Hospital Photos

Here's a photo of the Little Man right after he was born. Gotta love beautiful c-section babies!

The Man and the Little Man right after surgery. Mom was busy lying in bed next to them. :)

This was me before the c-section

And this is me after

Yup, I look pretty much the same. :)

Finally, here's the last shot we took of the Little Guy before leaving the hospital

We are all doing well still. I have to go get more blood drawn tomorrow because my liver enzymes are still twice their normal levels. I told the doctor I was just an over achiever and he needed to deal with that. :) He wasn't comfortable with that answer, hence, the blood work. Then, Thursday the Little Man gets to go in for his two week appointment. We will get to find out what a fatty he is! We're betting he weighs atleast 7 pounds because seriously, the kid eats all the time. He also poos all the time, so who knows, maybe he lost weight. :) Either way he is definitely related to the men in our families. Nothing else to report, we sit on our bums most of the day getting more recovered every day. Can't wait for the day when we can go out for a walk or even when we can go up and down stairs without both feet having to touch every step. Baby steps to eventually jogging. :)

Pictures

I know Everyone wants to see pictures of this beautiful baby, and I am sorry that I haven't posted them yet. In the mean time, the hospital took some AWESOME shots of him. If you want to see go to www.bellababyphotography.com
Once there, click on website, then click on client, when asked for the password, it is the Little Man's name in lower case letters. If you don't know or remember his name just e-mail us and we'll let you know. I'll post our pictures of him soon, so hold your horses. :)

He's Here!

Okay, sorry to all of you out there. I know it's been awhile since I've posted and most of you have heard, but our Little Man finally arrived! It was quite the traumatic experience but who said we didn't know how to arrive with flair? Many of you want to know what happened so here's the story.
Last Monday, the 11th, I started throwing up in the middle of the night. I called the doctor who thought it was just the flu and told me to stay as hydrated as possible. I felt a little better by Wednesday morning but by that evening I was deathly ill again. Even wierder, I was getting this stabbing pain up the right side if my back. I called the doctor again Thursday morning because it hurt so bad and he told me that I could wait until 1 to go into the office or I could go into the hospital. Thank goodness for my dear friends the Nueders who took one look at me and voted that I go to the hospital.
Once in the hospital, blood was drawn and an ultrasound of my entire belly area was done. It was determined that my kidney and liver were enlarged, my livers was shooting out huge amounts of enzymes, and my platelet counts were down to 96 (they should normally be about 150). About 12:30 pm I was diagnosed with "pregnancy induced hypertension". The best part about the day was that The Man left early that morning for a conference in Ohio. It about a 6 hour drive and I told The Man that the minute the doctor thought he should come home I would call him. When I got into the hospital the doctor assured me the baby wasn't coming that day. I was sealed tight so we just had to figure out why I was in so much pain. Well, at 12:30, I put the call in for him to return and I heard lots of noise in the background so I said get in the car and call me when it's more quiet and I will fill you in on what's happening. Well bless the man's heart, 10 minutes later he walked in the door of my room!!! He'd made it to Indianapolis and turned himself around hours earlier without telling me so I wouldn't worry about him. It was so nice to have him there!
Once he was there I don't remember a whole lot for a couple of hours because I was put on some strong pain medication for my liver (which is what the shooting pains up my back were). I do know that a couple hours later I had worsened to complete Pre-eclampsia and the doctor had told The Man that they needed to induce labor to get the baby out. They started me on Petosin and I started having contractions. I will tell you that contractions are WAY better than pre-e, just for the record. I thought the contractions were a piece of cake compared to the pain I felt before. Well, within a couple of hours the Little Mans heart rate jumped up to 190, my conditions severly worsened, and I had only dialated to a 1. The doctor came in and told us that we didn't have time for the petosin to work and that the baby needed to come out. A half an hour later I was prepped for surgery, got my epidural (and yes it was everything I had hoped it would be!) and at 8:34 the Little Man was brought into the world.
I was then put on some more serious pain medications and drugs to knock me out. Right before surgery my platelets levels dropped to 34 and after they were down even more to 25. Even without the drugs I was pretty out of it. I was still sick after the baby came out and I continued to throw up. Whew, don't throw up after a c-section! I thought I was tearing my staples out, not a pretty thought. I immediately got more anti-nausea meds, with all of the other miracle drugs.
The doctor kept me pretty heavily sedated for almost the next day because my body needed to recover from the pre-e. I wasn't allowed to eat for a day and half and I wasn't allowed to nurse until I could eat. :( But, finally on Friday afternoon I got to meet my perfect little guy. We had to stay in the hospital for a couple more days and while I still wasn't entirely better, I was moving in the right direction and we were really sick of the hospital so the doctor let us go home.
Now, we are doing great. I am SLOWLY recovering and going stir crazy. I really just want to clean my house, it's too cluttered! Lucky for The Man I have been exhausted so nothing has gotten done. Mom's flight lands in a couple of hours so I know that I will continue to be taken care of and not allowed to move. :)
Thanks to all of your prayers, concern, and meals. It is nice to feel so loved! Now that things are progressing I will update more. Love you all!
Ps - Happy 1 week birthday Little Man!

Tuesday - Worst Day Ever

After my really funny Monday, I ended up having the worst Tuesday ever in life. Around midnight Monday night/Tuesday morning I started feeling extremely sick. By 3 am I stuff coming out of both ends atleast a half a dozen times. I called the doctor after hours line and the kind doctor told me it was probably just a flu virus and that I should take some Pepto Bismol. Let me tell you, Pepto Bismol is a load of crap! Haha, kind of funny play on words. Either way it works worth garbage. All day I was sick and I now have the DEEPEST sympathy for sick pregnant women. Usually vomiting brings some sort of relief, but when you're pregnant throwing up makes your belly have contractions which makes your back ache to no end. Either way you can no longer lay down in a comfortable position so then you get sick all over again. Vicious vicious cycle.
Well, when I hadn't kept food or liquid in my system all day I called the doctor back and asked if there was anything else I could do. The wonderful man prescribed me the most wonderful medication. Until yesterday I had never heard of Reglan but it is a miracle drug. Pepto Bismol, not a miracle, Reglan, miracle. Matt picked up the meds about 7 pm, I took it and 15 minutes later I was nausea free. I could even take tylenol for my back and I then got in a warm bath. By the time I got out of the bath I was ready to make friends with my bed. I had slept about 3 of the last 36 hours so pain free rest was fabulous and I enjoyed it for 12 hours last night.
I have now eaten, drunk and slept so life is wonderful again. We'll see what other excitement this pregnancy provides in the enxt couple of weeks. I'll keep you posted. :)

Monday - Funny Day

Monday was an incredibly funny day this week. I got up and went for a walk. When I left, I locked the front door because we now have a garage with a keycode. An hour later I came home, chatted with the mailman, opened the garage with the code and went to go inside when I discovered the door was locked. Oh man! I had forgot that Matt locked the door to the garage a couple of days before and I didn't even think to look.
Lucky for me Matt was in Wisconsin that day so he wasn't able to come and let me inside and the number to my landlord was in my phone on the kitchen counter. Awesome! I then took a second walk to Staci's house. Staci is a total babe in our ward who was nice enough to let me use her phone. She offered to let me hang out at her house but she was taking her kids swimming and I thought I should be a little more productive than watching tv all day. My plan was go hang out with Lindsay, her cute two year old girl and her two month old twins. She needs as much help as she can get most days, and since I had all the time in the world I figured I could finally step in. My major problem is that I had a doctor's appointment, no access to my car, and four hours to find a ride. Staci let me interrupt her day until I had talked to Lindsay to make sure she was there and to call Katie to give me a ride to the doctor.
I then took a thrid walk and I was lucky enough to be able to help Lindsay with her kids all the way until 8 pm when Matt finally got there to take me home. A huge thank you to Lindsay for feeding me a delicious lunch, for Adam (Lindsay's husband) for cooking delicious hamburgers, and for Katie for taking me to the doctor on her 2nd Anniversary.
I have now learned my lesson and spare house keys will be made and distributed to nearby friends so I don't have to have another STINKY day of sweating and then sitting in it. Yummy!

37 Weeks

Here we are, another week passed, another few inches on the belly. I actually had contractions, I think, yesterday. I decided that I didn't really like them so I asked my belly to stop it. :) I am pretty sure I don't want this baby to come out, once again, thanks heaven for modern medicine and the blessings of an epidural. I know I don't have a choice and this boy will make his appearance, but I am definitely okay with it waiting another couple of weeks.

I will admit, I feel a little retarded because I didn't know it was contractions that I was having. I was talking to my sister Mimi and she was the one who made me realize what they were. I told her I thought it was the baby just pushing out and she mentioned that it was usually a hand or foot and that didn't cover my whole belly. Total duh moment, I just told her I thought it was his back this whole time and she just laughed at me. Oh yea, I am so going to push this baby out in the grocery store and just assume that I am pooping every few minutes. YIKES! Apparently I need a little edumakation. Needless to say, here is the photo of my belly this week. It is taken at a funny angle because The Man was standing on our coffee table when he took it. I'm not sure why he was up there but it works.

Here is a photo at a better angle but my smile isn't quite as big as the first one. Just know that I am equally happy in both shots.

Holy Awesome Week!

So this week has been fabulous so far. Since being back from camp I have tried to take it easy, but you all know me. Bed rest lasted all of last Friday and then I hit the ground running again. Who knew that sitting around doing nothing is not as fun or as nice as it sounds. It actually made me want to poke my own eyes out. So instead I unpacked my house, started walking around the neighborhood, and found new workout videos to get me through the rest of pregnant life. I am so IMPRESSED with myself in the unpacking arena. I forgot all about the fact that The Man's brother and his awesome wife are coming to visit next week. Life after camp didn't exsist so when it came I wasn't ready. Needless to say, our office/guest bedroom was the storage room for the boxes that we hadn't opened yet. In three days I have gone through every room in the house and emptied or organized all of the boxes in the house that I could. There is so much empty carpet space in the office I will have no problem fitting visitors in there now. I wish I had taken a before and after picture so you could see the change. Baby has been totally ticked off at me since Monday but I promised that tomorrow I would only do my workout video and take the rest of the day off. I'm pretty sure it was the lifting of the boxes that caused the belly pain.
Speaking of, with three weeks left did anyone else's belly feel like it was growing a TON everyday? I actually have to take tylenol sometimes to help my belly feel like it's not being streched to capacity. Maybe I am just a wuss. I figure if I have to take tylenol now labor just might kill me. Good thing for me that my doctor thinks an epidural is as wonderful as I think it is going to be. :)
Anyway, wanted to tell the world how productive I have been this week. Frequently I don't feel like I am getting much done but that has not been the case for the last four days. Good thing I am going back to work on Monday so I have things scheuduled to get done. When you are a stay at home mom at first, what do you do? Maybe it won't be as quiet as I think it is. Right now I am pretty sure a baby is going to sleep, poop, sleep, eat, sleep. Atleast mom is coming so I have human interaction during the day. I hope you are all having a good week. If not, your turn will come, maybe it was all me this week. :)

Belly Time

So it has been requested from mass amounts of people that I post another belly shot. I will again apologize for not doing this earlier but between moving and getting ready for Girl's Camp I had no time. Oh yea, for all of you that didn't know, we moved. Our apartment complex was going to up our rent and we didn't like the apartment that much so we found a townhouse with more rooms, a garage and a cheaper rent that we were originally paying. So pthhhhhhhh on our apartment people. We had to move the Saturday before camp so I probably didn't let many people know. I will send out a mass e-mail with the new address but if you don't get it just holler.

So, here is the belly in all of it's 36 week glory. Now, don't be jealous, not everyone can look like they swallowed a basketball whole, I just got mad skills. :)

Battle Wounds

So it's been a little while since I've updated the blog of our lives. Sorry about that. Girl's camp took over for the last few weeks. I have left and returned and the camp was VICTORIOUS! I took my camera to camp in the hopes of taking fun pictures to post but I literally never had time. Running camp was a new experience like I've never been through before. As a stake camp presidency we were literally up until midnight or so, slept until about 6 in the morning and then ran around all day like chickens with our heads cut off. The stress and preparation was totally worth it though. The activities couldn't have gone any better, the girls were awesome, and the Spirit abounded.

I did apparently overdo my activity level though. My ankles grew to sizes that are not human and could possibly count for 4 or 5 ankles each. They got so big the camp nurse freaked out and made me take my blood pressure. I so wish we hadn't done that. It got up to 138/101, apparently not good levels for those who don't know, and I did get sent home Thursday instead of leaving with everyone else on Friday. A GINORMOUS apology to Cindy the camp director for dogging out on her. It was doctor's orders though and Friday I felt like I had been hit by a bus so it was a good thing I was home instead of loading cars. Don't worry, I do not have pre-eclampsia like the doctor thought I did. I went to the doctor today and my blood pressure was back to a normal 118/68 and the baby is doing wonderfully. I guess the prayers of every young woman in the stake and all the leaders at camp probably helped with that one. :)

Just to show that camp was not all work, Cindy and I were able to join a game of sand volleyball with some of the girls. I wasn't thinking and took a dive to keep a ball in play. I discovered that we were playing in small rocks instead of sand. Needless to say my knees got cut up. Now Matt has physical proof to show that I wasn't obeying the "Take it easy at Camp" rules. Dang it! Either way I saved the ball and my team won. Yea! Another day, another moment of freaking out the camp nurse. :)

ps - A huge shout out to Gina, Michelle, and Leslie for the Hello Kitty band-aids. Don't they look awesome?