Our Girls

We have lived here for exactly 2 weeks today! Aftyn is starting to acclimate and yearns for friends already. She excitedly told me last Sunday that there are 2 girls in her church class that are twins! :)

Bronwyn ended up pretty darn sick from her church class last week and is sadly coughing a bit today so I kept her home to 1)not share what she has                               AND
                          2)keep her from getting some new sickness for Christmas.
She is definitely getting a bit big for her britches, having very determined ideas of what she wants to happen and trying out her freedom to choose her actions with all of us, mostly myself (Alysa) and Aftyn. It can be funny but also very frustrating. We just are trying to love her through it, which thankfully is pretty easy to do since she can be so caring and sweet.

Mirren is growing! On Thursday, I think she must have realized that she could finally really see things because she spent about 5 hours awake just looking all around her and at people's faces. Not at all normal for this girl who wakes up to eat, stays awake maybe 30 minutes after eating and then wants to go back to sleep until it's time to eat again. It is so sweet now when I really see her focusing on our faces, especially Reed's and the girls. She gets her fill of my face all day long with all that I currently do for her. It would seem she knows my voice quite well because sometimes if she's hungry and she hears me, wailing ensues until I pick her up and then she'll simmer down. 

That's our kid update. We sure love our girls. Can't imagine life without them.

Raking leaves at G&G Whiting's house. I love raking leaves and wanted to do this fun activity with my girls. :)

 

Better late than never. Aftyn was a cat for halloween. It's hard to see her ears on the top of her head, but they are there. Her favorite part had to be the makeup she wore on her face. She was delighted that she REALLY looked like a cat!

Jumping and playing in the leaves is a necessary part of raking. They loved doing it. Remember when the weather was so warm we could play outside in flip flops and no jackets? Yeah, me neither.  And I was probably too hot then anyway, what with being pregnant. . . . . . . .

Bronwyn the pirate. She was so cute! I decided she would have the most fun, since she didn't really care what she dressed up as, saying "AAARRGH" all night long. I'd say for the most part she loved her costume for Halloween.

This was taken at my sister Alyson's house the day before I trekked up to Idaho Falls after they had a big snow storm.

Taken last night. She was hungry and tired. Shocker. She sure is cute and still adores this pink blanket I pieced together thanks to my sisters Megan, Jenn and Alyson. They all played a vital part of this blanket, even if they don't know it. :)

Bronwyn being Bronwyn

 

 

This girl makes me laugh. She is really a thinker. And she thinks she's a dog, or a cat, or sometimes a horse.

What a sweetheart.

I think she is going to be tall like Aftyn but quiet and sensitive. She loves to be touched and to touch people already.

Sledding in "The Bowl"

Bronwyn's sledding partner

She took great care of Bronwyn and spoiled the pants off her by carrying her up the big hill many times over, not an easy feat

All bundled up and not going sledding. She slept in my sisters front room in her carseat happily while most of the rest of us froze sledding, and some stayed home to play games

Adventurous cousin - he was "snowboarding" and doing 360's on sleds the whole time. Nothing like the adventurous sort to get the rest of us trying things we might normally not. ;)

Sledding in action!

You're not having fun until someone's crying because they can't feel their fingers, lol

And then they quickly ham it up for the camera before being rushed home to warm up those freezing fingers

Aftyn had such a blast sledding! We were surprised by her fearlessness!

No way was Reed missing out on our fun!

We wouldn't have had such a fun day without everyone who stayed and played, but especially not without being invited by my sister and her family. They spoil us! We love that we live only a few minutes away from them and that we have gotten to spend lots of time with them already. Thanks guys!

This Just In . . . . .

Mirren finally smiled at ME this morning. As opposed to smiling in her sleep, smiling while looking at something to the side of me, or smiling at the light source in the room. And you better believe I counted how many times I got her to smile. 6 times!!! I am feeling very loved. :)
Poor Bronwyn is sick and has been since yesterday morning at 6 am when she puked. Poor thing. I've never seen her so sick for so long. Hopefully today will be the day she starts to feel better.
 Aftyn is hanging in there through Bronwyn being sick. Today she wants to make a "recipe" to eat. Pretzels and chocolate chips. I told her she would have to wait until her morning snack. I should probably make her eat an apple first. ;)

We're Here Because We're Here

On Sunday the 8th of December, the girls and I pulled into our apartment parking lot. We spent the day opening box after box, pulling out all the toys for the girls, and I organized the boxes into piles and put what I could into the bedrooms. It was a fun day.
   The whole next week was spent trying to unpack boxes, get things organized, and get Reed to us.  We somehow managed to move in the middle of a massively cold snow front in our area. Snow seems to be drawn to us when we move, except this time the snow beat us and we had to follow its icy path.
    We still haven't managed to unpack our boxes, but that is only because we don't have the furniture we are needing. There are certainly disadvantages to selling all your furniture every time you move. Sure you don't have to move it, but then you don't have what you need at your next place and it takes time to accumulate what you need!
     We are loving our townhouse. It's spacious and so fun to have our own family space again. The girls are very excited for Christmas. I think I've lost my zeal. I'll be more excited to have everything unpacked and organized and having the right furniture pieces for our home. I will just wait patiently for now. :)
      Mirren is getting big, to me. I have no idea how much she weighs but she feels plenty heavy to me. If I can find my tape measure I will measure her length because she feels pretty dang long to me. I have begun to notice that her 0-3 month socks, although quite loose on her ankles, are actually a little short on her long long feet. ;) She is just on the verge of smiling, a feat I am excitedly awaiting. She is practically sleeping through the night. It's a little hit and miss right now and has only been happening for about 4 days or so, but when it happens it's heavenly. Here are some pictures from her photo shoot with my awesome sister Alyson.

Sorry, I'm going to be keeping this short and sweet. Hopefully we'll get back into the swing of things here pretty soon, which will include me blogging more regularly. And some updated pictures of my Aftyn and Bronwyn who get bigger and bigger to me everyday.

Catch Up Post#1. Baby Girl Finally Emerges! A Birth Story

Picture taken by Alyson Misseldine, Pepperwood Photography

After that last post has sat there for 3 weeks, I'm sure you would guess if you didn't already know that we had our little girl! Here's the story:

  After lamenting every day that passed and brought me closer to my due date and no baby, I woke up on the 11th of November and called my midwife. I asked her if we could plan on inducing me on the 13th, my due date. She knew of my family's plans to be moving only 3 weeks later to our own place far far away, so she took pity on me and planned an induction even though she doesn't believe in them. This was to be my first induction ever. I was relieved and anxious.

Fast forward 2 days. Reed and I showed up to the hospital at 7 am to have the baby monitored for an hour and then proceed with our induction. We had the sweetest nurse who also happened to be a birthing class instructor. I was so excited to think she would be there for my birth and could offer me some good support. Sadly, she left before we got to that point.
   So we started the cervix ripening gel. I hated it. I am not a "lay in bed while having contraction pain" kind of person. At least not until I'm getting close to the pushing stage. I very impatiently lay in that bed for a whole hour as instructed, needing badly to empty my bladder. As soon as my nurse gave me the go-ahead, I ran to my bathroom. Shortly thereafter, Reed and I started walking the halls to try to get contractions going. Nothing really happened. I had some very painful crampy things but since they weren't contractions I decided to just go lay down and wait for some real contractions to happen. Also, another important thing to know is I wouldn't be able to have any other kind of medicine to induce labor for 5 hours after the gel had been placed, so I felt I had awhile for contractions to start on their own. No contractions. Literally just as 4 1/2 hours passed, my nurse put a contraction monitor on me and I began to notice this annoying pain in my lower abdomen. I had Reed check my monitor and lo and behold, real contractions that were incredibly light were starting!
   I was so excited in the hopes that perhaps I wouldn't have to have pitocen to induce labor since that was the reality that was staring me in the face. I ended up having oxytocin throughout the rest of my labor but thanks to a nurse who was sympathetic to my plight of wanting to have a very natural feeling labor, she kept the oxytocin on a very low dose so that it felt like my body was just doing its own natural thing and not having contractions forced upon it.
     So my first nurse left, I was on my 2nd nurse who I also loved, and real contractions that were causing dilation were happening! Woot! I walked the halls with Reed but I could tell my legs were getting tired from the effort it took to relax through contractions and so I decided the time was right for me to hop in the jacuzzi tub right in my own room. The nurse checked me and that's when we finally knew I was dilated, which meant we were well on our way to having a baby! I was a 5 and 80% effaced! I hopped in the tub, the nurse switched off my oxytocin to see if my body would continue to labor regularly on its own without the medicine. After about an hour, I could tell my body was working but not very regularly and my contractions were slowing down and not coming as hard as they had before which probably meant they weren't doing as much work. Bummer.
     This is where I became smitten with my nurse. She was such a sweetheart! I let her know the contractions were slowing down and I should probably go back on the oxytocin. She hooked me back up, but unbeknownst to me put me on an even lower dose of it and my body was still doing exactly what it needed to. When I figured this out, that she gave me such a low dose because she noticed that my body was so sensitive to the medicine, I gained a ton of respect for her. Because in the past I have had labor experiences where the nurse wasn't as sympathetic. Anywho, back to the story.
        So now that nurse had to leave after 4 hours. Here we were, on our 3rd nurse and no baby yet. I had not foreseen this happening. Reed and I kept commenting to each other how weird it was to be in the hospital and still not to have had a baby yet after so long. I was still in labor though so I wasn't discouraged, just impatient to be done. Around this time I had my midwife come back to check on me and after a brief discussion we decided she would come check me again in 30 minutes to see if it was time to break my water. After about 20 minutes, I called my nurse and asked if she could get my midwife to come right then because I thought it was probably time to break it because I was having a lot of pain and pressure because of all the water still inside of me. My midwife came and checked me and I was an 8 and the baby's head was engaged (finally!) so she broke my water and told me that there was going to be a lot of water, just as a means of a heads up. There was a lot of water and I was glad to have it outside of my body. I just knew we were for sure finally going to have a baby!! I was so happy!
           Timeline wise, I can't really be sure of all the next details. Contractions were coming harder. Reed was coaching me through them. I started having REALLY painful contractions which I decided were because my bladder was full. As one contraction was ending, I told my nurse and Reed The Plan. I'm still not sure why they were letting me call the shots, I guess that's what they do when you're the one in labor. LOL   I said, "okay, when the next contraction starts coming back down Reed I want you to pull me up as fast as you can (because after having hard contractions for so many hours, my stomach muscles were achy, crampy and pretty much shot) and I'm going to run to the bathroom as fast as I can."  And that's exactly what happened, with the nurse pulling my pole with all my iv's right behind me. As soon as I emptied my bladder, which was quite full, I felt SO much better. I very seriously thanked both Reed and the nurse profusely and told them they were my heroes because with their help I felt SO much better and the contractions weren't SO painful as they were before. I seriously had The.Best.Nurses. all day long. I loved all of them for different reasons.
          My midwife and nurse kept coming in and checking on me for about another hour or so, but I could tell I was really close to the pushing stage but couldn't quite get there and the contractions were so painful they were using up all my energy just to relax through them. My midwife came in and with her help I finally got the baby to move enough to get past those horrible labor contractions and then it was on to pushing contractions, hallelujah. And that's when the story gets long and painful. I probably pushed close to an hour. She was my hardest baby to get out. Why? you might ask. My midwife says it was because she was face up. And I tend to agree. By the time I got that girly to come out, I was sweating profusely and Reed says the baby's heart rate had dipped and if I hadn't gotten her out when I did we may have had to have some sort of intervention to get her out quicker. Also, her cord was wrapped around her neck at least once according to Reed.
      What a sweet sweet moment to finally have her laying on my chest and get to admire the person my body had spent so much time helping to grow. Our little Mirren Rose was so worth it and even though that was the hardest pushing stage with any of my kids, I would do it again. The post-birth amnesia has already gotten to me evidently. ;) Funny note, evidently I had a LOT more water than even my midwife was expecting because once Mirren came out a ton MORE amniotic fluid came gushing out, soaking my midwife's pants and the floor. Makes me laugh. Especially since it wasn't detected before just how much extra water I had but I'd like to think it might have been enough for 2 babies. Because seriously I felt like I was a big water balloon ready to pop for the last month easily.
       Everything else was pretty standard from that point on. Here we sit at almost 3 weeks postpartum and I feel awesome with no postpartum depression or anything to speak of and I am so so grateful. Aftyn and Bronwyn love their baby sister, but the cutest to me would have to be Bronwyn and how much she loves to kiss and hug her sister. She is so spontaneously affectionate with her, it makes me happy to see how genuinely she loves her sister. My transition from 2 kids to 3 has been so much easier than it was for me to go from 1 kid to 2. Odd, hmm?
        Mirren is a long little thing, already in 0-3 month clothes because she is so long. She was 7 lbs 13 ounces at birth and 22 inches long. She has already grown a half inch which makes it impossible for her to fit into newborn clothes. She has long arms and fingers and feet. She sleeps great and is so easy going it makes me feel spoiled and guilty all at the same time. We sure love her and are grateful to see what her personality will be and how it will change our family dynamic as she grows up.