that the car ride to the hospital was the worst thing ever was so right. You feel every single little bump and having contraction while confined to the car seat and seatbelt nearly had me coming undone.

Luckily we live in a pretty small town so it wasn’t tooooo far from our house to our friends and then to the hospital, but let me tell you something. When you are having contraction every 2 minutes we might as well have been driving to New York or something. It was killing me.

Finally we get to the hospital and the last contraction I timed was at 12:29 pm. I had pre-registered which was brilliant. We got to the nurse station inside the labor & delivery department and told them that I needed to be checked because I was probably in labor. Cue more hip swinging and deep breathing.

The lovely young nurse waits patiently for me to finish swaying and be able walk again and takes us to a labor room. She helps me get changed and then tells me to get in bed so they can monitor me. This is where I shouldn’t have been such a good girl. That bed was so much worse than the car ride. Ugg laboring on your back should be classified as some kind of crazy torture and I knew this, but I’m a good girl. So I got in bed and they hooked me up. She was in and our for about a half hour and then they determined that my water did indeed break. She tells me she’s going to check me and I look over at Poor Mark who has no idea how to help and he hates it and I tell him “If I’m only 2 cm I’m going to scream” She tells me I’m 7 and +2. Thank goodness, no one has to die.

She had to call my OB to come down since I was a VBAC and told me I could get up soooooon. I don’t remember why I needed to continue to be tortured, but I’m sure she had a reason. I felt like a caged animal when the contractions hit and they were right on top of each other. Fast forward a little while and my doctor strolls in talking about turkeys and crap I couldn’t care to think about. She wanted to check me and low and behold I was at 9 with just a tiny lip left. She said something about probably not wanting drugs since I was so close and I could have punched her, of course I didn’t want drugs, I just wanted to get up. I informed them of that without mentioning the punching and I wanted to get in the tub. The nurse started the water and someone helped me up. I got to the side of my bed and had a killer contraction and I needed to push like crazy. The doctor watched my contraction and asked me if I needed to push, I hadn’t realized that I did, but as soon as she said it I was like YES. She made me get back in bed, I nearly cried. She said rather than laying down I could get on all 4s on the bed. They raised my bed to sitting, I had stripped my gown off before getting back in bed. I put my arms on the back of the bed and swung my hips as good as I could on my knees in the bed. The doctor reached into my business when I had my next contraction and moved the last bit of…me that was in Jake’s way and told me to turn over.

I got situated and the doctor or nurse told me what to do and off we went. After the first contraction and pushing session the doctor corrected my form and I pushed away. While I was pushing I would plead with Jake to come out and visit over and over in my head. I would take a break and do the whole thing over again. Apparently this worked because out he shot. He was born at 2:29 pm, which was 19 minutes from the time the doctor said I was at 10. I looked later and found that I had my last timed contraction in the hospital parking lot at 12:29. Exactly 2 hours after waddling into the hospital my beautiful boy was born.

I had instructed the doctor over and over again that I wanted to wait for the cord to be cut and I wanted Jake put right onto me. Neither of these things happened because he came out so quickly he was purple and had to be put on oxygen. I have been working on this post for 7 months at this point and this part is still so hard to talk/write about. While they had Jake on little bed Mark was sure to ask over and over for Jake to be given to me as soon as he could. I was proud of him for that and so thankful too. After a few minutes they brought him over and I snuggled and Mark took pictures. Jake needed to go back under the heat lamp. I didn’t think I could walk over there so they moved my whole bed over, it was really nice. After a while they gave him back and I tried to nurse, and he did a little, but they kept wanting to put him back in the bed, have people come and check him out, messing with his little monitors. The whole thing wasn’t at all how I had pictured it going. At some point the NICU doctor came to check Jake out because they couldn’t get ahold of our doctor because Thanksgiving. The NICU DR said that he was fine, but needed a little more oxygen. At some point a different ped came in and said that Jake needed more oxygen then they could do in a regular room so he needed to go to the NICU for a while. I had gotten to snuggle a little, but no where the amount of time I would have wanted (you know like forever).

Now it’s been 15 months since Jake was born and I still haven’t finished this little story because it’s so hard to write and well life gets in the way. So after they decided that Jake had to go to the NICU they bundled him up and handed him to Mark. I gave Jake a kiss and took the first picture* of Mark holding Jake and then they left. All I wanted to do at that point was run after them, but I had to get cleaned up. The nurse helped me to the restroom and asked if I wanted to take a bath or shower. I didn’t. I just wanted to get dressed and go. And that’s exactly what I did. She helped me get dressed and then we gathered up all of my stuff and she pointed me in the direction of the NICU and she took my stuff to my recovery room. I was so surprised that I could walk and it wasn’t that bad at all. I suppose it could have been that my mind was only on getting to Mark and Jake and who cares how I feel right then, but who knows. A few days later Mark told me that he was just as surprised that I walked in on my own so soon after then got there. It was so different from Lil’s birth.

This is the beginning of our 13 day stay in the NICU. That’s a whole different story.

Minutes old

Mintues old

Flat ear, just like his sisterHe had a flat ear just like Lil, but his rounded out much faster.

*Somehow I can not find this picture and I’m so pissed about it it’s not funny. 🙁

I got you

Last night when I laid Jake down in our bed so I could get some sleep he was asleep, but not super deeply. I laid him on his back and as I was moving slightly away from him he reached out and grabbed my arm. I looked over and he was still asleep, but had the biggest smile on his little sweet face. As he settled back to sleep holding my arm I looked over and told Waldo “Either he’s smiling because he’s all ‘I got you, you can’t get away from me’ or because he’s content having a hold of me”. Either way it’s adorable and he’s just so sweet.

We’re having a little addition

This will not come as news to any family or people from Facebook, but we’re having a baby. I’m 29 weeks pregnant with a little boy and we couldn’t be more excited.

This picture of Lily is how we told most of our families and friends.

We waited to tell anyone (except Waldo’s Dad because we were living with him) until I was 13 weeks and we knew the gender of the baby. I had this amazing genetic testing done that told us the sex so early, it was awesome. And bonus, we know he doesn’t have any genetic issues.

Don’t worry about Lily, she wasn’t thrilled about getting a brother at first, but now she is all over it. She can’t wait to meet him and she is just so attentive to me and crazy sweet. I can’t wait to see her with him. Of course she hates the name we picked out and refuses to call him by it. We have decided on Jake Stephen and because of the Disney show Jake and the Neverland pirates; which she doesn’t watch BTW, she hates the name. She insists that we can’t name him after a show, I tell her that we aren’t and she just doesn’t care. She calls him Brother or Little Brother and that’s it, end of story. I’m betting she’ll warm up to it eventually.

This is one of the first pictures of all 4 of us. We were out buying some maternity pants and I snapped this shot in the dressing room.

I’ve had a number of ultrasounds, this one was at 11weeks. This is the one that was attached to Lily’s sign.

I’m going to do my best to update more often and try to even post some things from the last 29ish weeks so I can remember them. That’s my plan anyway.

We’ve moved…again

Four years ago when Waldo’s Mom called him and told us that she had cancer we decided that we had to move to be closer to her. We were renting so it was a pretty easy decision. Also making it even easier, Waldo’s parents lived in the same town that most of my family lived. So Win Win. Within I believe 3 weeks or something like that we had packed up all of our stuff, worked it out with our jobs to work from home while we were gone and we left. We had figured this would last a year or two. The cancer was very advance and we knew that we hated California (or at least the Central Valley) so we wouldn’t be staying any longer than necessary.

A year after moving to California Waldo’s parents decided to move to Idaho. Rita (Waldo’s Mom) was still going strong and felt that the clean air and better people of Idaho would help her recovery better than the nastiness of California. Since we lived with them and as stated before hated California we decided to give Boise a try. I was sad to leave my family after only 1 year, and not nearly as many visits as I had hoped, but it was the best thing for us so we packed up again and headed East.

As it turns out we loved Boise. There was a zoo, aquarium, kids science museum and great places to shop for natural foods. Everything we could want. We ended up spending 3 years in the Boise area. Waldo’s Mom loved it too, not for the same reasons as we did, but she liked it. To all of our surprise and happiness she lived another 2 years before the cancer finally got the better of her. 2013 was a hard year for our families. In the Spring we lost my paternal grandmother, in September we had our miscarriage, about 2 weeks later we lost Waldo’s Mom and then 6 weeks later my maternal grandfather Pop suddenly died.  Other little things also happened to us, but those are the biggies.

After losing Rita we couldn’t leave Waldo’s Dad right away so we stayed. We knew it wouldn’t last forever, Waldo’s job would need him back at some point. Well that point came a few months ago. We got the phone call or email, honestly I can’t remember how it came, but the end result was that we needed to move back to Montana.

Now don’t get me wrong, we love Montana. We have friends here. Do you know how hard it is to make friends when you a) work at home b) don’t do church c) don’t go out to clubs/bars and the like? Well it’s nearly impossible. We finally made friends with 1 very nice couple right before we moved back, I hated to leave them, but had to do it. Anyway, back on track. We also love how beautiful Montana is and while I haven’t visited the East side of the state, I’ve seen pictures so I can say this with some certainty, the area we live is the most beautiful part of all. We are also aware that there are down sides, such as we aren’t really outdoorsy people, and there’s no zoo and such here so being outdoors is how people live here. And there’s like 6 months of winter here. Winter is coming. People it’s no joke. There will be snow. Sure there was snow in Idaho, but not like here. It’s like never ending. But we have friend and friends with kids so YAY!

After the call (whatever) came we started to put all of our ducks in a row. We didn’t have a set date that we had to be back, but it had to be reasonable. We started packing up the things that we could live without and started to look for a rental. A major problem quickly because apparent, rentals in the Kalispell, MT area didn’t last long and because we have a cat that cut out about 9 out of 10 of the possible places. I don’t understand what so many people have against cats, but it’s a real thing and really started to get us know. One day while telling Waldo’s Dad how hard it was turning out to be to find a rental he suggested we try to buy. And thus the seed was planted. Waldo talked to a friend who had recently bought a house with a Rural Development Loan and after getting the name of his mortgage loan person and his realtor we were off. We applied and got the loan. We called the realtor and got to look at the listings. On the second day we had access to the house listings we were narrowing down the ones we liked and came across a new build in a nice neighborhood within our price range and we loved the kitchen. We called the realtor and because it was a new build and had only been on the market 2 days and they were doing showings daily she suggested that we put in an offer. We did and it was accepted. We packed up the car the next day and drove to Montana to see the house that we put an offer on.

It’s a townhouse which isn’t ideal and it’s about 1200 sq ft so it’s smaller than we really wanted, but we loved it. We were very happy about putting in our offer. While we were looking at the house we realized a guy Waldo worked before lives across the street and we met the wonderful woman that lives next door. Between that and the view out the backdoor I’m pretty sure we would have bought it no matter what, but we did like just about everything else luckily.

We went back to Idaho and started the whole process of getting the things the inspector fixed and closing on the house. We also pack like mad. It all worked out because just about 5 weeks after starting the whole loan process we were opening the garage to our first home and while we miss Waldo’s Dad, we couldn’t be happier.

So I started this with stating that we had moved again, but I’m putting it down here that this will be the last time for quite a while.

Our ride.

Lily and Daddy at a rest stop in Idaho.

Our new home.

OUR VIEW!

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