A Baby Story

Whew! What a whirlwind this last week has been!

Last you read, I was at 36 weeks, things were going fine, and that was that.

On Monday, I had my 36 week appointment with my doctor. They always start the appointment by taking your blood pressure. Mine was 173/95. Eeek! So the doctor did the Group B strep test and check to see if I was dilated, which I wasn't at all. He told me that they would take my blood pressure again, and if it didn't go down, I would be sent to the hospital right then and there! If it did, he thought he would schedule the induction for Thursday when I was 37 weeks along. Well, we took it again, and it was 177/110. So we were off!

The plan was to give me citatec, which would hopefully dilate me more and prepare my cervix for delivery. Once I was dilated enough (probably to about a 3), they would give me pitocin to really get the induction going. So, 6:45 I got my first dose of citatec. Every 3 hours I got another. Long was the night. As the hours wore on, I was hungrier and my cramps were getting worse. My hunger was eased slightly with flavored ice chips, and once the cramps got bad enough, some medicine was put into my IV which gave me relief in literally less than 10 seconds. It was amazing! So 12 hours later, they check me for probably the 4th time. I was dilated to a 1. Not much progress! But the doctor decided that in an hour, they would start the pitocin.

My lime ice chips.

The red line is Chris's heart rate and the blue line is my contractions

So come 7:30, they started the pitocin and I requested to start my epidural. The nurse went to get the anesthesiologist, and lo and behold, his shift just ended and the next anesthesiologist would be here in a half hour. Rude! I wasn't too happy, but what could you do? Some of you may know, I was nervous for the epidural. For one thing, I have seen the size of the needle they stick in you. Huge! Secondly, they are sticking something in your back! Hello! In between your spine! That alone is bad enough, but I tend to have a pretty extreme reaction of arching my back when someone surprises me or pokes me hard enough. So I was nervous. Then, add to the nervousness the worst cramps I've ever had. And add to THAT the fetal position they put you in so that your stomach feels even more squished than it already is and you can't move to relieve your contractions. Add all this together, and you have me squeezing the blood out of Jed's hand. But, it went totally fine! The blessed anesthesiologist, I think his name was Dr. Lund so we'll just call him that, gave me lots of local anesthesia so that I felt nothing. And 10 minutes later, I was all numb and it felt great!

Then started the problems. Once in the night, my baby's heart rate went down. They gave me oxygen and had me lay on a different side, and all was well. But after they gave me the pitocin, his heart rate went down again. The oxygen didn't help as well as the last time, so the nurse stopped the pitocin. They started it up a little later, and again his heart rate went down. This time, it wasn't coming up. Dr. Thorpe had been at the hospital in Orem and was on his way, so the nurses did what they could to keep trying to get his heart rate up. Dr. Thorpe arrive just as my mom did, and they assessed the situation. My poor baby's heart rate was down to 60, which while quite low (it should be 140), they said it wasn't dire. I was still worried, though. They warned me that I may have to have a c-section, and minutes later, Dr. Thorpe decided a c-section was the best way to help my baby, and I was fine with that. I hadn't wanted a c-section, but my dear baby needed to get out!

The c-section was strange, but kind of amazing. They had me in there and done in 10 minutes. Dr. Lund even said as they were prepping me that they were only on their moderate speed and if they needed to, my baby would have already been out. So the c-section. It was such a strange feeling, because I could feel things, and yet I couldn't feel things. It felt like they were pulling and tugging at my skin and tummy, and yet I knew they were doing a lot more than that. So after a minute, they said, "The head is born.... the shoulders are born.... your baby's born!" And I heard these two teeny little grunt cries and that was that! I teared up but didn't cry like I thought I would, which probably was because I didn't get to see him. Because he was preemie, the NICU nurses whisked him away the moment he was out, and for good reason. Instead of breathing normally, he had to grunt to barely breathe. So he was given surfactant and put on a little C-PAP machine.

And with that, Christopher Daniel Stephenson was born at 9:45 AM on March 13, 2012. He was 20 inches and 5 pounds, 14 ounces.

So, it was over! It felt weird. It was almost like nothing changed. I couldn't feel anything, my stomach still looked huge, and I didn't see my baby. Jed was great and kept going to the NICU to check on Chris and he would tell me what was going on. After a few hours, they moved me down to the Mother/Baby floor where I would stay the rest of the time in the hospital. On the way down I got to see my dear baby. It was sad to see him on the machine, but they said he was doing really well.

In his NICU bed

Chris on the C-PAP

All afternoon we kept checking to see how he was doing, and with each update things got better and better! By 5:00 he was out of the NICU and down in the nursery on my floor and a little while later, I got to hold my baby!

I will finish the story off with how recovering from the c-section went. I was expecting terrible pain and an inability to stand up straight or at least without terrible pain. Perhaps I was lucky, but it wasn't bad at all! The first time standing up I had a flash back to the first time I stood up after I broke my femur. Oh that hurt like nothing I had ever felt, but after the c-section, my first time standing up was relatively pain free! Mostly just uncomfortable. Over the course of the week, things were going really well. Walking was great and although a trip downstairs to the cafe wore me out completely, it felt so good to walk around. So I'm extremely happy with that!

It's been a week and this last week has passed by so quickly, yet last Monday seems weeks ago! I can't believe all that's happened in only a week, how much has changed, and how amazing life is. I am extremely grateful to the doctors and nurses for taking care of me and my baby and delivering Chris to us safe and sound.

And that's my baby story.

Tracking the Baby Bump: Week 36

Less than a month left!

If he were a fruit, he would be a crenshaw melon.

So this week, I really don't have enough room inside me for this child! Here's a little cross cut of a pregnant woman's body:

Now you see? Sometimes when I go from laying down to sitting up, I don't feel like I can sit up straight because it would squish my insides more than they can be squished! Seriously, look at how smashed the stomach and small intestines are... I'll just say that it's no wonder that nearer to the end pregnant women have.... bowel problems? Can I just say that and you know what I mean? The point of this is, my baby is huge and I ain't got no more room!

This week I have focused on two TV shows: Downton Abbey and The Biggest Loser. I watched Downton Abbey in record time! But the sad thing? Season two was on pbs.org, but by the time I got to the LAST episode of the season, the videos had expired. So sad! So I read what happened, but it's not the same as watching.... I was really sad. But, life goes on. It was a very interesting TV show to watch! It's like my favorite BBC, 1800s movies and shows, but being set in the 1914-1920s, it's slightly more modern. So there are old style values that are being challenged in a changing world. I loved that. I did not love that so many people were unfaithful to their spouses/fiances/loves of their lives! Too many people were kissing people they shouldn't have been kissing. Dislike!

And the Biggest Loser. Love it. I love that Jed watches it with me, too. The only problem is, I so want to change my life, too! I want to go work out and feel that awesome feeling after you worked your butt off and you're so sweaty and your muscles are so tired, and you just feel so good! But, it's going to be a few months before I can do that.... I hope that my motivation can last until then. So, I can't work out right now, but adding onto that, I just feel so dang lazy! I know I shouldn't feel lazy. I mean, it's not like I am choosing not to do dishes or lay down all day. But it's still so hard not to feel lazy! I keep asking Jed if he feels like I'm lazy because I'm so nervous he'll resent me for making him to everything around the house in addition to school and work. But he assures me he does not think that and I'm being very silly for thinking he would. Jed has been awesome throughout this. He's gotten to the point where I don't have to ask him to do the dishes or to take my plate from the couch where I ate to the sink. He knows I would want him to, so he just does it. I've trained him so well. Ha ha no, he's just awesome! He's stepped up and done great. Hopefully this bedrest thing won't last too much longer, and then it will be only a little while before I can get back into cooking light cleaning so I can help him!

So this week, insomnia has hit. I had several nights where I couldn't sleep for hours, and then when I finally fell asleep, I would wake up every hour and often wake up in the early hours in the morning wide awake! I'm so grateful I've been able to sleep in or take a nap.

But, I think all the insomnia caused some problems. Thursday night I went to bed with a migraine. Medicine didn't help, so I took a little more. Still nothing. So after a few hours of no sleep and pure pain, I had to call the on call doctor. I felt horrible doing so at 2:30 in the morning, but they had told me that one of the warning signs to look for was a migraine that wouldn't go away with medication. So, the doctor told me to go to the hospital.... Poor, poor Jed, to have to lose sleep for me. But he did, and he took me there. It was just like the last time; I did a urine sample and they drew some blood. I was hooked up to the fetal heart monitor and the blood pressure machine. All tests came back fine! My blood pressure was slightly higher than normal, but as I sat there, it went down to my "normal." So, just like last time, they told me it was good I came in, but I still needed to just keep an eye on things and come in again if something like this happens again. Lovely. So after two hours, I still had my migraine (although somehow it had lessened slightly), so they gave me some morphine and some other drug. It was a shot to the hip... owie. But they monitored me for another 45 minutes to make sure all was still well with me and the baby after the shot and to make sure my headache went away. And it did! Oh it felt blessedly good. So, we were back at home just after 6:00, and we went straight to bed. Both of us slept in, but I slept in until 3:30 that afternoon! I woke up several times, sometimes to texts, and because of the medicine I couldn't even stay awake long enough to reply to a text. The rest of the evening I was groggy and had a small headache, but with medicine and caffeine (prescribed by my lovely nurse), and food from my wonderful husband, I felt 10 times better that evening!

So, again we visited the hospital. Tomorrow is our 36 week appointment, which I'm excited for. I will have the Group B Strep test, hopefully the doctor can tell us if I'm dilated and how big the baby is, and above all, I hope we can figure out what's going on with me! I don't want to hinder the baby's growth by having the baby come early, but he is just so active so I know he's healthy and he seems pretty big to me, so maybe he's ready to come out! I'm just afraid that we'll have to visit the hospital every week for tests telling me that I'm fine and need to rest (which I'm doing plenty of), and I'm also afraid that one of these times, it may actually be worse than we thought and then I could have to stay in the hospital for several days or weeks! I don't want to sound selfish, because the baby's health is the most important thing, but it's hard not to think of my own health and our finances, because those are factors. Plus, what if one of these times it suddenly not only affects my health but also the baby's? It's a strong possibility. So for the health of all, maybe it's best to get this baby out!

I think by this time a lot of women hope that they'll deliver soon. It's nice to know we're in the home stretch, though! Only 25 days until my due date! Whenever he comes, I'm excited for him to be here! 

Organizing! It actually happened.

Well hey there.

So, long ago it was Christmas break, and I wanted to do some organizing around this dang house! (You can go back and read this blog post if you want a refresher on my many plans for the break, but I'm going to say most of it anyways.) Some of the things I wanted to do and did do was organize all of our closets and make a trip to DI. That, I did! It took a long time to get those closets clean... And it made our second bedroom a mess! I believe I have some pictures, too....

Here's our office when we first moved in:

So here is the office after Christmas.... after buying our crib for super cheap....

By the by, with the crib there, we couldn't even fit our chair at the desk. Problem? I think yes.

Sad to say, this isn't even the office at its worst. Another big problem with the office was that I would put our mail on the desk and forget about it. Somehow we still paid our cell phone bill on time? It was something that needed to change.

So, over Christmas break, not only did I have to clean out the closets, but I had to somehow fit our baby's stuff into that room. See our second bedroom is also our office, or nursery, our music room, our linen closet, our second closet for our clothes that overflow, and a place to house some random things. The most important functions for that room, though, are the office and the nursery. So, somehow we had to fit the furniture we needed in there, and the decorator/organizer in me wanted to have a semi cute room! A huge downfall of the adorable organizing blogs that I read and of Pinterest is that it makes me want to have beautiful rooms that are super cute, and between the room in our home and our bank account, that's out of the question. So, I had to make do!

Oh! But on the plus side, Jed got me for Christmas $30 toward decorations from IKEA for the desk! What a great Christmas present, right? I wanted to make a cute desk just like my favorite blog: http://iheartorganizing.blogspot.com/ . Click here to see my inspiration for my office! You have to scroll down a lot.... but what I wanted for my desk was a mail station and the cute pencil cup storage.

Well, on passed Christmas break (and like I said, I DID actually clean out the closets), on passed February, and I still did nothing. The things we got from Ikea sat on the floor. Life was busy! The one thing we did was switch the desk and the crib, which worked a lot better! Also, for Christmas I was given a lovely glider rocker from my in-laws, so we were fortunate enough to sell our old recliner on KSL and we got to replace it with a beautiful recliner. So, my desire for a cute coordinated office was slightly closer. All the wood in my office has a slightly cherry color.

Then came my lovely bed rest..... And I was SO lucky that the Saturday before I had done a ton of organizing of my office supplies and the Monday before was President's day and we had taken the opportunity to get some things from Target and organize a bit. Thank goodness I didn't procrastinate any longer than that! So the day after I was put on bed rest, Jed was amazing enough to make me feel better by hanging all my IKEA stuff! So by the time I was on bed rest, I was lucky enough to have almost everything organized! Whew!

So here is the thing that is my pride and joy from my Monday purchases/organizing: my itso modular storage. You buy one cube at a time and they connect. Then, you can buy shelves to snap in, wheels if you want it to be mobile, even doors to cover the cubes. LOVE it! You can buy these things at Target. So, here's what we put together:

Our 5 cubes we put together

 Here are the trays/shelves we bought to organize all our baby things:

Don't you just love this storage? Modular storage that is deep enough to store things like a bin of toys and our diaper bags, but nice and neat and put away. I love it to death. Plus, when we move, we can set it up differently if need be. I love that.

So the next and biggest step that I had been dreading was this: organize my files. I had so many papers to go through... so many.... I knew a lot of the paper I had needed to be tossed. I also had a lot of papers I knew was important, but I didn't know why or what to do with it! In comes: my mom. I asked her to come help me for several reasons: I was on bed rest, so I was bored and didn't want to overdo anything; she is extremely knowledgeable when it comes to running a home and finances; and last, if I scheduled a time to do it, it would have to be done!

In the days before, and I mean days, I did a little at a time. I didn't want to overdo, because physically I didn't want to cheat on my bed rest, and mentally, it made me feel better to not have hours of paper work to have to tackle!

I threw out tons of paper, tons. Once I knew that the rest of the papers I had were worthy of saving, I made these:

You can't see it, but what I did was took my husband's sketch pad because the papers were extra big, and I put categories on each, things like finances, insurance/medical things, job stuff, and even a "not sure what to do with but I know I need it" category. Then I put all my papers into their respective category. This made it so much easier for my mom to look at the papers for me, and if I had done it one my own, I could have easily put my papers in my filing box from there.

Speaking of my filing box... I prepped that for my mom, too!

Yes, terribly exciting, I know.

So, my mom came, and brought her LABEL MAKER with her! I love label makers. I hope to get one for Christmas or a birthday someday. It is a blessed thing. So, with my mom's help, we went through the categories, created a label for the hanging file folders, and then labeled some manila folders to further organize the papers. Oh it felt so good! AND because I had pre-categorized my papers, I was able to go lay down part way through when my good friends Sam and Evan came to visit me, but she was able to keep organizing! Awesome. So here is my beautiful filing box:

Nice and full and organized! I will never again have to search for important papers. Also, as I get important things (like work done on our car, insurance, taxes), I have a place for them! It feels wonderful.

I also made my mail station!

You can't really see what we labeled them, but we labeled the folders "To Do ASAP," "To Do," "To File," and "Coupons." So now, when I get mail, I will go through it THAT SAME DAY and then I can throw away things, put them in the folder of things I need to do now, sometime soon, or to file away. Now the paper won't clutter our desk!

I also now have a place to put receipts! We keep this in the mail station:

So do you want to see the whole product??!!

Here it is!

This cute caddy my mother made. Everything you need to change a diaper, right there!

Here's the desk! My pride and joy.

And here's a closer look...

These just stick to the desk, so you can keep your cords up on the desk and not have to worry about them falling behind!

This you may recognize from the iHeart Organizing blog. I love this way of organizing all my pens and pencils!

Notice how neat the labels look? LABEL MAKER!

So now everything has a place in our desk! It feels sooo good! It's great, too, because now when Jed or I need to find something, either we can look for just a minute and find it because I labeled most everything, or I can direct him to it because I know where everything is now! Also, I feel just a little better because I have a cute desk. I can't have my dream office with perfectly coordinated stuff and I can't have my dream nursery with adorable decorations, but I can get a little piece of it!

Hope you enjoy seeing my life become organized as much as I enjoy it. I have a feeling I will be referring to this blog post a lot, just to see the wonderful progress!

Have a great week!

Tracking the Baby Bump: Week 35

Can you believe I started doing this at week 15? What a difference 20 weeks makes!

Here I am at 15 weeks

26 Weeks

Today at 35 Weeks!

So there we have it. I'm looking pretty big, right?

Baby Stats:

Height: 20 ish inches
Weight: 5 1/2 ish pounds
If he were a fruit, he would be a: honeydew melon

So you would think I wouldn't have had an exciting week, right? Well you're right, being on bed rest has been rather boring. But not terrible!

I visited the doctor's office 5 times this week! Monday and Thursday for my non-stress test, Wednesday to pick up the 24-hour urine test kit, Thursday to drop off the 24 hour test, and then again on Thursday because I didn't realized I had to get my blood drawn when I dropped off the test. Whew! So many times.... This week I hope to only go twice, and then the next week I'll be going a ton of times. The nice thing is, with all these visits, I get the reassurance that the baby is doing great! The tests have all gone well, though my blood pressure went a little up, but my resting heart rate was still in a safe range, so it should be okay for now.

What else? Well I did lots of organizing on my work computer so that it would be nice and cleaned up for my long term sub to use, as well as a lot on my own computer. My email is very organized! Ha ha it was probably a strange thing for me to do, but you really can only look on Pinterest and Facebook for so long.... I seriously look at both those and my Google Reader at least 5 times a day, probably more. I should start tracking it. I'm discovering a few more blogs every few days, generally through Pinterest, so those help give me a little something new.

I also did lots of organizing with my office papers! I did it in several sessions, all of them sitting down, and watched some great tv shows and movies so that I was nice and relaxed the whole time! Plus, my mom came over and was a great help. Jed also was great, because he did all the moving of the papers and throwing away of the huge piles of paper I threw out. But that is going to be saved for another post! But that was something I looked forward to every day, even though it took up an insignificant part of my day, it was great to have something different and something where I wasn't laying down but was sitting up.

I don't know if it's because of all the laying down or if it's growing pains/round ligament pain, but I've had some annoying pain down in my pelvic area. Keeping a pillow between my legs helps, but I definitely have to shift from side to side or being really propped up by pillows so I can "lay down" on my back so that my hips don't hurt too much.

One of the funnest things of this week is that the baby started hiccuping! I always wondered if the baby was hiccuping and I never noticed, because around 28 or 29 weeks is when I heard I should be able to feel hiccups, and I never did! But this week, I have felt him hiccup almost every day. It's been fun to feel, and it feels nice to know he is doing what he's supposed to!

So, last, I think my baby may have dropped! Or he's on his way down. My friend Natalie as well as Jed both say that it looks like my belly is a little lower and not as round, but looks like it's hanging a little. I feel like he's a bit lower, because I definitely feel a lot of pressure on my bladder.... Ha ha today I had some troubles walking because he was definitely settled on my bladder. So, I read that your baby can drop soon before you deliver to weeks before, and considering I'm at 35 weeks, it is probably weeks, but it's still exciting that there are some small indications that things are getting closer!

I have to say, this week I got really excited for the baby to come. I just can't wait! I'm excited to be able to hold him, feed him, and all that jazz. I know it won't be easy, but I'm getting excited to just start figuring this parenting thing out! I'm such a planner, so I just plan and think things over and over until I can finally act on all of my plans. So, I'm excited for the point when I can finally act on all this planning, even though I know it will be hard! It's going to be great though.

So, another week down, and about 5 more to go!

A Baby Shower!

These are the awesome ladies who threw the shower!

Hey there.

A few weeks ago, I was given an awesome baby shower!

My old freshman roommates were so great and planned a great party.

First of all, big thanks to Kyli and her mother, who kindly let us have the shower at her house.

Now, the food was delicious. They made a soup bar. There were four types of soup, all of them so delicious. Then there were bread bowls and french bread as well as lots of toppings for the soup. They also has salad and these awesome fruit cups. For dessert my good friend Kelsey made some delicious lemon bars, there were some great cookies, and my mom made an adorable cake! Here's the delicious food:

Aren't these little booties so cute??

So, the food was awesome. I felt so grateful for all the people that came! I had family from all sides of my family and friends from all parts of my life. It was fun to see everyone there and chat with them. I always feel bad at parties and showers like these though; I feel like I don't give enough attention to my guests! So I hope they can forgive me if they didn't feel like I gave them enough of my time.

 

 

 

I don't think any pictures were taken of my friends from work, but they came, too!

So after a little while, we played a very fun game given by Kelsey. She asked me some questions, like my favorite baby movie (Father of the Bride II with Baby Mama as a close second), my biggest craving (sour things or citrus... I say this as I eat a slice of delicious key lime pie my amazing friends Sam and Evan made for me. They could not have given me a better dessert!), or if I had a gift card to buy anything for my baby, what thing would I choose (Baby shoes! I make involuntary cute noises whenever I see the cute teeny shoes). So she asked the same questions to the guests at the party and whoever got the most right won candy! My mom of course won, but she declined the candy, and so the next person in line was my coworker Janelle! She's pregnant as well, and so we have had many a conversation about our pregnancies. 

After that, I got to open presents! I always feel awkward at first opening presents. I just feel so self conscious and embarrassed! But I quickly was distracted by the cute outfits and super soft blankets for our baby! We got some really great things, and I am so grateful for the gifts and help from our family and friends! Thanks again, everyone! We feel very blessed to have such great family and friends.

This was a present just for Jed. We can't start too early introducing our little boy to Star Wars!

This was another awesome gift! My mom and Amy (?) put together this adorable diaper cake and Kyli gave me the awesome plaque.

My necklace is something my mom made. My lovely Aunt Toni taught us how to make cute little stars from ribbon, and then put them all together on a cute necklace!