Most Amazing Week of My Life

I have to admit I am a little sad that last week has past. I am crying simply sitting here remembering it. The blessings that I have felt are too many to count however I will try because I never want to forget this feeling.

• Having Joe home from work all week. Laying by my side in bed as we stare at the face of the little baby between us for hours on end. Waiting on me seeing to my every need so that I didn't have to get out of bed. Providing for us by bringing me meals to helping Annie get hers (she was a difficult latcher and it took 3 hands to get her on properly) Taking his turn when I had been up with her trying to feed for 2 hours (it was a difficult night) rocking and changing diapers. He was understanding of my frustrations and was very gentle in helping me make decisions when it came to how to react to different new baby situations. And last but ABSOLUTELY not least he put up with my post-partum bodily changes and injures better than I could have ever expected.
  
• Having a content baby. She is sooooooo amazingly wonderful and surprisingly easy. She eats about every 3 hours. If she is hungry at 2 hours there is usually a reason (like last night when she Vomited up all of her previous feeding 5 min later) and when she sleeps 4 hours in the night I wake up amazed, rested and thanking our God! She is a little rooter after she eats and gets frustrated however she has taken a paci very nicely. She is content to be held, content to be laying in her bed and surprisingly humble knowing she is the most beautiful baby in the world!!
  
• Humbly receiving HELP!! I really truly appreciate everything that people have done for me so far. The meals have been soo good. Joe and I lost everything in our fridge and freezer 2 weeks ago, I worked 2 12 hour shifts thursday and friday and went into labor friday night, so I had no time to restock the fridge & freezer with more than milk, fruit & pizza rolls (i go for the important things :o) The laundry is 2 floors away so there is no way I could have done that, Joes mom took our laundry home with her and brought it back clean and folded what a nice service :o) My wonderful amazing mother who I can call at the drop of a hat in tears and request giant size nursing bras and nipple shields and she will drive all over earth to find you one because your sister bought the last one in the Maternity store (thanks Kris! :o) My baby sister who has come over most every afternoon to help me love on my baby and run little errands for me, she has done laundry, dishes, and who knows what else but I appreciate her coming by to check on us!!
  
• My faith in the Lord... oh no here come the tears again... To look at my baby and love her so much that I dont know what to do with it all. I have to turn it upwards because I know that it is the Lord who gave her to us and she is HIS!! I will try my best to teach her about her heavenly father for now it has been easy, she is a great listener and has never talked back in her entire life, did I mention that I have the best baby??

"It is no small thing, that those who are so fresh from God, love us" -Charles Dickens

I have no idea where to start, I have so many stories and thoughts twirling around in my hormonal head :o) I have decided that I need to write down blogging topics so that I can have fun things to Blog about when I have time. However, as promised, here is my story...

2:30 am Saturday Sept 20

Woke up with my water broken. Simply a slight leak and not wanting to show up at my place of employment where they consider me a professional with my water not broken I waited to be positive. By 3:00 I was contracting every 2-3 min and was certain that I was in labor. I woke Joe up really curious as to how he would react. Waking him was a little difficult (he was up until 1:00 fixing the shower) and when I told him my water broke he just said "OK"! I told him I was getting in the shower and that I would wake him up when I was ready to go.

4:00 showered and contractions getting more painful than cramps, I was actually doing something that resembled a "potty dance" as I got ready. I paged the MD and left a message telling her that I was in labor. The best part about this was that I had just worked a 12 hour shift with her at the hospital the day before and was just a little whiny about being tired and wanting to have the baby early! :o) She called me back and when I answered the phone she simply stated "wishful thinking really works for you girl"

Fun Fact: I can't get a hold of mom on the house phone, cell phone or Dads cell.....I call Kelly and she informs me that they are in Lexington for a board meeting! No worries right? Problem two, Kelly has no idea where they are staying and they have not been in touch at all...cell phones off... no hotel number left in case of EMERGENCY!!!???

4:30 Pulled over by Bellevue Police for speeding on the Avenue!! :o) Joe was a little upset however I simply told him not to worry he would not get a ticket. When we told the police man I was in labor he offered a squad to which I laughed and told him that I was an L&D nurse and I had everything under control just let me leave!!!! He wanted to know what hospital we were headed to and when we told him he said that his wife worked at Good Sam in the ER and if we were lying he would know!!!! First of all sir why would we lie about going 35 in a 25 at 4:30 am and if you wife knows I am at the hospital and tells you about it I will sue her for violating HIPAA!

5:00 Called Kelly when I arrived at the hospital to tell her she could come (she had to be restrained so as to not beat me to the hospital). She has in the mean time called every hotel in Lex looking for Mom! :o) However had not found them... she did however find a piece of paper with a confirmation # on it and called them all back using it and found them!

I was admitted and in triage, hooked up to the monitor my contractions are indeed every 2 min, and now much stronger. I knew this but its nice to see that the computer agrees with me. I am 4-5 cm and the nurse starts my IV.

6:00 In my room getting the terrible, horrible, worst thing in the entire world...Epidural!!! I would hate them except they make life so much easier. I would not EVER go natural because something tells me that if I didnt like the 5 min Epi process that I wouldnt do well with the 8 hour labor process. However, I freaked out during my Epi. I cried like a baby, I hated the feeling of it! However it took away the pain...so whatever.

7:00 6cm hanging out in bed with tingly legs from the epidural.

Story Kelly told me: she was so excited about coming to the hospital that when she finally got a hold of mom on the phone she jumped in the car and started off to the hosp. and lost connection with mom when she realized she was driving down the road trying to talk on the cordless house phone and not her cell phone!!!

11:00 10 cm 100% effaced and time to start pushing. Now being a L&D nurse I know how this first time pushing can go, I have done it with many of my patients, anywhere from 10 min to 3 hours long, most often at least an hour. I was very nervous about this, I had no idea how I was going to push for 3 hours!! However with my first push my moms face lit up and Joe mentioned something about seeing the head! I couldn't believe how blessed I was, this was not going to take long at all!

In the end I pushed for about 3o min! Joe was an amazing help when I was pushing, he was so intense. I benefited from his excellent coaching skills, I am not really the go get 'em, push yourself hard type, and I really felt myself drawing from his intensity.

11:39 She came out beautifully blue and limp and not really breathing..... she needed just a little help, I wasn't worried though, my RN friends are excellent and she was up and running in no time :o)

I can't believe how blessed I am to have had such an easy labor and so far on day 4 things are going fairly well. When things are hard (breastfeeding) I just have to look at my little girl and I am so in love with her that it is all worth it.

Annie

Our beautiful girl came on Saturday September 20th 11:39 am. 6lb 4.8 oz and 19inches long. Her name is Ann Marie and she will be called Annie. Today was our first day home with her, we arrived home from the hospital late last night in a desperate attempt to spend the night at our house. We didn't get discharged from the Hospital until late sunday night because she refused to poop until she was 33 hour old!! We couldn't take her home until she had proved her bowels functional :o) So with today being filled with soooo much "newness" I have not had a chance to blog (go figure) I plan on filling you all in on my whole experiance including pictures tomorrow. I will leave you with the only picture that I can currently get my fingers on because I am laying in bed on the laptop and all the pictures are on the desktop. You can visit here http://www.our365.com/NewbornPortraits/BabyDetail.aspx?birthid=038afa4f-b713-4937-aa9e-6ad5f31a1642 to see her hospital picture.

The official count down begins.....

Oh this could be a very long 3 weeks!! I put off my OB appointment last week mostly because I was busy every day and didn't have time to go to the Dr. but also I didn't want my weekly visits to start yet, they make me anxious!! So now starting this week I am doing weekly MD appointments and I think it is the only right thing to do to let everyone know my progress :o) I did have the MD check me and I am 2cm and 70%!! Of course as soon as I walked out of the exam room I was thinking to myself how subjective cervical exams are and how she is a very tiny woman and I am probably only a fingertip and 50% (notice a doubting attitude?:o)

I have been staying very active, I would love to go into labor any time now. I was helping lug big branches to the burn pile at my parents house on monday for a while, I was pretty proud of myself until I had picked up all of the medium size branches that didn't require much bending. Then I got the rake out and was raking up the small sticks into a pile so that Kelly could put them into the truck. Kel was a stinkin work horse, I have never seen her work so hard! She loaded about 6 truckloads of branches and took them to the burn pile, she even went over to the neighbors and loaded thier branches and brought them to the burn pile as well.
Elly Beth helped out with comic relief for those of us who were working. Once she sat down about 200 feet away (that was her limit) from the giant burn pile and said "i think i will rest here by the fireplace for a while" Then she laid down on her back and told dad "I am going to lay out in the sunshine" Dad: "I have one problem with that, theres no sun" (it was overcast and 6:00 in the evening) Elly: " I thought this would be better". Then when Kelly was dumping her first truckload onto the already huge burning woodpile Elly looks at me and says "were all going to die" !!! None of us had a problem with that statement, however kelly prooved herself responsible and no one died :o)

As a final note we still have no power!! We are staying with Joes mom. I went home yesterday and cleaned out the fridge and freezer. I fried up 3lb of bacon for dinner last night that had defrosted. My husband was VERY happy with that meal. I also boiled about 7lb of chicken and froze it in the broth to make chicken noodle soup with. Everything else was lost, it is going to be very sad to have to restock all of those staple items that normally have a long fridge life :o(

All Grown Up

I love this picture and I thought that I would share it with you all. Joe went to school at Cedarville University and played soccer all 4 years. I loved that he went to school there and I loved going to visit him for the weekend. I would always stay with some of the girls on campus which made me realize how grateful I was that I didn't have to live in a dorm!! I visited more in his senior year because he and most of his friends rented houses and so I didn't have to sleep in a dorm! As the years went on and he and his soccer friends grew closer, I in turn got closer to thier girlfriends as well. Between 2004 & 2007 as we all got married, there were many trips for weddings to, Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, Indiana & Kentucky. We don't see eachother as much anymore however I love getting the chance when we can. It makes me feel like such a grown up :o) This trip was particularly fun because we are all starting into the family stage, there were toddlers, new babies and pregnant girls and as much fun as college was I know it is just the beginning of our story...
Tiffany Belleman, Kelly Green w/ Emma, Jamie Vance w/ Owen, Me, Annie Beall, Sarah Waldo, Missing Kristin (who was on her way) & Rachael who has a brand new baby at home!

It has begun... the first one is on his way!!

Well here it is blog friends, Kara is at the hospital in labor!!! I talked to Dad at 7:00 this morning and she is 6cm and 100%! I gave the guess of delivery time at about 12:00. No one asked me for my opinion on weight but I think he will be about 8'12 :o) We will see, pray for our big sis. She was asleep when I called, its probably the first time she has been pain free in years! She called me last night around 11 asking me if she took another Vicoden if it would have any effect on her being able to get her epidural. I said take 2 and call me in the morning :o) God bless Anesthesia!!

Playin with Picnik

Here are a few pictures that I played around with on the editing site Picnik. What better to do than watch a Rock Hudson film and edit photos when you are up at 3:00 am!! Oh what has become of me, I am turning into my mother!