Meeting Great Grandparents

Aden met his great grandpa and grandma...

Unfortunately, great grandma pulled a Houdini disappearing act when the cameras came out.  Here's to the 7th great grandchild!

Bath Time!

When we first brought Aden home from the hospital, he wasn't a huge fan of "bath time." I think it was mainly because we had to do sponge baths since his umbilical cord was still attached.  But now he enjoys sitting in the warm water.

I love this boy!

Congratulations Stephen and Katie!

My cousin Stephen just recently proposed to his girlfriend Katie and she said YES! He proposed to her at the airport when she got back from a trip.  We were all waiting for them at her house when she got back.  Here are some pics from us getting ready for the after party and Stephen getting pumped up.

This is my friend Katie.  We like to run and hike together and beat John and her husband in lots of board games.  When they pair up against Katie and I, they just can't seem to win! ;)

Of course he loves his mom!

Here is the ring!

Congrats Stephen and Katie! I'm so happy for you both and am sorry I probably won't be able to make it for your wedding.  Maybe I can skype in!

Gone Fishin'

The other weekend John and I went fishing at Woods Canyon Lake with my parents, my aunt Robin, uncle Phil, my cousin Megan and her husband Arturo and their sweet son Sully.  He is almost exactly 9 months older than Aden.  Woods Canyon is just an hour outside of Payson... we left Phoenix about 4:30 am in order to have an early breakfast at the Payson airport.

Aden after his breakfast at the Payson airport

John getting my pole ready for me as any good husband should do... ;)

My dad and uncle out in the boat

Megan and Robin

Sleepy boy

John feeding these crazy chipmunks before we realized they were crazy...

As soon as we brought out the food, the chipmunks came out of the wood works.  At first we thought they were cute until they were trying to jump into our bag of potato chips and interested in what Aden's car seat was. 

Much to Megan's dismay... John ended up bringing a few of these little creatures to their untimely demise... One with a stick and the other with a rock! 

I love this picture that Megan took!

I didn't catch any fish.  John and my dad caught 1 each and my other family caught a few.  Sad day for fishing but beautiful weather and a wonderful time with the fam!

1 month old

I know I just put up my birth story but here is some pictures of Aden on Thursday when he turned 1 month old.

I can't believe how quickly a month has gone by!  When I let myself think about it, it makes me sad to realize that he will never be as small as he is now ever again.

1 month stats:

Weight: over 10 lbs (50th percentile at his 2 week appt.)
Height: was 22 3/4 inches (95th percentile)
Head Circumference: in the 5th percentile! lol!
Other Milestones:  We have Aden on a structured routine where he eats, then has some awake time, then sleeps and this repeats every 2.5 to 3 hours.  At night we do a late-ish feeding somewhere between 10 and 11 pm and then he wakes up 2 other times.  He doesn't really cry very often... even at night when he wakes to eat.  He kind of just grunts in increasing frequency with a whimper every once in a while until I get up.  I love that he doesn't cry very much but it also makes it harder for me to read him.  John and I don't respond to his grunts until they are fairly frequent because half the time he is still asleep.  Aden smiled at me yesterday for the first time and my heart just swelled with joy.  I love this boy!

Birth Story Part II:The Arrival of Aden Justus

Ok, so here is where the story gets good...

John and I are both feeling great... I have no more pain but I can still feel my lower half which is I guess where you want to be.  I could bend my knees and push off my feet to get my bottom off the bed.  I think some people don't like epidurals because they can't feel anything.  John and I were both feeling good and just waiting till around 7 pm for the nurse to come back and check me. 

About an hour later, 4:45ish the nurse comes back and says "Dr. Moorehead called and wants me to check you"  I said ok and everybody but my mom left.  She asks me "what do you think you are?"  I said "I hope at least 6 cm" to which she replied "You're a 9.5!"  John and I both smiled and laughed with delight! In an hour I had gone from 5 cm to almost fully dialated! I think the epidural was what was needed to get me to relax and let my body do its thing.  I also think that I was in the process of dialating really quickly and that is why the pain was so intense right before I got the epidural.

All of a sudden I knew we were in business and things started getting exciting! The nurse called Dr. Moorehead to get down there.  She said Dr. Moorehead had said somebody paged her before the nurse came to check me but everybody in L&D denied doing it.  I think it was an angel ;)  The nurses brought in a bunch of equipment and gowns and turned on the heater for the baby.  My cousin Megan also came into my room at some point before I delivered.  I had wanted her to be in the delivery room because we are so close and I wanted to be able to share that experience with her.  I knew she would not be weirded out or anything and I was sad to have missed out on the birth of her son Sullivan 9 months earlier.  So I asked John if she could stay and he said yes!

John and I before I started to push

The nurse decided to try a practice push to see how I would do with pushing.  After one push she said "Ok I can see you're going to be good at pushing."  A little bit before Dr. Moorehead arrived she said "Ok lets try another one so that you're all ready right when the Dr. gets here" I pushed again and she said "ok stop stop stop!"  Apparently he was getting close to arrival.  It was interesting because I could still feel myself pushing, but there was no pain. Twenty minutes after they called her, Dr. Moorehead arrived and gowned up.  All of a sudden I was pushing through one contraction, which is maybe like 3 total pushes.  Then the next contraction I did another two pushes and right before the third Dr. Moorehead said "I'm going to get splashed" and splashed she did get! With the third push he came out and I had this incredible empty feeling now in my stomach! Aden Justus was immediately placed on my stomach and John and I were both in love!

After a couple of minutes, they placed him on the heater and got him all cleaned up and weighed/measured.  Aden measured 21.5 inches, 7 lbs 10 oz (which I had guessed it would be the night prior with John) and a 9 on the APGAR. 

Having a baby was one of the most incredible, miraculous experiences of my life!  After having a baby, I cannot fathom how one cannot believe in a Creator.  I look upon it in such wonderful remembrance and cannot wait to do it again. 

I leave you with some 'after' pictures...

Birth Story Part I

After two weeks of trying every known old wives tale except acupuncture (yes that means I did castor oil... twice!) I gave up mostly because my OB has a week time limit post due date.  On day 8 post due date, John and I met my cousin Megan, her son Sully, my aunt and uncle, my parents and John's mom prior to my induction at Einsteins for a celebratory pow wow. We then left for Paradise Valley Hospital at 7 am with a smile on my face.

My OB who I love (Dr. Shannon Moorehead) called me the night prior to discuss the induction options.  I wanted to go with the less invasive prostaglandin gel placement instead of pitocin.  I was hoping it would kick start labor for me and I wouldn't have to have pitocin.  I was avoiding pitocin because I have heard many stories of pitocin making labor more intense sooner than if labor starts naturally.  I really wanted a natural labor.  I read like 5 books and practiced many relaxation techniques with John (using the Bradley Birthing method) in order to do so.

However, when I got there, the nurses didn't like the heart rate of our baby.  They said it was staying too stable oreven dropping during contractions.  They apparently like his heart rate to be bouncing around more.  The nurse hooked me up to an IV and pumped a ton of saline water into me hoping it was just dehydration affecting the heart rate.  It did help but the baby didn't like it when I was reclined or sitting up on my back.  Because of this, the nurse strongly urged me to do pitocin because you have to lie on your back for an hour after the prostaglandin gel placement.  Plus she said that once they put the prostaglandin gel in they couldn't take it out if the baby's heart rate didn't do well with the contractions.  I was encouraged by the nurse because she had 4 natural labors with pitocin!  I thought "if she could do it, then I can!"

One thing that I didn't appreciate, but its not really the nurses' fault, is that they tend to throw the 'c-section' words around quite liberally.  I know they may do that to prepare you in case of an emergency but I also like what my brother Lowell said about threatening a c-section... He said they do it to "control you" lol!  But it is kind of true... To a certain extent, OB's and labor nurses track too much information such as every single heart beat.  Millions of women in the world have normal labors without all this tracking.  The c-section rate in the US has currently risen to 30% while the recommended rate is 5-10% by the WHO.  Studies also show that tracking fetal heart rate does not improve the outcomes of fetal mortality but only increases the number of c-sections performed.  Ok... off my rant of obstetrical practices in the US and back to the birth story....

So by 8 am I was started on pitocin at the lowest level...1.  The nurse planned to up the level every 30-45 minutes depending on how the baby's heart rate responded.  At first she wasn't liking the heart rate.  I decided that when she left I would down some of the honey sticks I packed in my hospital bags.  I know you're not supposed to eat food during labor but I also knew my baby.  I had always noticed he would increase his activity (and thus heart rate) after I ate sugar.  Within 1 minute of honey ingestion, the heart rate would improve and the nurse would come back and say something like "I guess baby likes it when you are on your side"  I would nod and smile but know that it secretly was the honey.  I did this every hour or if she would come in and complain about the baby's heart rate.  Sometimes she would give me oxygen also to see if it would help.

Three hours later, 11 am, my OB came in and broke my waters.  By that time the contractions still weren't painful and I was only 2.5 cm dialated.  There wasn't a lot of fluid but there wasn't any meconium in the fluid either which I was happy about.  When you go over the due date there is often a decrease in amniotic fluid which can be concerning.  Looking back at the whole event, it seems like the nurse and OB (probably unintentionally) liked to point out that the reason for lower amniotic fluid and a heart beat that "they don't like" is because I was 8 days late.  It was almost to a point of making me feel bad about it.  My thought is that babies eventually come out.  God created labor so perfectly that babies do come out and have been doing so for thousands of years without tons of medical intervention.  I wanted my baby to get the chance of making his debut on God's timing.

Within 15-20 minutes of breaking my waters, the contractions started to increase in intensity.  I had John ask anybody other than him and my mom in the room to leave because I wanted to be able to concentrate and focus on the contractions as they were coming.  After every contraction I would look up at the monitor to see what the heartbeat was doing because I wanted the baby to be doing well.   I sucked down tubes of honey as needed :)  Around 2 pm the contractions had gotten VERY intense.  I could no longer relax my body like I was supposed to.  I would tighten my fists and squirm my whole body.  Sometimes I would try to bite the pillow (John claims I would try and bite him but I'm pretty sure I didn't do that!) John was there alongside me the whole time coaching me and encouraging me to relax.  When you tense up the rest of your body, your uterus can't contract as efficiently. 

After about an hour of these crazy contractions I asked the nurse to come check me and I was only at 4 cm! So after 7 hours of contractions and laboring, I had only gone 2 cm! Still 6 to go!  At that point I was thinking, "is this going to last another two hours?" I reasoned in my head that if it was less than that I could do it, but not if it was more than that.  I called my mom in to talk to her because she is the reason I was so inspired to have a natural birth.  To me I liken it to running a marathon... is it painful? yes.  Do you have to prepare for it? yes.  Is it worth it? to me... totally!  In the end, I decided to get the epidural.  I was feeling contractions at 4 cm that I was expecting to feel at closer to 7 or 8 cm.  Once I made the decision to get the epidural, the anesthesiologist was in my room pretty quickly.  He went through the whole rigamaroo of getting consent and asking about my medical history.  I was still experiencing the whopper contractions so John had to help me answer them.  By 3:30 he had administered the epidural which it took another 10 minutes to take effect but I could feel the pain diminishing with each contraction.  5 minutes later the nurse checked me and I was at 5 cm.  She said she wouldn't then check me until 7 pm (which I assume is when she changed shifts). 

The pain relief was WONDERFUL!  I felt like a whole new woman.. appreciative of not feeling the pain.  I invited in all the family that was there that I had previously banned from my room and could talk and joke with them.  I think John felt huge relief because he hated seeing me in so much pain.  I don't regret getting the epidural because I knew myself and I know what I could handle and I could not handle that. 

Next I will post the excitement that comes next!

False Alarm

On my 3rd night past my due date (July 13th) we had a false alarm.  John's family had arrived from Parker the day before.  I went on my usual evening walk trying to follow the advice of so many that walking would start labor.  That evening I noticed a few more contractions than usual but decided just to go to bed.  I woke up around 11 pm and noticed my contractions were coming at 5-8 minute intervals... most starting after 6-7 minutes.  This continued for another 1.5 hours.  I decided to get up and check my email.  The contractions were still timeable and seemed to be getting stronger but not painful. 

    

At 2:30 am I decided to take a shower and braid my hair... getting ready for my soon-to-be trip to the hospital.  I woke up my mom and she called my dad because he had gone up to Greer the day earlier for a meeting later that day.  He started on the 5 hour trip back to Phoenix because we were pretty sure things were going to be moving.  I decided around 3:30 to try to sleep for a few hours.  I was scheduled for an OB appt. later that day at 8:45 am and figured I might as well go so my Dr. could check my dilation progress. 

When I woke up around 6:30 I was still having contractions but they seemed to be coming at slightly longer intervals.  I had let John know that today was the day.  He got out his 'contraction app' on his phone.  The longer time between contractions I chalked up to being distracted and getting ready.  At my OB appt. I let them know I thought I was in labor and the nurse and the Dr. were excited.  Afterwards we went to Starbucks for a decaf mocha and met John's family there.  By that time my contractions really had phased out but I had hopes that they would kick back up in the evening. 

Unfortunately they never did which brings me to Aden's birth story...

I wish I would have waited a few hours to call my dad.  He ended up ditching out on an important meeting involving the Wallow Fire because his daughter 'was in labor' but then I wasn't...