tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34995257888559451682024-02-19T08:42:18.846-07:00The Adventures of T&L SmithLaurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.comBlogger99125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-41245230403296236912013-12-03T11:32:00.000-07:002013-12-03T11:32:18.727-07:00Nolan Allen and Dean LeeAlright... the birth story. I want to write this down before I forget too much of what happened. Also I'm sure there are at least a few people out there who are like me who enjoy reading birth stories.<br />
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For starters, I was ready to be done with the pregnancy when I was about 35 weeks along. Couldn't sit comfortably anywhere for longer than five minutes, didn't have motivation to do anything... the works. So when Thanksgiving FINALLY rolled around, I was stoked; probably didn't seem that way, but any nervousness I thought I would have just didn't exist at all. I was just so done.<br />
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I slept ok Thanksgiving night, surprisingly enough; had to be up to call the hospital at 630am to make sure they had room for me to come in for my induction (when we had to do this with Nettie's induction we had to wait about five hours before we could go in) at 730. Lucky for us, there was no wait! So we got everything loaded into the car and headed to the hospital. (My brother and sister-in-law were in town for Thanksgiving so they were kind enough to watch Nettie when she woke up until Sam and Jess could get her for the day.) We registered at the hospital, blah, blah, blah, and made our way up to Labor and Delivery.<br />
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Once we got to our room, I changed into one of those super attractive hospital gowns (which I couldn't tie closed in the back btw) and the nurse got me hooked up to the heart rate monitors. We sat and waited for a little while, assuming that a doctor would be in soon to check how dilated I was, but unfortunately, they got called away first to a delivery and then to a c-section, so we were bumped a few times. The doctor didn't make it in until noon; so during that time we just monitored the babies and I slept a bit. My poor nurse, though, baby B (Dean) did not want to stay on the monitors for the life of him. She was in and out of our room constantly, spending about 20 minutes each time trying to find his heart rate.<br />
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Anyways, noon rolled around and we were finally seen by the doctors. They did a quick ultrasound to make sure that both babies were head down (or at least A, which he most definitely was). Even though both babies were head down, they told me that if it came to it, they would allow me to try for a breech extraction of baby B if he somehow flipped because of the fact that I had already had one baby who was of a pretty good size (Nettie was 8lbs 2oz). That was awesome news to me, as I was definitely hoping to avoid a c-section at all costs.<br />
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Once they confirmed that the babies were head down, they checked to see how far dilated I was. Now, I was hoping for a couple centimeters at best since I hadn't really been having any real contractions or anything like that. When she checked me, I was about four and a half centimeters dilated! Best. News. Ever. But really, I was that far along probably because of the fact that Nolan had been head down and extremely low for a couple weeks (remember how uncomfortable sitting was for me). We were given the go ahead to start pitocin (finally) and I think it was around 1pm that that began.<br />
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At first it definitely wasn't bad at all. Mildly uncomfortable at worst, and I remember it being like that with Nettie too. I was able to take a nap at some point during this, because my epidural request came at about 430ish pm. I wasn't super uncomfortable then, either, but I wanted to be prepared cause I could feel things getting worse, and on top of that, the nurses had talked about breaking my water, and I remember how painful it was for me after they did that with Nettie.<br />
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So the anesthesiologist came in and "attempted" to place the epidural... three times. I don't blame him for it being so hard, I'm almost certain it's cause I couldn't hunch forward very much, but hey, I had two people inside of me. What matters is that I got one. It did take awhile for it to take affect on the right side of my stomach though, which was annoying, but oh well.<br />
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After the epidural, the doctor came back in to check my progress and we were up to just about six centimeters. We decided that it was a good time to break my water, so they did that, and Tucker told our nurse quite a few times that after they broke my water with Nettie, everything sped up a lot with the labor. It seemed kind of like she just acknowledged what he said, but didn't really believe him. <br />
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Well, it definitely picked up. They broke my water just right around six o'clock. I could feel the contractions get worse (cause the epidural took awhile to affect the right side of my stomach), and the unmistakeable feeling of pressure started to get reeeeeeeeally strong, like hard to ignore strong. I kept telling my nurse this, and I asked her when they would check me again to see how far I was dilated and she said something like two hours after breaking my water. Nope. NOPE. That wasn't gonna happen. I told her to check me. She did and said I was something like an 8. The pressure just kept building and I was seriously struggling with not pushing.<br />
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So another fifteen minutes goes by (I think) and the nurses shift change starts to happen. My original nurse started to catch the new one up on what was going on, and with each contraction I kept telling them the pressure was just about overwhelming. So the original nurse suggested the new nurse check me again just to be safe. 10 centimeters. <br />
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Things moved really quick from here. Because of the fact that we were having twins, we had to be moved to an operating room to deliver; the reasons being there were two teams of pediatricians that needed to be present (one for each baby in case of problems) and they wanted to be able to have the option of an emergency c-section if something started to really go wrong. Tucker had to get some scrubs from them to wear into the OR, and so they got those for him, but got him a set of medium sized ones. He came out of the bathroom where he was going to change and said something along the lines of, "Someone will have to get me scrubs that are substantially bigger than these." If I wasn't so focused on not pushing I would have laughed. It did make me really nervous that he wasn't going to get into the room before the boys were born though.<br />
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They made him follow (scrubless) as they started to move me to the OR. I'm not exactly sure where he changed, but he came in shortly after they made me scoot from my bed to the operating table (which was really hard to do between contractions and numb legs).<br />
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Legs went up into the stirrups and they told me I could push whenever, which was good cause my body was already pushing without me doing anything. I think I pushed three times and there was a big release of pressure. Nolan was out! They swept him to the other side of the room to start checking him, then they broke Dean's water and told me I could keep pushing if I felt like it. It took a little bit before I felt like my body actually could push again, but once I did, it was only two pushes. Tucker said that with each baby that came out of me, my stomach dropped about six inches.<br />
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I can't even begin to describe how much lighter I felt after they were both out. It was a very weird feeling. They checked out the babies while the doctor stitched me up (which was painful, by the way). Both of the boys checked out well and so once they were done with me, they shifted me back to my first bed and handed me the boys for transport back to our room.<br />
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So yeah, I went from a six to a ten in about an hour and super quick pushed those boys out. It went fast.<br />
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Since then, everything has been great. Both boys are nursing well, though Nolan hasn't quite started to gain weight yet (we're going back to the pediatrician on Friday to see if he's made any progress). Dean was measuring high for his jaundice levels while we were still in the hospital and he still looked a bit yellow today when he got checked out at their first appointment, so we have to go get blood tests for him for the next five days to monitor that.<br />
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But really, the boys are great. And coming home with them was fairly easy cause Nettie went to stay with Tucker's sister Barbi for a little while. She still hasn't really been introduced to her brothers yet, and I really miss her. It'll be nice when she comes home.<br />
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That's all for now. I'll sit down to write another post hopefully not too far in the future.Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-92111328850428003302013-11-17T10:46:00.002-07:002013-11-17T10:46:51.534-07:00Terrible TwosWish my 100th post could be about something better, but... ugh.<br />
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So recently Nettie is prone to throwing tantrums if she even slightly disagrees with you. Screaming 'no' and picking up random things just to toss them on the floor again. Just being a brat, in general. Today, I sent her to church with Tucker (cause I woke up reeeeeally late), cause she enjoys being in Nursery. Well, 20 minutes before church is supposed to be over, Tucker comes home with her saying she was kicked out for "being disruptive" and not behaving. She's turned into that kid that you always tell yourself your child will never be. :( <br />
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Granted, she's only a brat half the time; usually she's an absolute doll. I'm not sure if this is just a phase for her or not. It's entirely possible that she's just not getting disciplined properly, which then is all my fault cause Tucker only sees her for maybe two hours a day.<br />
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I'm going to try being more earnest with timeouts this week; maybe that will help a bit. I don't want to resort to spanking cause I don't want her to learn hitting (but I think she's already picked it up from somewhere cause she tried hitting me earlier when she was having a tantrum), but honestly, I was spanked as a kid, and I remember being so afraid of getting spanked again that I wouldn't even dream of doing "bad things" again. I don't want Nettie to be afraid of me though...<br />
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Anyone have any advice?<br />
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I've tried explaining to Nettie why she can't do something or whatever the situation may be, but she's so beyond listening during her tantrums that I doubt that works, and that's the sort of thing that people seem to say you're supposed to do. Do we just stick with timeout? Do we wait for her to mature a little bit more?<br />
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Just ugh...Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-83717742838279950822013-11-05T11:00:00.001-07:002013-11-05T11:00:24.167-07:00It's November...Didn't think November would ever get here, and now here it is! I think we're pretty ready for the boys to get here. I can't move comfortably anymore or get up off the floor or crawl around. It's hard to imagine how I'm going to function through the rest of the month. I don't have motivation for just about anything anymore (cooking, cleaning, going places), so there's lots of sitting around and Nettie is always super excited when Tucker comes home.<br />
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Speaking of Nettie, we seem to be losing naptime. Even though she still definitely needs it, I can't get her to sleep hardly ever in the afternoons anymore, and I don't have the energy to fight her on it. Oh well, earlier bedtime I guess.<br />
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We've been in our new apartment for a month now, and really like it... or well, I like everything except for the fact that it's two stories. But I stay downstairs for the most part anyways. Nettie's potty-trained completely now, and she only likes to go potty upstairs in her bathroom, so that's kind of annoying (cause I still have to help her pull down her undies (doobies, as she calls them for whatever reason)), but it's getting better.<br />
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I'm 33 weeks and 4 days today, so only about three weeks left to go before the induction date (they could always come sooner). It's kind of funny, I thought that the closer I got to my "due date" the less worried I would be, but I seem to be worrying more now that something is going to happen and one of the babies won't make it. That terrifies me. More than likely it's pointless worrying, but the support groups I'm in on facebook have a good handful of women that had situations like that. I know the odds are not high that something will go wrong, but I still worry, and will continue to until both babies are here safe and sound.<br />
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I would write more for this update, but I just spent three hours sitting at WIC with a toddler that doesn't like to cooperate for longer than about half and hour and I'm not in a super great mood. I'll try to get another post up before the boys get here though.<br />
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<br />Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-84737712612524315992013-08-20T10:59:00.000-06:002013-08-20T10:59:55.366-06:0022.5 WeeksK so last time I posted a picture, I was 20.5 weeks along. Conveniently, I'm wearing the same shirt this week for my picture, so maybe differences in size will be easier to see? I dunno, whatevs.<br />
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Aside from looking somewhat shocked in this picture, I think I look a <i>little</i> bigger. Feeling slower each day, for sure. And I can feel that dealing with tantrums (which have become a daily occurrence :( ) or dragging screaming child from the park or store is really hard on me. I probably shouldn't be doing that sort of thing though.<br />
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Speaking of the screaming child, I should probably do a little update about her. And really, for the most part she's adorable and sweet. She's just reached that age where if something frustrates her, even a tiny bit, she flips out and can't control her emotions. We're working on it, and have become very familiar with timeout. This past Sunday we got to church and sat through sacrament meeting in the foyer because she was angry that she couldn't go to nursery immediately. Or well, I sat in the foyer, Tucker took himself and Nettie into the clerks office for timeout. I would say it's embarrassing that she acts like that, but I mean, she's just barely two years old, and a majority of kids go through similar phases. We've just gotta get through it.<br />
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But really, she's mostly just a sweetheart. When I ask her where the babies are she pats my tummy, though I don't know if she quite understands exactly what that means. A few weeks back we decided to start leaving the side of her crib down (with a big box pushed against the side) so she can get out on her own in the mornings. This has actually worked pretty good, the only downside is she comes out about 5-10 times after we've put her down for the night asking for different things. She knows if she asks to go potty when she gets up that I'll oblige and won't just send her back to bed, so that's usually the request.<br />
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Lately her favorite tv show is Jake and the Neverland Pirates, which I'm ok with, cause it's not annoying at all like some little kid shows are. She even understands what Halloween is because of the show, so if she still likes pirates by October, I'll probably try and put together a pirate costume for her.Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-26990397549079282002013-08-10T06:53:00.003-06:002013-08-10T06:53:45.640-06:00Eh...So I fiddled with the blog stuff a bit cause I was bored this morning. Sorry if you don't like it. I'm still trying to decide if I want to leave it this way or not.Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-41108745625381801382013-08-07T11:27:00.002-06:002013-08-10T06:59:01.225-06:0021 WeeksOk, so not quite 21 weeks, technically that's on Friday, but close enough for me. Anywho, I finally took a "belly picture", something I've been putting off cause I was afraid I just look extra fat lately and not actually pregnant. I know I definitely <i>feel</i> pregnant; like, can't lean forward when I sit without multiple kicks of protest, have a hard time getting off the floor when I sit down to do things with Nettie, have EXTREME round ligament pain (it's bad... really, really bad), and I can never seem to find a comfortable position when I sleep at night (I sleep on the couch currently cause our bed was just too hard for me with the whole having to sleep on my side thing). Enough rambling, though. Picture!<br />
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Disregard the fact that I have to use our tablet to take a picture; it's currently the only camera we have (Nettie dipped my digital camera in the sink). For comparison, this post was me at <a href="http://tucktuckandlrp.blogspot.com/2011/02/24-weeks.html" target="_blank">24 weeks with Nettie</a>. Apparently I didn't take any pictures of myself sooner than that when I was pregnant with her. Oh well. I definitely look bigger in this picture, though I'm sure some of that just has to do with the weight I've added on since two and a half years ago. If I actually make it to 37 weeks... I'm kind of scared to know how big I'll be.<br />
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In the worry department this week, there are a couple of things. Least worrisome, we have to move. Apparently you can't have more than 2 adults and 2 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment. *Sigh* When I talked to the office here at our complex about it, they gave us the option of transferring to a 3 bedroom place here without any penalties or fees whenever we want (we just signed our lease again in June), or they said we could just wait till our lease was up next summer to move and it wouldn't be a problem. So we had the choice of moving with or without babies, and we've decided to do the move before they come. Basically by either the end of this month or the end of September we'll be in a new place. Woooo?<br />
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Worrisome thing number two: the internet. This is mostly my fault though. Whenever I get bored, I got searching for stuff about twins, twins support sites, random blogs, etc, and all that you ever find (or at least a very large majority of the time) is the tragic scary stories about people delivering at like 24 and crazy NICU stuff, or losing one of the twins, or other sad scenarios. I'm making myself paranoid. Also, a thing called TTTS (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin-to-twin_transfusion_syndrome" target="_blank">Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome</a>), which is something that can only happen with identical twins. Basically because both babies umbilical cords are hooked to the same placenta, stuff can happen where one baby is receiving more blood and nourishment from me and the other starts to fall behind in growth. This can develop at any time in the pregnancy, and can come about fairly suddenly. TTTS is one of the reasons they like to do so many ultrasounds with twins (so far I've had a doctor's appointment every month, a separate ultrasound appointment, and a home visit nurse person), but from what I'm reading, I'm on the low end of what is standard. Most mo/di twin pregnancies have ultrasounds every two weeks after you're 16 weeks along. I'm gonna ask about that tomorrow at my appointment.<br />
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Third worrisome thing: potty training. I've decided to try and do this with Nettie probably starting next week, but I honestly have no idea how to even go about doing this, even though I've read lots of stuff on it. Although, she's pretty good about going poo on the potty if I catch her before or in the act of it, haha! Today, for instance, she started concentrating real hard, so I asked her if she wanted to go on the potty but she said no and ran off, then I went about my business getting her a drink of juice ready, but she came in really upset with me, still with the ultra-concentration face on and wouldn't let me do anything till I took her into the bathroom and set her on the toilet. She had held pretty much most of it in till we got there. It was impressive. So, that sort of thing is encouraging, but Nettie has a drink with her pretty much all throughout the day, so pee is going to be another story. I doubt she has any idea about what bladder control is yet. Blah.<br />
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I think that's it for this post though... Can't believe I actually wanted to sit down and write something up. Haven't been motivated like that in forever!<br />
Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-41542237508077349492013-07-23T06:02:00.002-06:002013-07-23T06:07:00.578-06:0018.5 WeeksI have a feeling the pregnancy is going to drag on and on. It has only been three weeks since we found out we'd be having twins. That's it! Just 3 weeks! It seriously feels like it's been forever. Maybe it's dragged cause there's been so much going on during that time frame? I dunno. All I know is I'd like it for time to speed up and feel normal again. Bleh.<br />
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Next ultrasound is a week from today. I'm going to try and see if they'll take a picture of both of the babies heads together so I can actually prove there's more than one baby in there.<br />
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We bought car seats this past week. I happened to be near a Babies R Us with my mom while she was in town, so we stopped in and they let me test out a bunch of them in my car. Ended up going with the one I really wanted, but probably wasn't going to get because it was way more expensive than the Graco candidate. But there was an awesome sale on one of the Chicco designs in the style of car seat I needed, and you get an extra 10% off when you have to buy multiples of stuff (woot?), so I got the Chiccos for the same price I would have gotten the Graco for. I like'em.<br />
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Now my mind is focused on breast pumps. I really, really, REALLY want to be able to breastfeed this time around. With Nettie, I could only do so for the first few months (maybe till she was 4 months old?) cause stupid birth control pills sabotaged me. Not doing that again. But yeah, breast pump. Me and Stephanie are planning on going to the Kids Exchange thing this week at the Fair Grounds, so maybe I'll find something I want there... but I've got my heart set on the new Avent pump. Haven't talked to Tucker too much about getting one yet. Maybe I can convince someone to gift it to us?<br />
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OH ALSO! Circumcision. I'm kind of torn on this issue. It's not covered by Medicaid (which is what we have currently for the pregnancy), so we'd have to pay out of pocket for it to be done. As far as I can tell with all the research I've done, there is no medical difference for circumcised or uncircumcised boys, like cleanliness or whatever. It's purely a cosmetic thing. Which I mean.. only 60% of American baby boys are circumcised nowadays apparently, so it wouldn't be weird for them in the locker room later on... Ugh... boy parts. I think I'm fine not having it done. Both because I don't like the idea of my poor little ones possibly being in extreme pain and also because I don't want to fork out an extra couple hundred dollars if we don't have to. Tucker has remained silent on the issue so far. Anyone have any opinion or.. something.. on the subject?<br />
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Lol at the post, by the way. Breast pumps and circumcision. Oh goodness... Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-32868132368298396102013-07-03T05:16:00.000-06:002013-07-23T06:06:40.121-06:00Suprise :)So we got quite the shock yesterday when we went in for our first ultrasound yesterday. We were just hoping for a normal, healthy baby (girl would have been nice too) but was told that we've got TWO normal, healthy babies growing right now. Identical. Oh... and boys.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">INSANE.</span><br />
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I'm still not sure if the whole thing is real, but seeing the two of them squirming around inside yesterday is a hard thing to forget. It's amazing how much this surprise has changed how we're having to think about things. I'm still not entirely sure how it will all work out (or if I will ever have sleep again), but as long as both of them get here healthy and everything continues to go smooth, I won't complain. Or well.. I'll keep my complaining to a minimum. Ok, so probably not, but I won't go complaining publicly. That's the best I can do.<br />
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It's really funny; on our trip this past week with Tucker's family, he and I talked about how many kids we actually wanted to end up having. I honestly wasn't sure how well I was going to handle two munchkins running around, cause while Nettie is a sweetheart, she still doesn't listen very well and can be a handful. So we decided we probably would be done with this "set" of kids for 3-4 years and then see if we wanted to do another couple later on. Welp... that's certainly changed now, haha!<br />
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But I'm not going into this twins thing completely inexperienced. For a couple months earlier this year (just before I found out I was pregnant actually) I was babysitting twin boys whose parents are both in Tucker's lab working on their degrees. Guess Heavenly Father knew Nettie and I needed a little time to prepare for our additions to our family.<br />
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I still stop every few minutes and think about the fact that there's two babies inside me rather than just one, and I can't help but shake my head, just completely stunned.<br />
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Guess we better actually start getting together a list of names of the boys, all we had come up with was the name we wanted for our next girl cause we (or at least I) was so set on having a little sister for Nettie, haha! This is what I get for trying to will that situation into existence.<br />
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Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-43640637997259044772013-04-26T12:17:00.001-06:002013-07-23T06:03:58.766-06:00Been Awhile...I think I've established by now that I'm a horrible blogger, but this is somewhat blog worthy (since I don't want to put it on facebook yet). Baby Dos (that's baby two for those of you that don't count in spanish) is on it's way! :) Only about 8ish weeks<span style="color: red;">((EDIT: In reality I'm actually only 6 weeks at this point))</span>. I've actually had a bit of nausea this time around, so I'm hoping that doesn't mean it's a boy. Cause let's be real here... girls are just better. And I just want girls. Which means this baby is obviously going to be a boy.<br />
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But yeah.. for those few of you that might happen to stumble across this, lucky you! You get to know before everyone on Facebook.<br />
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And who knows, maybe I'll do an update post or two for our little family soon. Don't hold your breath though.Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-9771330606521766232011-09-11T23:16:00.000-06:002011-09-11T23:16:08.330-06:00HomeIt's kind of crazy that I've been gone for six years now, but Phoenix is still 'home'. I'm not sure if it will always be like that for me. Kind of makes sense because I've lived kind of nomadically since I left home, never staying in one apartment for very long. Raleigh, I think, I could definitely call home someday... if we stayed. But more than likely we won't be, which is sad, because I'm really liking the city, love our ward, and love being close to family. Although, we do have the potential to stay in Raleigh for 3ish more years; Tucker just needs to decide if he wants to get his PhD. I'd be fine if he decided that. I'll be fine if he decides he's done with school, as well.<br />
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Anyways.<br />
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I'm home in Phoenix till Wednesday. Been here since this past Tuesday. I haven't really done much, just mostly hung out at home with my parents and Nettie. That was kind of the main point in coming anyways, so that they could see her again while she's still smallish. Jenna was able to come home for the weekend, which was awesome. It's crazy how much we like each other now, considering all the fighting and disliking we did when we were younger. I was sad to see her leave tonight; had to concentrate really hard on not crying in the airport (but she failed, both when she got here and when she left). We must figure out a way to live close to each other someday.<br />
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We had a nice day yesterday filled with family. Got to see my oldest brother and his family (and his kids are so big now it's crazy!), and my Uncle Ron and Aunt Pam. The day was super fun, and apparently exhausting because I fell asleep at like 7:30.<br />
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The home ward was great (as usual), though there are so many people that I don't recognize in it now. It's kind of strange being a "grown-up" in the ward. I remember being a kid, watching all the teenagers leave for college, then get married and start coming back to visit with their kids. Now I'm doing that..... weird.<br />
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Nettie has been pretty good on this trip. Not gonna lie, I was like super stressed to fly with her. She's normally not a big fan of sitting (while being held) for long periods of time, and that's basically all I can do on the flights. But we survived. The first flight people were super helpful. I was in the last group to board the plane and had a diaper bag and backpack with me plus Nettie, so when I got to my row to sit down, I looked at my seat and then at my bags and must have looked frazzled or something cause a bunch of people sitting near me asked to help me out. I'm so glad there are decent and nice people in the world. Couldn't have made this trip without strangers offering assistance along the way. Also glad that the older lady I sat next to on the flight didn't care when spit up rolled off of me and onto her. And glad that she and the guy sitting on my other side didn't complain when Nettie pooped with an hour left in the flight (this poop ended up as a blow-out too.... yeah....). Second flight Nettie just slept the whole time, so it went much more smoothly, all in all, than I pictured it going. Now we just have to make it home to Raleigh, and I'm sure I'll stress over that trip until it's over.<br />
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And tonight I was able to get together with a few of my high school friends (as well as some of their new friends). It's awesome that no matter how long I'm gone for I can just come back and basically pick up where I left off with them. Pretty sure I'll be able to call them my friends for my whole life, which is great, cause they're all awesome people. I wish that I could come home more often to visit, but I'm glad that I can always see them on the few times that I do come home.<br />
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But yes. My trip has been good thus far. I've been really bad at taking pictures so far, but I always am. I'll just steal pictures from my mom and Jenna eventually.Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-49738219600719116272011-08-09T08:53:00.000-06:002011-08-09T08:53:49.181-06:00General Updates (because I can't think of a more clever title)I realized I haven't actually done a post for about a month now, so I figured I'd take advantage of Nettie's vaccine induced exhaustion and write a quick little update for those of you that read this.<br />
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I'll start with Nettie since she's the cutest and most interesting of our little Smith clan. She's 9 weeks old now, which is kind of insane when I stop to think about it. At the risk of sounding cliche, it feels like we've already had her. But what a little blessing she is! She's started "talking" to me sometimes when I talk to her, and she's also smiling on a more consistent basis; though, if she doesn't feel like it, she won't, no matter how long I make ridiculous faces at her. She also can hold her head up pretty good... well, pretty good in comparison to not at all. There's still a fair amount of bobble-headedness going on, but she likes to be held up right so she can look around at stuff.<br />
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The stats from her appointment yesterday are:<br />
Height: 22"<br />
Weight: Right under 12lbs<br />
Head Circumference: Hmm... I don't actually remember. We think her head looks huge, but apparently it's right in the same percentile as her height and weight.<br />
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And speaking of percentiles, she's basically between the 50th and 75th percentile on everything. A fairly average baby I guess. She got three shots and one oral vaccine at the appointment. Needless to say, she did not like getting jabbed in her thighs, and I don't blame her. The cute little tears were streaming down her face even before I had a chance to pick her up. And when Tucker and I took off the bandaids at home later, the painful scream and tears started again, which made me cry (something that I've never done in relation to her). I just felt so bad that I couldn't make her feel better. But for the most part, she slept all day yesterday and is now asleep (with a small fever) again this morning. Poor baby :( I just kept telling her it was for her own good; hopefully she understands.<br />
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I've been cleared to start exercising, which I am itching to start doing. Why haven't I started already? Last week was crazy busy, and so far this week, I've felt too bad leaving Nettie alone cause she's feeling pretty crummy from her shots. Hopefully tomorrow she'll be doing well enough that I can head down to the gym and sign up, cause let's face it, I look pretty gross. Haven't exactly been the most disciplined person when it comes to eating or exercising since we got married, and it definitely shows. I want to try to get back to what I weighed in high school... or at least my first year of college.<br />
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Also, I started taking birth control pills about a month ago (because that's when I was told to start taking them back while we were still in the hospital), and since that first week, my milk production has gone down. So far down that we have had to feed Nettie a bottle of formula a couple times a day because I simply don't have anything to give her. While I'm not opposed to formula, it's kind of frustrating that I'm not able to satisfy my baby's hunger. I asked her pediatrician about it yesterday, and she said that my pills probably have the wrong mix of hormones in them for a nursing mother. More than likely I'm going to stop taking them and opt for a more... uh... direct form of birth control and see if that helps with milk production.<br />
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Tucker has pretty much finished up his lit review (which is basically 30ish pages of him summarizing stuff that other people have written about similar stuff that he did his research on) and should be starting his thesis soon. He also needs to get his resume updated so he can start sending it out to companies. Kind of crazy to think that we're less than five months (potentially) away from having a real job. Dr. Drake keeps telling Tucker that he should take a job with Glambia, a company in Twin Falls, Idaho........................................................................................ yeah. Not exactly thrilled with the location, but apparently she thinks they would be a great company to work for and thinks that Tucker would fit into the lab there really well. Also, the guy that runs the lab is a Bishop, and I'm sure many of the other workers there are Mormon as well, so maybe she just thinks that we need to be surrounded by Mormons, haha, I don't know. We're not ruling it out as a possibility, but we'd really like to stay on the east coast (could always go work for Campbell's soup in Camden(?), New Jersey: worst city in America 2008!)<br />
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I can't think of anything else off the top of my head that I'd need to include in this. It's probably already way longer than most of you will want to read. My bad. Oh! At the beginning of next month I'm going to be flying out to Phoenix for a week long visit which I'm pretty excited about. Flying with Nettie will be a bit interesting I'm sure, but we'll survive. Lots of people do it.<br />
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And to Lindsey: One way or another I'll be in Phoenix for Christmas this year. You can count on it.Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-88116269419574440002011-08-09T08:24:00.000-06:002011-08-09T08:24:03.825-06:002 Monday Pictures<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL0ds7q8sGzykCS2lvujpSnS8WXQU7c2RqcSVV8VHAfiFwJG4Q2hCE7wbd9PA_JeWTXGIQ2d8Qi6EXx0sImia-ZLspn6eusyZXN40eHYlhyphenhyphen4g-f_gKeCOV7Jm8nmf50qYkwtNorOaMOPis/s1600/8.1.11.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL0ds7q8sGzykCS2lvujpSnS8WXQU7c2RqcSVV8VHAfiFwJG4Q2hCE7wbd9PA_JeWTXGIQ2d8Qi6EXx0sImia-ZLspn6eusyZXN40eHYlhyphenhyphen4g-f_gKeCOV7Jm8nmf50qYkwtNorOaMOPis/s320/8.1.11.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">August 1, 2011</div><div style="text-align: center;"> Nettie got to borrow this new awesome swing from Aunt Katie. It's pretty much our favorite thing now.</div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUpFAV4wk3UnoMfG1Wt5y72gsuo9XEI4VVSXfCZo2M6pjnooBYZIFW7fraYxnYDjWPlMIFcInUjLE_XpX1AYwTXCV9ea8EFmlUxal45TGfSG7_hRZtPw_WQZh9ImHx73VnA3BG376uj2rE/s1600/8.8.11.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUpFAV4wk3UnoMfG1Wt5y72gsuo9XEI4VVSXfCZo2M6pjnooBYZIFW7fraYxnYDjWPlMIFcInUjLE_XpX1AYwTXCV9ea8EFmlUxal45TGfSG7_hRZtPw_WQZh9ImHx73VnA3BG376uj2rE/s320/8.8.11.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">August 8, 2011</div><div style="text-align: center;">The aftermath of the two-month check up. Shots are hard :(</div>Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-24680594690909778482011-07-26T14:43:00.000-06:002011-07-26T14:43:44.283-06:00Monday PictureOk, so this week's picture isn't technically from yesterday (even though I did take some last night), it's from this morning. I couldn't help but pick this picture, though. She's so dang cute in it!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhjhmBs7DUe1q4lusjb9NnLe1bodT0JL9AWg75awr8LixiaMQ_wPQUMuBQgLB8bAjhKPTYK_3c8Z5vbzSLlDu4v_Le_qNkTYilM8T72kscbUDWEr6leminJswTBKaGb7X6aUNjBM9s_nNx/s1600/DSCN0643.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhjhmBs7DUe1q4lusjb9NnLe1bodT0JL9AWg75awr8LixiaMQ_wPQUMuBQgLB8bAjhKPTYK_3c8Z5vbzSLlDu4v_Le_qNkTYilM8T72kscbUDWEr6leminJswTBKaGb7X6aUNjBM9s_nNx/s320/DSCN0643.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">July 25, 2011</div>Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-76769113469882837562011-07-19T06:57:00.000-06:002011-07-19T06:57:24.763-06:00Monday Picture(s)I didn't post a picture last week, but I did take one. I just never really think about getting onto my blog to do that kind of thing. But I did think about it this morning, so voila! <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdqakY9cP2vOq5xYhESu5potMXRqKEVVGHP7xjPQ7j-Fvvn4xdxBPfVaY8Fh-3UT7VlbjufdTuwbg3hgbFvhZ29tyorizpNuzLRpS9CUliteO_3Ewq5s0ShpwZuMud0t8hcg66BIrg0VKv/s1600/7.11.11.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdqakY9cP2vOq5xYhESu5potMXRqKEVVGHP7xjPQ7j-Fvvn4xdxBPfVaY8Fh-3UT7VlbjufdTuwbg3hgbFvhZ29tyorizpNuzLRpS9CUliteO_3Ewq5s0ShpwZuMud0t8hcg66BIrg0VKv/s320/7.11.11.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">July 11, 2011</div><div style="text-align: center;"> Tucker was at a conference the first half of this week so Mommy decided she would sleep in the bed (I've slept on the couch in the front room with Nettie since she was born), and so when I fed Nettie and got up, she stayed asleep and it was super cute.</div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwiVefI8eb1Gnm7jAg5144PwYEUWdIgvDI9bBgEMJG7aTYbXmt8YFj4PkBVtETLOm7hZio3NswFRxxBGRYTi4bF2v2GwO76EAA6CQV0rhe2hEbs6cIZgulaEBEmq8jl0-Hs2jEtq6kl75a/s1600/7.18.11.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwiVefI8eb1Gnm7jAg5144PwYEUWdIgvDI9bBgEMJG7aTYbXmt8YFj4PkBVtETLOm7hZio3NswFRxxBGRYTi4bF2v2GwO76EAA6CQV0rhe2hEbs6cIZgulaEBEmq8jl0-Hs2jEtq6kl75a/s320/7.18.11.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">July 18, 2011</div><div style="text-align: center;">First trip to Walmart = Success! Also, first ride in our jogging stroller. She did pretty good. I think she's a bit on the small side for it still (it's not recommended for use until they're 6 months old... yeeeeaah.), but it was fun to push her around and have everybody smile at her. And not gonna lie, like 6 people either talked to me and Tucker or made a comment in passing to me about her as we were walking through the store. Even the general public thinks Nettie is adorable! Who can blame them though?</div>Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-60828985436126216522011-07-07T12:42:00.002-06:002011-07-07T12:42:16.160-06:00:)She smiled for reals this morning. Adorable. No pictures yet. Working on it though.Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-73610778188128806442011-07-06T14:39:00.000-06:002011-07-06T14:39:37.608-06:00Happy 1 month birthday!Nettie's a month old today. Crazy. That went way too fast. Or maybe it just seems that way because my days and nights sort of blended together for awhile. <br />
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Anyways, went to the doctor this afternoon (and left right before it started to downpour, thank goodness) and she's doing really well. Gained a full pound since her last appointment (which was 2 weeks ago) and now weighs in at 9lbs 12oz. Little chunker. Although... she still doesn't look all that chubby. Getting there, just not there yet. She's also now 21inches long (a gain of 3/4"). Percentile-wise she's right about 50% with everything. Average baby, yay!<br />
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She hasn't quite started smiling yet. I think she's really close though. Every now and then she'll get this cute look on her face that's like right on the verge of a smile. I'm sure when she does smile it'll be adorable though.<br />
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Also, Katie let me borrow her Moby wrap this past weekend cause I couldn't figure out my sling. Holy crap, love this thing! Used it for the first time a couple days ago and as soon as I had it tied on Nettie was zonked out. Even as we speak, she's strapped to my chest (sleeping). Awesome! I have hands to do things with again.... well.... at least when I'm holding her, that is.Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-67718647638380051022011-07-05T09:44:00.000-06:002011-07-05T09:44:34.887-06:00Nettie's BlessingIn church this past Sunday we did Nettie's baby blessing. It was a super special experience (made better by the fact that she decided to sleep through sacrament meeting) and all the guys in Tucker's family excluding Sam were in the circle, and my parents made the trip back out here so that my dad would be able to participate as well. Katie (my sister-in-law extraordinaire) was much more clever than me and wrote down the blessing as Tucker was giving it. I would never have thought to do that, but I'm really glad that she did because this will be something sweet to show Nettie later on in life.<br />
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I didn't think to get a group picture of everyone while we were at the church building (mostly because I think everyone was hungry and wanted to get out of there to eat lunch), but we did get some group shots later at Shad and Katie's house, so hopefully Barbi will upload those soon so that I can post them. I did take some pictures of Nettie in her dress though. She's swimming in it, but it's really cool cause it was the dress that I was blessed in. Yeah, that's right; retro.... or vintage. One or the other.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><div style="font: 0.7em 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif; width: 400px;"><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" height="300" width="400"><param name="FlashVars" value="galleryid=15052161214_8GTpB"/><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"/><param name="movie" value="http://www.picnik.com/slide/slide.swf"/><embed src="http://www.picnik.com/slide/slide.swf" width="400" height="300" wmode="transparent" allowScriptAccess="always" FlashVars="galleryid=15052161214_8GTpB"></embed></object><div style="float: left;"><a href="http://www.picnik.com/show/id/15052161214_8GTpB/t/netties-blessing">"<b>Nettie's Blessing</b>"</a></div><div style="float: right;"><a href="http://www.picnik.com/" target="_blank">Create a free slideshow with Picnik!</a></div></div></div>Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-54087782799322782942011-07-04T19:35:00.000-06:002011-07-04T19:35:14.595-06:00MiraclesI'm not quite sure where to start this post. The subject matter for it is fairly emotional not only for me, but for the whole Smith clan. I guess I'll start by saying that this weekend we blessed Nettie. All but one of her Smith (and Williams) uncles were here, and both of her Grandpa's were here as well. It was a truly sweet experience, highlighted by the fact that her Uncle Scott was still here to participate in the event.<br />
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Thursday evening, Tucker and I were getting ready to head up to Shad and Katie's house to play some D&D. Right after 6pm (I think), Tucker got a call from his mom. I didn't really think about it, or pay much attention to what he was saying on the phone because she calls fairly regularly, and I assumed she was just asking about something for the upcoming weekend when the whole family would be here in Raleigh. When Tucker got off the phone, he said that Scott had been in an accident (a motorcycle accident) and they couldn't get ahold of Stephanie to let her know. The hospital chaplain had called Lois instead, hoping that she would be able to reach Stephanie. All they had told her was that they thought that Scott was ok. Not the most reassuring statement, as ok could mean a lot of things.<br />
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The next few minutes, Tucker tried to get ahold of Stephanie, calling her cell and her work, but couldn't get through. But shortly after all this trying, he got a call from her instead, asking him to come to the hospital with her. So of course he said yes. I called Katie to let her know that if we made it to the game that night, it would be late (seeing as we didn't know how Scott was doing). Tucker left with Stephanie and promised that he would call soon to let me know what was going on.<br />
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About an hour later, Tucker called and told me that Scott was relatively ok. We found out that his accident had happened while Scott was driving home from a job interview on the 440... that's right, he crashed his motorcycle while driving on the freeway. So immediately, I thought that he must have been hurt pretty bad, but his list of injuries was a concussion, a broken collarbone, and some road rash on his hands and knees. Extremely good considering the circumstances. Tucker stayed at the hospital with Steph until about midnight.<br />
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The next day Tucker went to school a little late, explaining to one of his labmates that he had been at the hospital late with his brother. When he got to school, he explained his injuries to them and then told them where the accident had happened. More than one of them had driven by (and got caught behind the traffic) of Scott's accident, and they even expressed to Tucker that they were amazed that Scott was even alive from how bad it had looked. <br />
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From what we can piece together, Scott somehow lost control of the bike (whether he was hit, or blew a tire, or just lost control isn't really known) and was thrown into the median (just a concrete barrier separating the two sides of the freeway). His bike hit the median as well, but bounced back out into traffic, where it hit one car, and was then caught under another car. The bike (supposedly) exploded, and the car that it was trapped under, burned and melted with it.<br />
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While this accident was certainly bad and will leave Scott a gimp for a little while, he was extremely lucky. If Scott had bounced back out into traffic like the bike, he would have been killed. And really, it's amazing that he wasn't killed or more seriously injured just by being thrown from a bike going 70 mph. Even more amazing is that Scott was discharged from the hospital the evening after the accident.<br />
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Lois joked today that she was happy Scott decided to time his accident with this weekend since they were going to be up here anyways for the blessing. I think that we all realize just how close we came to loosing Scott, and even though this was a happy weekend, there was a definite feel of gratitude underlying everything. The family simply would not have been the same without Scott, and I know that Nettie was glad that he was able to be in the circle to help bless her on Sunday.<br />
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All in all, a very memorable Fourth of July weekend for the Smiths.Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-85255187632301225192011-07-04T19:12:00.000-06:002011-07-04T19:12:05.793-06:00Monday PictureSo I realize that I missed doing last week's picture, but Nettie has been sleeping weirdly for about a week now, and so I nap a lot during the day. Anything that doesn't involve taking care of Nettie or sleeping sort of goes right out the door and I forget. She's started to sleep a little bit better again, so hopefully this lasts.<br />
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Today has been four weeks since Nettie was born. Crazy! And she's still alive! Wahoo! <br />
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I would have taken her picture today in her cute little red outfit for the Fourth, but she spit up all over it. So here's a slightly less glamorous picture (or two).<br />
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This last picture is the one that was taken today before my parents flew home. They were out here this weekend while we did Nettie's blessing. I'm really grateful that they were able to be here for such a special day.Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-48895367543957481612011-07-01T13:50:00.000-06:002011-07-01T13:50:58.940-06:00UpdateSo I promise I'm still alive (and so is Nettie), I just haven't been able to think of anything interesting to blog about lately. Also, the time that I have when I'm not feeding/holding/taking care of Nettie is spent either sleeping or just doing something mindless and lazy (I've watched a ton of Psych in the past couple weeks).<br />
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Nettie's blessing is this Sunday and hopefully it will all be ok. My parents are coming in for the weekend, and Tucker's family will all be here as well (except for Sam). There was a fairly significant piece of drama that happened last night that I'm sure will alter the "plans" that we had for this weekend with the family, but that's ok. We're just glad that everyone is ok. (I'll probably post more on this later, but I'm not sure how private the people involved want it to be).<br />
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For now though, enjoy this cute video of Nettie... although, all videos of her are cute. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0Oyd_A8telY/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0Oyd_A8telY?f=user_uploads&c=google-webdrive-0&app=youtube_gdata" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0Oyd_A8telY?f=user_uploads&c=google-webdrive-0&app=youtube_gdata" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div>Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-5083206195088921732011-06-20T19:51:00.000-06:002011-06-20T19:51:31.272-06:00Random Video<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>So this video isn't of anything exciting, but I think it's cute. It's just of one of the few times that Nettie is awake and not crying or eating during the day. I also have a couple of her hiccuping, but I haven't uploaded them yet. Maybe I'll get around to it.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/bZUcVy0nf0c?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-11427319633150421902011-06-20T19:47:00.000-06:002011-06-20T19:47:09.470-06:00Monday Picture<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzd6T8qpjOuZvU5QfwinBlaXpGSUdfhfP4Z1LnuRjik7BlsqkV8Zy5qy1NL3gf3tMAxkOSSiXEIaNWxehOh5CfBzBqU0v4omd4mp7OYKsm7BeUluoLeXkDh8xGS0QtPGU0Fp9G6_iOq9FJ/s1600/6.20.11.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzd6T8qpjOuZvU5QfwinBlaXpGSUdfhfP4Z1LnuRjik7BlsqkV8Zy5qy1NL3gf3tMAxkOSSiXEIaNWxehOh5CfBzBqU0v4omd4mp7OYKsm7BeUluoLeXkDh8xGS0QtPGU0Fp9G6_iOq9FJ/s320/6.20.11.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">June 20, 2011</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Here's this Monday's picture. I think from now on I'll try to get her in basically the same pose. And just for memory's sake: Nettie was not very happy most of today. Slept for about 6 hours (longest stretch yet), and pooped like a billion times.... literally. And since Tucker does pretty much all the diaper changes when he's home, he was not very happy. But I laughed. :)Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-16942189348121216772011-06-16T08:10:00.000-06:002011-06-16T08:10:32.224-06:00A Few FrustrationsI definitely love being a mom, but the past couple days have been really hard. I came down with some dang head cold thing that Tucker got while we were in the hospital, and so all that I've wanted to do is sleep. Nettie was cooperating with this desire for about a day, but the past two days or so, she won't sleep anywhere but in my arms or laying on my chest. This makes sleeping fairly uncomfortable for me because I have to prop myself up and then can't move the entire night either, leading to some annoying back and neck pain the following morning.<br />
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On top of all this, Nettie seems to have regressed a little bit with the whole nursing thing. She'll start rooting around to eat, and then when said nipple (yes, I said nipple) is in her wide open mouth she'll do this bounce off my boob thing with her face and will open and close her mouth, but won't latch on and will then scream because she's not getting anything to eat. <br />
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In the middle of the night when I try to feed her in my sickness and sleep-deprived zombie state, I/we end up soaking just about everything that both of us are wearing, and that's really annoying too, cause then we're both cold and I have to change us, and it makes more laundry, which is hard to do because we don't have a washer and dryer in our apartment, but have to go to the laundry facilities at our complex or lug it all to one of my sister-in-laws homes to use their machines, which I then feel bad about just because.<br />
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Hopefully this will only last a couple days and Nettie will go back to being the perfect baby that she was. And I really, really, really hope she doesn't catch what I have right now......... that would not be fun at all.Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-40646733756153161962011-06-14T17:50:00.000-06:002011-06-14T17:50:54.641-06:00A Picture Every MondayI can't remember exactly who was telling me about this cute idea, but I liked it a lot and figured I could attempt to do it. The deal is that you take a picture on the same day every week of your child for a year or however long to show their growth, etc. Since Nettie was born on a Monday, that's the day that I'll use.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy8VIBkFE1MvrKgRcYcEJyZqlUhC75tVGP-FT_zY3M3D8zip_emNOGAANyAgOIHdSsQrzwIee_AnHUX-9HdjlII2cbiU-XEzDA9X9uHzKji5bR9OId11QyHE-1ANdGRn9Sv6JKjc14Bh_2/s1600/6.6.11.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy8VIBkFE1MvrKgRcYcEJyZqlUhC75tVGP-FT_zY3M3D8zip_emNOGAANyAgOIHdSsQrzwIee_AnHUX-9HdjlII2cbiU-XEzDA9X9uHzKji5bR9OId11QyHE-1ANdGRn9Sv6JKjc14Bh_2/s320/6.6.11.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">June 6, 2011 </div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bsRyuSkIe3I/TffzFGp-q7I/AAAAAAAAAR0/A8F4r-fJyLg/s1600/6.13.11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bsRyuSkIe3I/TffzFGp-q7I/AAAAAAAAAR0/A8F4r-fJyLg/s320/6.13.11.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">June 13, 2011</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The picture from yesterday was taken during a photo shoot that my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law were kind enough to give to Tucker and I as a present. This is the only one that I've seen so far, but I love it! Soooo cute!</div>Laurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3499525788855945168.post-77522896165295762612011-06-14T04:32:00.000-06:002011-06-14T04:32:57.877-06:00Little Miss Nettie SmithSo I got a surprising 9 hours of sleep last night (total, not in a row) and Nettie is asleep once again. Figured I'd at least try to start this post. Kind of hard to believe that we've had Nettie for almost a week now. She's fit so perfectly into our lives, and to risk sounding cliche, it's like she's was always here. Anyways... on with the story.<br />
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Our induction was scheduled for Sunday (June 5th) at 830pm. On the instruction sheet that they gave me at my final doctor's appointment, it told us to call the hospital an hour before the set time to make sure that there was a bed available for me. Neither Tucker or I thought this would be a problem because the two times that we'd been up at the hospital before (once for our tour, the second to be monitored for a little while) it had been fairly slow in the Labor and Delivery area. We called anyways, and the girl I talked to asked if they could call us back because she needed to find out about availability from someone who was on break when we called. That was fine with me.<br />
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We finished collecting our stuff and headed down to the car at 8 even though we still hadn't been called back. I decided to call again as I walked to the dumpster to throw away some trash and while Tucker pulled the car around. I spoke with the person that had been on break and (go figure) they didn't have any room for me. Talk about a major disappointment. She said that we would probably have to go in the next morning instead, but asked how late we were willing to go in that night, just in case something opened up. I told her that it didn't really matter since we had been planning on being up the whole night anyways.<br />
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So, we went and got some hamburgers from Burger King (we had already started driving by the time I finished talking with the woman), which we probably wouldn't have normally done, but I hadn't eaten since noon-ish per my instructions, the nurse told me to go ahead and eat since they didn't know when I was going to be called in, and we didn't have any food in our apartment (sort of, nothing to make a meal out of at least). Back at home, we decided to watch a little tv before I went to bed, but between 930 and 10 the nurse called and asked if we could come in at 1130 that night instead. Um, duh.<br />
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When we got to the hospital, we had to check in at the emergency room because patient registration (where we would have gone during the daytime) was closed for construction. Checked in, and made our way up to L&D. When we got to the desk there, a nurse took us back to our room and started to ask all the normal questions. By the time I had gotten changed and stuff signed it was close to midnight, and they needed to check my 'progress' to see if they would start me on pitocin or a balloon thingy (honestly can't remember the name of it) that they would put in my cervix to help me get started dilating. I was only about 1cm, which wasn't much of an improvement from when they had checked me on Tuesday. So in went the balloon. They said that I should start feeling a little crampy (which I did), and so they would give me a pill to help me sleep. I agreed to take the pill, thinking it would take like half an hour tops to get the dang thing, but didn't end up getting it until after 230ish am.<br />
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The next morning my new nurse woke me up at 6 to take a shower and to check to see if the balloon would come out easily (meaning that I had dilated to at least 3cm). The balloon definitely came out, and I was between a 3 and a 4, completed effaced. They got all my IVs started right around 645am and so now all we had to do was wait.<br />
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Around 1130am, they came to check me again and decided to break my water. In doing this, we found out that little Nettie had already pooped for the first time because there was some staining to the fluid. The only difference this really made was that they would have to check her briefly before allowing me to hold her right after she was born. No big deal. Up until this point though, I hadn't been uncomfortable or feeling any sort of pain, like, at all. I remember thinking how easy being in labor was. Little did I know that as soon as my water was broken, things would change. I started to actually feel the contractions, and to me it seemed like they were coming like 3 minutes apart (I never actually timed them out though). My parents and Jenna had arrived at the hospital by this point too, and whenever I started to have a contraction, my dad would let me squeeze his hand. I went like this for about 15 minutes before I decided to call the nurse back in to tell her to start getting me ready to have an epidural.<br />
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So they started me on another bag of fluids that I had to drain before they would even call the doctor down. They finally called him down around 1pm and by 105pm they had the IV in my back and the medicine going. Ah, sweet relief! I felt great again. I dozed off and on for awhile (pretty sure that my family left to go do something else when they came to do the epidural), and they didn't really feel the need to check my progress for a few hours. Around 440pm, though, the nurse came in and told me that she was going to turn the pitocin off because Nettie's heartbeat was starting to look a little bit questionable. Nothing to worry about, but it was starting to look like it could become irregular. They also gave me an oxygen mask to wear to see if that helped at all.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjgLyaMRQIxaY3xTl5LLVP6fbD-1MF1OpXq2Rzg2A4jM8N6-Aw4qOIJriWybYkyu5hxH5fRkuXU6e9xgGhjslRt9z91YRZeaovaEzODDCn8JwS6qcnkyKaCt9poaCRNriU4JIAYbKz5OJZ/s1600/DSCN0416.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjgLyaMRQIxaY3xTl5LLVP6fbD-1MF1OpXq2Rzg2A4jM8N6-Aw4qOIJriWybYkyu5hxH5fRkuXU6e9xgGhjslRt9z91YRZeaovaEzODDCn8JwS6qcnkyKaCt9poaCRNriU4JIAYbKz5OJZ/s320/DSCN0416.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
While the nurse was in the room turning off the one IV, I mentioned to her that I would sometimes feel pressure like I had to go to the bathroom. So she called a doctor in to check me (and like 5 people came along, apparently they had all been at a delivery next door and decided to come; a couple of them were 'student' doctors though, so they were just observing). They checked me, and lo and behold, I was completely dilated! They had me try pushing a couple times (which I don't know if I was doing right cause all I could really feel was that pressure), and then they decided to let me sit for about another half hour before doing more pushing so that I didn't have to push for like an hour and so that Nettie could descend a little more on her own. <br />
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I didn't really care that I would have to wait a little bit longer, but it was exciting that stuff was actually going to start happening soon. My Dad left the room and we waited for about 15 minutes before I decided that the pressure (which was starting to strengthen and was really hard to ignore) was great enough that I had to call the nurse back in. I definitely felt the need to push now. So she sat down on the bed with me around 520pm, I'm sure thinking that we would probably be pushing for awhile because she didn't bother to call the doctor yet.<br />
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We started pushing. It took me a couple of contractions to figure out exactly what to do because of the epidural, but about fifteen minutes later, the nurse got up to call the doctor. We kept pushing, and I could definitely feel something coming out of me. In just a few more pushes, Nettie's head was about half way out of me and my nurse told me not to push anymore. I remember thinking that she was ridiculously stupid. How the heck was I supposed to hold off on pushing when the baby was basically coming out of me on my own? I kept telling her, "I need to push, I can't stop, I need to push," but she kind of ignored me. I really couldn't stop myself from pushing though; it was physically impossible.<br />
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The doctor arrived just in time to wash her hands real quick and watch as Nettie came out into the nurse's hands (way to go, Doc) at 538pm. Tucker cut the cord (I think), they checked her out, and then I was holding her. My perfect, sweet, little baby. She was here, and I couldn't have cared less that they were starting to stitch me up (I had a 3rd degree perennial tear because Nettie came so quickly).<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlvvC5tqUzagtxjGyyDFSdvsgjcl-snERS3vHfbt2h6SbUNnisrBfSkRX3qh7b_9GBD8e-hV2aJ2uzWTyL5RfzLKVoaEhKRyhauqI7qEUhqxaOYjxmnRd6n9eXY1NuFjfcVqPakI4vaXMH/s1600/DSCN0417.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlvvC5tqUzagtxjGyyDFSdvsgjcl-snERS3vHfbt2h6SbUNnisrBfSkRX3qh7b_9GBD8e-hV2aJ2uzWTyL5RfzLKVoaEhKRyhauqI7qEUhqxaOYjxmnRd6n9eXY1NuFjfcVqPakI4vaXMH/s320/DSCN0417.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
In total, I pushed for about 20 minutes. Apparently that's quick. I'm just pro at pushing I guess, haha! Both Jenna and my mom were able to be in the room with us as well when Nettie was born, which I think is kind special.<br />
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Now as far as naming her goes.... During the time that my family had been gone that afternoon, Tucker and I looked at the list of names that we liked and narrowed it down to three. My favorite: Eleanor Janet. Tucker's favorite: Emmeline Lynette. And then a completely out of the blue name that we hadn't really discussed before: Lynette Meryl. Tucker suggested it, saying that he thought it would make a pretty first name as well as a pretty middle name. I actually kind of like it. We both agree that if that name was used, we would not be calling her Lynn for short. And we decided to pair Meryl with it (my little sister's middle name) because unfortunately, Lynette Janet didn't quite flow well enough for us. At this point, we didn't decide for sure on a name because we both still wanted to see her first. But I think that my mind was sort of already set on Lynette, and as soon as she came out, I was certain that that was her name.<br />
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Little Nettie weighed 8lbs 2oz and was 20 1/4 inches long. When she popped out of me, she inhaled quicker than the nurse could suction out her mouth and nose (remember the meconium staining in my water), but she was screaming so well right after they checked her that they weren't concerned about that at all.<br />
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We got the chance to try breastfeeding while they were stitching me up, and Nettie latched on perfectly (and has ever since). About an hour or so (I think, not really sure) after Nettie was born, my family all got to come back to the room to see her. Lois and Stephanie had arrived as well and were able to see her. When they came in, I asked if Tucker had told them her name yet (because he had been the one to go out and get them). He hadn't. So I told them, and immediately started to cry when I said her middle name and looked at Jenna (I'm kind of a softy). I'm pretty sure that we caught Lois off guard with our name choice though (Lynette is her middle name), and the next morning when she came to visit I remember her asking if we like Meryl Lynette better, haha! Lynette is definitely her name though.<br />
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The rest of the hospital stay was pretty easy though. I was never really in any pain or discomfort from my stitches (still aren't actually), and so I never had to take anything stronger than Ibuprofen. Poor Tucker though, due to lack of sleep the first couple nights that we were in the hospital, started to feel really crappy and got a sinus infection sort of thing. Because of this, and the fact that Nettie did not like sleeping in the little tub they had in our room for her, I got a total of about 6 hours of sleep for the 3 nights/days that we were there. Though, that hasn't really bothered me much either.<br />
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Also, holy crap, I am a milk making machine! I know this is gross/tmi, but the second that I take my bra off to nurse or take a shower, I'm seriously dripping all over everything. Kind of annoying. But I shouldn't complain really, because Nettie has already passed her birth weight, and according to the lactation consult I talked to this morning, she's done it a week faster than most solely breastfed babies. Go us!<br />
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Mostly she's just the best baby in the world. She's adorable, and she sleeps really really good. Lately (meaning the past two days) she's gone for 4-5 hour stretches before waking up, which is very nice for me and Tucker because we both seem to have gotten a head cold. We also got some newborn pictures taken of Nettie (courtesy of my mother-in-law and two awesome sisters-in-law), so hopefully those will get edited soon so that I can show them off to everyone :).<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixwaiIUbzQ8zgw3K2Jqv-bLdKfcAL9xMvrJOBEOTD6RmfOAosvVdEE0h70iIPyGKTeLzEqnYAv5j8EPdaZ66YgsQFwm8rrWp-dpMTKH-u_zpJYVnRxVi11wWhwaNr_KfJ1qpl91kaOb9rd/s1600/DSCN0450.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixwaiIUbzQ8zgw3K2Jqv-bLdKfcAL9xMvrJOBEOTD6RmfOAosvVdEE0h70iIPyGKTeLzEqnYAv5j8EPdaZ66YgsQFwm8rrWp-dpMTKH-u_zpJYVnRxVi11wWhwaNr_KfJ1qpl91kaOb9rd/s320/DSCN0450.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>But yeah. Be jealous of my uber cute baby :DLaurenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06611745751057763603noreply@blogger.com1