Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Holy Happenings…Living w/Parents

I know, I know it’s no surprise that i have gone an eternity without blogging (at least it hasn’t been an entire year this time!) As you can imagine though, a LOT has happened in the past 10 months.

We found out somewhat abruptly (while i was nearing the end of my 7th month of pregnancy) that we were going to have to move.  The owners of the home we were staying in were planning on putting it up for sale the following month. Yay! that put me moving AGAIN fully pregnant. Do I need to remind you of what happened last time.  Yeah, I went into labor with Kal at 4:00 in the morning of ‘Moving Day’. I immediately started packing up the house, but the question remained “where were we going to live?” Well to make a long story short, and to Jeff’s dismay we knew we were supposed to move to Utah.  We’re not huge fans of throwing money away every month on a rental, so we knew we were gonna have to buy.  I didn’t want to have a baby while moving, and I most definitely didn’t want to move with a newborn….  So I moved out to Utah with Kalvin Dec 1st (which was still cutting it close considering I was 36 weeks) Jeff was going to be staying behind until his transfer was final which is a whole other stress bucket.   My dad was soo wonderful he came out to Colorado helped Jeff and a few ward members load up the moving truck, and drove it all the way to Riverton Utah.

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Kal did great and didn’t fuss at all except for the last half hour!  10 hours is a long time for a hyperactive 20 month old boy to stay happy!  It helped that there was such beauty to behold along the way!

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We got to my parents, Tyler and Heidi were there along with a few ward members to help unload some things from the truck into my parents house, and then everything else was taken to the storage unit. It was a crazy Saturday and I was glad it was over, but the following Saturday turned out to be crazier.  Late Saturday night I randomly woke and felt weird and just knew that when I got out of bed my water was gonna be broken. Sure enough I stood up and it was immediately evident. I ran to the bathroom then yelled for my mom..( I was only in labor with Kalvin for 3 hours, so I was worried about how quickly this was gonna unfold) needless to say she didn’t waste anytime getting me to the hospital.  This was not the most pleasant delivery experience, but definitely not the worst I ever heard of.  I was dilated to a 4 I believe, but my contractions had slowed since we’d arrived. Aftera WHILE of no real progression I asked for pitocin, the on call o.b. was busy and was supposed to bring it as soon as she finished up, i waited for a while then found out that the o.b. had left gone to another hospital to do a procedure, so I had to wait.  Then my contractions picked up They asked if I wanted an epidural (I was wanting to go natural) I told them I wanted to play it by ear to which they responded with telling me how the anesthesiologist  was finishing up in an O.R.  in half an hour and would only have a 10 minute window to give me an epidural if I wanted one and then would be busy for the next 4-6 hours in surgeries.  Well I panicked and got an epidural, for the fear that I would madly need one and not be able to get it. I got the epidural and my contractions seemed to weaken and slow down.  I had been in labor for 6 hours already.  ( I have since read that it’s not good for the baby to be in much longer than that after the water has broken because the chance of infection greatly increases)  The epidural was making me feel HORRIBLE! I never want another one.  I was freezing, and couldn’t get into a comfortable position. I wanted so badly to get up and walk, but you can’t exactly do that when you can’t feel your legs.  So I wanted to get this show on the road and fast! I asked again for pitocin and had to wait over an hour. Then when they were finally were on there way with it my body started having bigger and closer together contractions on its own. I was dilated to a 8 perhaps? I asked for the pitocin anyway, I didn’t want any further delays. They gave me the pitocin and I had Talynn within 5-10 minutes, and I forget how many pushes, but not too many. She was born 12:42pm December 9, 2012 weighing 7lbs 3.7oz and was 18” long. Same length as Kal but a over a lb heavier!

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She was not happy! She was screaming, and kept screaming and grunting!IMG_3674 copy

The nurses started to sound a little concerned about the grunting, and said they wanted to just take her to the infant nursery and have those nurses give her a look over right away (they did let me hold her briefly) and told me I could come see her in a few.  After about 5 minutes I told my mom to just go check on her.  As soon as I saw my mom’s face I knew it wasn’t good and my heart sank. “She’s having trouble breathing and they’re taking her to the Nicu” . I said “You’re kidding!” Not another NICU baby!!! Freak!  Of course I had to wait for the epidural to wear off before I could go see her, so I impatiently waited hours with nothing better to do than worry…..

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Well she spent 9 days in the hospital and I had the taxing visits to and from the hospital multiple times a day. They were constantly giving her new iv’s even put in a PIC line which isn’t fun. So sad to see your little infant hooked up to all these tubes and wires, and not a thing you can do to help.  I wasn’t able to spend as much time with her there as I was able to spend with Kal, because now I had another kid I had to worry about and Kal was missing me and hated not knowing when or if I was coming back.  He would cry everytime I left. My parents are so awesome they looked after Kalvin the whole time I was at the hospital, and Kal isn’t easy for a young mom do corral (Don’t worry mom we all know it was mostly you that watched after and ran after him. She also brought Kal to see me at the hospital a few times.  Although I think he may have been more interested in playing with the wheelchair than seeing me…

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They never were able to tell me exactly was was wrong with Talynn or why she had trouble breathing.  There was a huge list of possibilities and they had her on antibiotics and slew of other things to try and catch all the possible causes (Not to mention they did chest x-rays twice a day everyday) Holy Radiation right!  One of the things they told me is she may have caught pneumonia.  Right now I don’t really care (at the time it seemed like the end of the world)now all I care is that she’s alive/happy/healthy, and growing and developing right on or ahead of schedule!  I did have a pretty special experience with this though.  Talynn was on oxygen. One of the requirements for her to go home was she had to be off of oxygen.  They had been consistently lowering the oxygen level and she was keeping her oxygen percentage up at 100 . I get to the NICU one night and her oxygen percentage kept diving and then when I went to feed her she was having even more trouble keeping it up.  They had to jack her oxygen up.  I had to leave the room…I was at the end of my rope.  I went to the mother’s room to pump the rest of my milk (really I was going in there to cry like a baby in private)  I just wanted my baby home with me. Like everyone else I knew that had had babies recently.  Why couldn’t I just have a smooth transition from delivering my baby to taking them home and just getting to enjoy them, instead of constant stress and worry.  Okay….pity party over! I got on my knees and immediately began to thank my Heavenly Father for all my blessings, including the past 6 days I had had with this beautiful little spirit regardless of how stress filled they had been. I told God that I KNEW that He had the power to heal her of all her afflictions, and I begged Him to do this thing for me, because I was worn down and it was too much, and then I proceeded to make promises to Him.  I stayed in a room at the hospital that night. I woke up to do Talynn’s 7:00am feeding.  I picked her up from her bed and sat down. As I was pulling her towards my chest to start feeding her I realized the oxygen tube was gone! She had had a complete turn around.  God truly is a God of miracles and he hears our prayers! 

Well eventually we did bring her home, and it was and still is so fun to see Kalvin and her interact!  Here’s their first meeting….

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It didn’t take long for Kal to try and steal the spotlight!

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My grandmother Dorothy Preece is still alive, and I think it’s so awesome that my kids have a Great Grandma. (I never had one of those!)

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Given our abrupt and bumpy start I did Talynn’s newborn shoot a little later than ideal…and boy was she wiggly! But we got a few good shots in. 

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As always we let Kal join in the fun….

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Crazy how Jeff and I were apart for the most eventful month of our year: my birthday (4th), Talynn’s birth (9th), wedding anniversary (13th),christmas (25th) jeff’s birthday (28th)  It was sad not having Jeff there with me for the birth, but I think it was harder him not being there the whole first month of our daughters life. Any who life goes on, and you do what you have to do.  It was nice being surrounded by so much family this Christmas.

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With the craziness of the move and an all of a sudden newborn we had put Kal’s potty training on the back burner, but we jumped right back in and he did WONDERFULLY!

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Having awesome “CHOO CHOO” undies didn’t hurt.

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Kal loves being outside so any day that came along that wasn’t bitter cold we could be found outside on the trampoline, blowing bubbles, drawing with chalk, etc…

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It’s crazy how good he’s gotten on this thing!

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About a month and a half after we moved to Utah Jeff was FINALLY able to join us! And Kal was sooo happy to have his bestfriend back…..

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We discovered a train at the Mall off I-15’s 106 exit. Kal loved it!

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It was soo hard being all alone out in Colorado, and I have loved being closer to family here in Utah….

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We were having the hardest time finding THE HOUSE  we needed so we started talking to builders and were planning on building (meanwhile still living at my parents THEY ARE SAINTS!) I lived with them for 5 months with Talynn and Kalvin and the last 4 of those Jeff and our two dogs (VIZSLAS) were there too. It was a full house and we had plenty to keep us busy!

We had EASTER:

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Kal got his first set of clubs instead of a huge basket of sugar!

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Bowties and blue eyes kill me!

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We finally got around to doing Talynn’s baby blessing.  She had on a pretty white dress but off course we stripped it off before I got the camera out… 

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Lots of firsts took place at my parents house. Talynn’s First Bath (okay this obviously isn’t her 1st bath but I couldn’t find those pictures…so we’ll pretend)

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Kal’s FIRST haircut!

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and we bought our FIRST home in UTAH! And guess what we didn’t have to wait for it to be built, because I found the exact same house we were gonna build already built  (minus a few of the bonus features we wanted but who cares!) on the same size lot.  Things fell into place and it was definitely meant to be.

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1 comment:

KarenM said...

Great wrap-up. I love the pictures.