Locks of Love

M&M has been growing her hair out for a long time now and I had been thinking that it would make a good donation to Locks of Love. Locks of Love is a charity group that makes wigs for children that are going through medical treatments that cause them to lose their hair and can't afford to buy a wig on their own. You have to have at least 10 inches of hair that you can donate. M&M has been somewhat hesitant about it and DH has not been too supportive of the idea either. On Saturday M&M mentioned that she would like her hair cut but I could tell that she was hesitant about having 10 inches cut off. Finally towards the end of the day I said that I would let her decide and just cut off however much (or little) she wanted me to. She had me measure out 10 inches to see how short it would leave her hair and then she agreed to let me cut it off. I ended up cutting off about 10 1/2 inches! M&M loves it though - it ended up being longer than she thought it would and she kept commenting yesterday on how much she liked the hair cut! I'm glad we went through with it - now I just need to get the ponytail sent off in the mail!

Blog changes

I have been contemplating for quite a while as to whether or not I should make my blog private. After weighing the options I have decided that I will keep my blog public but I will give everyone in my family a code name so that if you don't know our family it will be harder to find out personal information about us. It will take me a little time to get all of my previous posts changed to reflect our new code names but from now on this is how I will refer to each of our family members:

M&M
Luke Skywalker
(a.k.a. Luke)
Blondie
Kitty
Baby K
(this name will probably change once we get to
know her personality a little bit better)
DH (dear husband in internet lingo)
a.k.a. Dad or Daddy
me (Steph)
a.k.a. Mom or Mommy

2 weeks old!

I can't believe that Baby K is 2 weeks old already - and yet some days it feels like she's been around longer than that. I am still adjusting to having a newborn around. Lately she seems to think that she should be eating all day long. Whenever I get her well fed and try to lay her down to sleep she almost immediately wakes up and wants to eat again. Unfortunately this means that I have been able to get hardly anything done around the house. Every room seems to be a disaster, there are always dishes that need to be done, laundry to be washed and/or put away, groceries that need to be bought and I am barely able to get the rest of the kids fed throughout the day. I'm lucky if I can get showered and dressed by noon! Thankfully Baby K does great at night and will usually wake up just once to eat - so I'm not sleep deprived, just time deprived during the day...

Baby K & I are still trying to get the whole nursing thing down. When my milk came in the first week it was too much for her and she was having a hard time latching on. Because of that she became slightly jaundiced which made her extra sleepy so she was eating even less and losing weight. Our pediatrician had me supplement some with bottles and wake her up every 2-3 hours to eat. She has finally started gaining her weight back and is much more awake and alert throughout the day. Now I just need to get my milk supply back up so that we don't have to do bottles anymore (although I must admit that it's nice every once and a while to be able to hand the baby off to DH to feed - and he enjoys it as well).

This is the only way I have found that I can keep Baby K asleep so I can get things done during the day:

curled up in the baby sling

Kitty turns 3!

Thursday, April 17th
Kitty turned the big 3 this week. She is at a really cute, fun age and it was a lot of fun watching her open her presents. She wanted everything to be pink this year. When she was asked what she wanted for her birthday her answer was always something pink, i.e. a pink trampoline, a pink chair, a pink pony...

My brother & his wife, D & K, came down from Rexburg Wednesday to spend a couple of days with us so they were her for Kitty's birthday as well as my parents & sister M. We had a pizza dinner and then my brother & dad put together Kitty's new tricycle & then we had cake & ice cream. Kitty was so excited all day long for me to decorate her cake and then she wanted to eat it right after I was done. When I was decorating it I kept asking her what color she wanted different things like the pony, the flowers, the pony's hair and every time the answer was 'pink'. She had a hard time waiting all day before we finally ate it!

The video I've included here was when Kitty was opening up one of her gifts which was a My Little Pony play house. For some reason she had it in her head that this was something for Blondie because it is something she knew that Blondie would like as well. It was pretty hilarious watching her open the present. (And yes that is Baby K crying in the background - she had decided that she wanted to eat right when Kitty was in the middle of opening the gifts...)

Baby K's birth

Baby K has been keeping me pretty busy these last 2 weeks so I haven't been able to write up the details of her birth yet. I finally have a free moment right now so I will hopefully be able to get this posted soon.

Thursday, April 3rd, I felt nauseous pretty much all day off and on so I was wondering if I would go into labor Thursday night/Friday morning. I was nauseous before the births of M&M & Luke so I thought that this might be a sign of the birth getting close. Friday came and went though without anything happening and Saturday was uneventful as well. I attended M&M & Luke's soccer games Saturday morning and listened to conference throughout the day. DH mentioned on Saturday that he wanted this baby to be born as far away from Kitty's birthday as possible (April 17th). I made comments to several people also that the thing I like least about childbirth is just not knowing when labor is going to kick in and when the baby will be born. Each night I would go to bed wondering if labor would start sometime that night...

(It turns out that it was a good think I didn't go into labor on Friday because my midwife had another client due at around the same time as me who had her baby Friday morning...)

Sunday morning (April 6th) I woke up around 2 a.m. and felt a gush of water and then a second gush. It took me a few seconds to realize what was going on and then I realized that my water had broken (in bed). I quickly got up and hurried into the bathroom. DH woke up because of the noise I was making and he got the sheets changed on the bed. DH encouraged me to go back to bed and try to get as much sleep as I could before the contractions started. With Luke's labor my water broke in the middle of the night as well and then contractions started about 2 hours later. So I went back to bed and tried to sleep but wasn't very successful. So I went downstairs and put in a Jane Austen movie and laid out on the couch. When I left my bedroom Kitty called out from her room, "Mom!" I went into her room to look at her and she was sitting straight up in bed. I told her that she was going to probably have a new brother or sister born that day to which she quickly said, "A brother". I then patted her on the back and told her to lay back down and go to sleep & she did.

I started noticing contractions not long after that and they seemed to be somewhat regular. DH came downstairs not long after I did and got a little bit of sleep there on the couch. I decided to call my midwife, Hugs, around 6 a.m. and she said that she would be right up. The unfortunate thing was that we didn't have the birth pool from her yet and that takes a while to set up and get filled with hot water. I then called my parents around 7 a.m. to let them know that we would have to make a change in our plans for the day. Saturday had been my mom's birthday and we were going to have dinner & birthday cake at my parents' house after conference on Sunday. I was supposed to be making my mom a birthday cake. (I got the cake made Saturday night but I told her that she would have to frost it after she came over...)

Well, unfortunately after I called Hugs my contractions seemed to slow down. By the time she got to our house they were very infrequent and not very strong. Hugs & DH got the pool set up and started filling it while I laid down on the bed and tried to rest some. The kids eventually all got up and the excitement level was definitely high. Kitty asked if she could get her swimsuit on because she wanted to swim in the pool that we were setting up in my bedroom. My parents came over and then later on my sister and her fiance came over as well. Everyone went downstairs to watch conference while I stayed upstairs to rest and listen over the radio.

Between sessions Hugs came back up to see how things were going. She suggested that I eat something or try and take a walk. I tried getting in the pool for a little bit but that didn't seem to change anything. So we decided to all go for a walk since it was fairly nice weather outside. We walked around the block and I had to stop for about 2 contractions during the walk. When we got back to the house Hugs said that she was going to go back home and that we should call her when things picked up again. Hugs thought that the contractions might not pick up again until later that evening... :( I felt a little bit like when a woman arrives at the hospital in labor and gets sent home because she's not in active labor yet... (Unfortunately for Hugs this was the birthday of her 11 year old daughter and they had company that was going to be coming over for dinner - and Kitty was born on her wedding anniversary.) After Hugs left we took one more walk around the block and then everyone headed back downstairs again to watch the afternoon session of conference.

I went back up to my room and laid down on the bed to listen to conference again. At around 2:30 I started noticing that the contractions were picking up in intensity and they were coming closer together. I managed through them for about an hour and then I went downstairs to get DH because they were getting hard for me to manage on my own. DH was asleep on the couch so I had to wake him up and told him that I needed him upstairs. DH came up and timed the next few contractions and could tell that they were getting much stronger than they had been earlier in the day. I was trying to wait until conference was over before we called Hugs but we decided to call her about 10 minutes before it ended. She said that she had had just enough time to finish the preparations for her family's dinner and that she would be right up.

Once Hugs got there around 4:30 I was definitely in active labor. Unfortunately we kept having interruptions from the kids wanting to know when I was going to have the baby because no one wanted to miss it. My mom got dinner on the table for everyone while DH & Hugs were upstairs with me trying to manage the labor. This was one of my more intense labors and I had a hard time at the end managing through the contractions. I had back labor and the pain was very intense. Probably at around 5:30 I got into the pool again and I had some really intense contractions while I was in there. We kept getting interruptions every now and then from the kids and DH finally had to lock the bedroom door because he could tell that the interruptions were distracting me too much. With each contraction I was holding onto DH & Hugs and trying to just get through them.

I finally turned towards the outside of the pool and was on my knees with my arms holding onto DH at the edge of the pool. Hugs told me to push whenever I felt like it and I finally just bore down & said, "I'm pushing" and gave a great big push. Hugs quickly checked me and said that the head was out! so I needed to slow down and let my body stretch so that I wouldn't tear. Hugs told me to wait until the next contraction before I pushed again and then she told DH that he had about 3 seconds to get anyone into the room that wanted to see the birth.

DH quickly ran to the the bedroom door and called down the stairs that it was time!! The kids and my mom and sister quickly hurried into the room when I felt the next contraction coming on and before I knew it the baby was out! When Hugs said that she was bringing the baby up between my legs and then I needed to grab it I couldn't believe that I had done it! That was an awesome feeling! I quickly picked up the baby in my arms and sat back against the side of the pool. Hugs wrapped a towel around it and the baby had no problems whatsoever breathing right away. I lifted up the towel and saw that it was another girl - and she was completely covered in vernix (a white "cheesy" substance found on the skin of infants which usually decreases as the baby reaches gestation). This baby had the most vernix that I have ever seen on a baby before and Hugs said that it is usually thicker on babies that are born early. By the measurements and observations that Hugs took later on the baby she said that she measured closer to 36 weeks gestation than the 38 1/2 weeks that we had calculated.


I sat in the pool relaxing for a little bit and then I delivered the placenta in the pool. We then let Luke cut the umbilical cord (M&M got to do it with Kitty) and then I got out of the pool and moved over to the bed. Luckily my uterus clamped down pretty quickly and I didn't have to endure too much uterine massage by my midwife. :) DH took the baby as I got out of the pool and then he let each of the kids take a turn holding her. After Hugs took all of her measurements and my mom dressed her I tried nursing her for the first time and then I took a quick shower while everyone took turns holding her downstairs.

It took us a while to decide on a name but I think that K Anne is definitely fitting her now. She was born at 6:15 p.m. and was 8 lbs 0 ozs and 19 1/2" long. It was definitely weird having her in the evening - Hugs didn't end up leaving until around 9 o'clock that night. I was starving after the birth and ate quite a bit of food after my shower (plus some birthday cake). I can't say that I got too much out of the conference sessions that day but I do remember hearing Elder Ballard's talk on mothers and President Monson's talk where he mentioned his wife being in a coma (both of these were as my labor was getting more intense).

I think the thing that threw me the most with this birth was that it was nothing like my other labors. I think we were all anticipating the birth to take place sometime in the morning and then we would have the rest of the day to relax and recover. Unfortunately for the kids they were very antsy the whole day because we didn't know when the birth would take place. Then when things finally kicked into gear they got very intense pretty quickly and I had a hard time managing the contractions. All in all my active labor time was only about 3 1/2 hours which was less than half the time of any of my other labors. DH was an awesome support to me the whole time and I really needed him to help me get through the contractions. I informed both DH and Hugs towards the end of the labor that there was no way I wanted to have any more kids after this one. I am now not so set on that decision - it's a good thing that babies come out so cute because the end result is definitely worth the pain & effort! I have felt great following the birth and I think my recovery was easier and quicker than with any of the other kids. I definitely think that part of the reason for this was the aerobics that I had been doing regularly up until the birth.

Why can't we eat?

I took Baby K to the doctor's office on Tuesday and I had Blondie & Kitty with me. We were taken back into one of the examining rooms and while we were waiting for the doctor to come in the room Blondie asked if she could have a snack. I responded that they would have to wait until we were back out in the car because there are signs all over the office saying that no eating or drinking is allowed in the examining rooms. I pointed out the sign to Blondie and told her what it said. Baby K then started to get a little fussy so I decided to nurse her a little before the doctor came in. When Blondie saw me nursing Baby K she asked, "How come Baby K can eat but we can't?"

Luke - the walking dictionary

DH was talking to Luke's primary teacher on Sunday and he was commenting on how smart Luke is and that the other kids think that he is really weird sometimes because of the big words he uses in class. As an example he related this story: A couple of lessons ago the teacher wrote a phrase up on the chalkboard and told the class to keep their attention on the words on the board. Then the teacher pulled out a candy bar and asked the class if he were to eat the candy bar if they could still keep their eyes on the chalkboard. All of the other kids responded and said that they would watch the teacher eating the candy bar. Luke though responded and said that he would watch the teacher eat the candy bar but he could still see the words on the chalkboard using his peripheral vision...

To which all of the other kids in the class asked, "What's peripheral vision?"

Name update

Just when we thought we had Baby K's name decided on, we have made another change. Her middle name is going to be spelled Anne instead of Ann. When we first decided on the name I asked DH how he wanted to spell the middle name and he immediately responded that we should spell it without the 'e'. Then yesterday he called the insurance company to have Baby K added to the insurance and they asked how the name was spelled and he said that he wasn't sure on the middle name - apparently he had a change of heart and decided that he preferred it with the 'e'. When he came home we discussed it and I said that I like the spelling better with the 'e' on the end but I was going to let him decide since I was the big pusher on the first name.

So, anyways, the baby's name is now Baby K Anne (for today anyways)...

Introducing...

Kendra Ann
I think we are finally decided on this name. This has definitely been our hardest baby to name for some reason. With each new baby we seem to have a harder and harder time deciding on a name. We were actually calling her something else for a day or so and that name just didn't seem to fit for me so we changed it.

Welcome baby #5!

Well, for those who haven't heard the news, we had a healthy baby girl born to us on Sunday, April 6th. She weighed 8 lbs even and was 19 1/2" long. The only reason I haven't posted any pictures yet is that we still haven't decided on a name and we also wanted to call all the family first (a hefty task when we have 9 siblings between the two of us). I've decided to post some pictures so everyone can see her and I will post the name once we finally decide on one - for some reason picking the name gets harder and harder for us with each child...

So, enjoy the pictures and I will post the name hopefully very soon. I will also write up the details on her birth when things settle down here a little.

Pregnancy update - Week 39

I went to see my midwife yesterday and my uterus measured a centimeter less than last week which is a sign that the baby is dropping more. Unfortunately he/she was also posterior so my midwife suggested that I try more pelvic tilts to get the baby to turn (especially when labor starts). She said that in Mexico the midwives believe that babies don't like the cold so they tend to turn their backs to the mother's back when the weather is cold. My midwife has noticed in her own experience that there tend to be more posterior babies in the winter time. I suggested that maybe I need to walk around the house with a heating pad on my belly...

Getting ready for baby...

The last couple of weeks have been busy around our house trying to get things ready for the baby. I finally got our bedroom cleaned up and set up the bassinet/changing table pack-n-play that we have and I have bought some new clothes for the birth day. I have bought both boy & girl things so we are prepared for either one. With Blondie I had only gender neutral things out for the birth but at this point I like to have both genders & then I'll either take back the things we don't use or I'll save them to give away as gifts. I also got some new flannel blankets made - both boy & girl again. There was a great sale on flannel at the fabric store a couple of weeks ago and I found some really cute fabrics. I pulled out all of our baby stuff from storage last Saturday and I've cleared out enough space in our bedroom so that we can set up the birthing pool in there again. I bought a new infant car seat/carrier because our previous one has gone through 4 kids now. When I pulled it out of the box the other day Luke made the comment that I really must think that we're having a boy because the car seat is black & gray! (Actually, the seat that I got doesn't come in any "girly" colors.) I've also done my birthday shopping for April already so that I don't have to worry about it once the baby is born. Both my mom & DH's mom have their birthdays this month & Kitty will be turning 3 on the 17th!

One advantage with this birth is that my parents now live nearby so my mom doesn't have to try and time her flight to get here before the baby is born. The disadvantage with them living here in Utah though is that they are also closer to my younger brother who is attending BYU-Idaho. My parents are on their way up to Rexburg today to attend his final choir concert and then will be going up again next week for his graduation. So, I'm not supposed to have the baby today, tomorrow, or next Wednesday, Thursday or Friday (are you listening baby?!?). ;) Other then that, any day should be good (and preferably before the kids go back to school on April 14th)...

For those of you that want to send gifts for the baby, the one thing we really don't need is blankets! I can always use cute clothes & shoes & our crib sheets are getting pretty worn. I could also use some covers for my boppy pillow and a new mobile for the crib (our old one is broken).

Views on Childbirth - part 8

Read part 7: Blondie's Birth here

Kitty's Birth
Kitty was definitely our surprise baby - in more ways than one! At the beginning of August I came down with some severe back & neck pain which had me laid up for a couple of weeks. I thought that I had just overexerted myself and finally went into the doctor's to see if they could do anything. I was given some prescriptions for the pain & some anti-inflammatory pills. While I was there though I asked if they could give me a pregnancy test just to make sure that we could rule that out. I got the prescriptions filled and went home to take my first round of them. The next morning though I got a call from the doctor's office telling me, "Congratulations, you're pregnant!" I wasn't too sure what to think about that news. At the time Blondie had just barely turned 1! I asked the nurse if I could continue taking the prescriptions that I had been given and after consulting with the doctor was told that I should stop taking them immediately. Well, so much for the pain relief. Thankfully I was able to manage with just Tylenol for a time and then I got better to the point that I didn't need to take anything anymore.

I wanted to see Hugs again for this pregnancy & birth but she informed me that he Stake President had told her that she could not continue to practice midwifery without having her temple recommend taken away until a law was passed to make it officially legal in the state! At this time the midwives had been trying for several years to get a law passed to make the practice of midwifery legal. It was inadvertently made illegal several years previous when some wording had been changed in the Utah law regarding the practice of medicine. So, I decided to see my midwife's partner, Suz, and try to do all I could on my end to help this law get passed. The legislative session in Utah runs from January-March and my baby was due April 23rd. My midwife during this time was continuing to involve herself with birth by working at the Birth Center located in the Salt Lake Valley (she has a RN degree and worked as a Labor & Delivery nurse for years before she became a midwife). Thankfully we were able to get the law passed that year and my midwife was able to attend to me once again starting in the last month of my pregnancy. Kitty's birth was the first birth she attended after the law was passed.

I had my 20 week ultrasound and we elected not to find out the gender again. My mom was scheduled to fly out on Monday, April 18th. She couldn't come until then because she was accompanying some kids for a solo & ensemble festival that was taking place the Saturday before. On that Saturday, April 16th, I was having some fairly regular contractions in the morning and I though that this might be it. I called my parents and my mom was not too happy. Things slowed down though the rest of the day and the contractions pretty much stopped. That evening I gave my midwife a call and let her know what had gone on that day. I told her to be prepared in case things progressed that night.

Well, I ended up getting hardly any sleep at all that night. Around midnight I started having some fairly regular contractions and I knew that this was it. We called Hugs around 5 in the morning - she was grateful that I had called and warned her the night before because she went to bed earlier than she had been planning on. With this birth I spent most of my time laying on my side on the bed trying to get as much rest as I could - I was exhausted from not getting much sleep that night. DH & Hugs got the pool set up and as I got closer to the delivery I got into the water. My water broke once again in the water and then the kids started to wake up. I was a little concerned because we didn't have anyone there to take charge of the kids (my mom was supposed to do that) and I didn't want them to be a distraction to me. Hugs called a fellow midwife to come and be at the birth but she ended up getting to our house just after the baby was born. Hugs said that the last stage of my labor went quicker than she had anticipated. My favorite memory of this birth was Blondie coming in to the room and coming over to me in the pool and just quietly putting her hand on my shoulder. It was such a sweet gesture at that moment of the labor for me.

When I got to the pushing stage I told DH to move to the other side of the pool near Hugs so that he could observe the birth - usually he is at my head supporting me (either physically or emotionally) and he hadn't up to that point really seen the actual birth. I was pushing in a semi-reclined position in the birthing pool. As I felt the burning sensation of my body expanding, I slowed up on the pushing to prevent tearing. I just remember DH being amazed at how the head compresses so that it can fit through the birth canal. Once the head was born my midwife observed what she refers to as a turtle move where the head comes out and then goes back in slightly - this is a sign that the shoulders are stuck. I couldn't believe that this was happening to me again! This time my midwife was prepared for it and was in a better position to help the baby out so she didn't have to jump into the pool again. She was able to help ease the shoulders out and then I brought the baby up to my chest. The baby was quickly wrapped in a blanket and I held it to me keeping the body under the warm water. We sat there for several minutes before I looked to see if it was a boy or a girl. I looked and to my surprise it was another girl!! That whole pregnancy I had been planning on this being a boy! It took us a couple of days to finally decide on a name for her!

Kitty Jane was born around 8:30 a.m. Sunday morning, April 17th. She was 7 lbs 12 ozs, 19" long - so all of my kids so far have been within a pound of each other. My mom was not too happy to hear that she had missed another birth (she has been present for 2 out of the 4 now). DH had to call the primary president to let her know that I would not be able to teach my primary class that morning at 9!

Once again I didn't tear at all and I had a lot of energy immediately after the birth. After Kitty had tried nursing a little and they weighed and measured her, DH took all of the kids downstairs so that the midwives could work on me (my favorite part - uterus massaging). DH had the kids each take a turn holding their new baby sister & taking pictures while this was going on. I then hopped in the shower for a quick wash - as I was getting out of the birthing tub Luke looked at me and said, "Wow, you've got a dirty bum!" It was a funny comment coming from a 4 year old but that's what he noticed - as I'm sure you can imagine the water in the birthing tub gets fairly dirty from the birth & the placenta!

The only thing that I would change about Kitty's birth would have been for her to allow me to get a little more sleep before the labor started & for her not to have gotten stuck (neither of which I had any control over). Blondie & Kitty's births were very similar and the only reason I would call Blondie's birth my favorite is because I felt more rested up for it.

I have been very grateful for my midwife in all of my births and I love her laid back approach to birth - and yet she will quickly step in when the need arises. Kitty ended up having O neg blood so I didn't need a rhogam shot after her birth - and now that homebirth midwives can become licensed in the state, they can carry and administer rhogam themselves without the mother having to go to the hospital after the birth.

We also had a little bit of a roller coaster experience with Kitty a week or two after the birth because my body wasn't producing enough milk. When I took her in for her 2 week appointment she was not back up to her birth weight. Luckily we have an awesome pediatrician who gave me a list of things to do to get my milk production up and had me supplement with some formula in the meantime so that she would start gaining weight. My problem was that I was keeping myself too busy with the older kids and was not focusing enough on the baby. It's amazing how much of a psychological process childbirth & breastfeeding are...

M&M's new look!

M&M has unfortunately inherited her dad's eyesight. She has been having a hard time lately seeing the board at school so we finally decided to get her some glasses. She had an eye exam last May and the eye doctor recommended that we wait as long as we could before we got her glasses because the eyes will start to get lazy and will get worse quicker. Well, it's been almost a year since then and she has been complaining more and more about her eyesight so I took her in last week for another eye exam. We ordered some glasses and were able to pick them up yesterday. They look black in the picture but they are really dark brown. She is only supposed to wear them for looking at the board at school or a movie if it is far away. She won't be wearing them too much at home except maybe for watching T.V. if she needs to. She might take them to church as well to see the board during primary but we haven't made a decision on that yet. This is all a new experience for me since I have never had to wear glasses so far in my life. I think the hardest thing for M&M will be to not misplace them or accidentally leave them somewhere. She can tend to be a little forgetful at times...

Views on Childbirth - part 7

Read part 6: Luke's Birth here

Blondie's Birth
The biggest difficulty I had with Blondie's pregnancy was that we weren't sure where we would be living when her due date came along. DH was finishing up his graduate work at BYU and was looking for full-time employment. I decided to see my midwife Hugs again for my care and was hoping that we would be around in Utah for the birth so Hugs could be there. Blondie was due on July 13th and DH was due to finish up his graduate work in April. DH sent his resume to several places and we were actually hoping to get a job around the D.C. area for a few years - partly because my parents lived there but also partly for the experience. Well, we heard nothing from any of the companies and around April the church, which had not been hiring software engineers for quite a while, started interviewing for some new jobs that were being created in the Family History Dept. DH knew one of the managers from the church through some work at BYU and got an interview and was hired. He started work in May at Church Headquarters in downtown Salt Lake and we shortly after that started looking for a home to buy in the Salt Lake area. The way things worked out we found a home and were set to move in at the end of July/first part of August (perfect timing, huh?).

We had a 20 week ultrasound again to make sure everything looked fine with the baby and we decided not to find out the gender this time around. We figured that we already had one of each and it would be fun to be surprised with this one. My mom was set to fly out again about a week before my due date. She came out and my due date came & went with nothing. This was my first experience with an overdue baby. My mom was trying to decide if she should extend her stay at this point. July 14th was a Monday and we went to a local park for Family Home Evening. We did a lot of walking to see if that would jump start things.

Well, the next morning I woke up to contractions around 4 a.m. I was having back labor (again) and managed on my own for a time. Around 7 in the morning I woke up DH & we called Hugs. We then woke up my mom and the kids so we could start trying to get the birthing pool set up. We put in as much hot water as we could from the tap and then DH started boiling pots of water to dump in as well. I was actually in a great mood & frame of mind for the birth. I was really ready to have this baby and had read several books that contained mostly birth stories in them to prepare for the birth. There is something really inspiring about reading other people's birth stories. One of the books that I read talked some about keeping a sense of humor during the labor. I decided that I wanted to try this and it worked wonders for me. Most of the labor I sat on my bed with Hugs & DH in the room and we just talked about anything. Whenever a contraction would start in I would close my eyes and just silently endure them one at a time. Then I would continue in on the conversation. When things started to get more intense we decided to try out the pool. I got in and the water was TOO HOT. I stayed in for a few minutes and then had to get out because I couldn't take the heat. I think that they ended up dumping in some pots of cold water to cool it off and I was finally able to get in again. It is fairly relaxing to get in a big tub of warm water and just let the water take the weight off of your body and the contractions. Just before I got in the water for the second time I remember DH asking if he could do anything for me, to which I replied, "Yeah, you can have this baby for me." I also remember asking at one point why I let him do this to me. :) It was after that comment that my midwife said I must be going through transition and getting ready to finally have this baby. It's been nice having the same midwife for these homebirths because she can read me pretty well during labor now.

I got back into the pool and was trying to manage through the final contractions. I was feeling the urge to push so I started to push and there was a gush into the pool - my water finally broke. I was on my knees with my arms over the side of the pool bearing down. Before I knew it the head was out and was apparently out for several moments when the midwives realized that the baby's shoulders were stuck. Hugs quickly jumped into action and stepped into the pool with one leg and started trying to maneuver the baby out. She had me flip over onto my back and she was finally successful. (There isn't any danger in the baby trying to breathe in the water because the baby doesn't get the stimulation to breathe until it's mouth & nose come in contact with air.) I brought the baby up to my chest and we found out that it was a girl - which is what I had guessed. After the placenta was delivered I got out of the pool and moved over to the bed. Hugs was surprised that I didn't have any tearing the way she had to maneuver the baby around. Needless to say I was very ecstatic though!

Blondie was born around 1 p.m. on July 15th and was 8 lbs even. It was a very positive experience for the whole family & M&M & Luke both observed the birth. Luke was 2 1/2 & M&M was almost 5 at the time. M&M was excited to have a sister! There really isn't anything that I would have changed about Blondie's birth - it was awesome! (Actually, I would have loved it even more if I could have prevented her from getting stuck but I didn't really have any control over that.) I did have to go through the whole rhogam procedure again at the hospital but we knew a little more what to expect this time and we left Blondie home with Grandma.

The real drama with Blondie came a couple of weeks later. We moved to our house when Blondie was about 2 1/2 weeks old & DH was due to fly out to Scotland the next day for a research conference he was presenting at. My mom left several days after Blondie was born and then my dad flew out to help with the moving. While we in the process of moving, the BYU student health center was apparently trying to contact us and they only had our number for the apartment we were moving from (which had been disconnected by this time). They finally called my in-laws and we were given the message that I needed to call the clinic immediately. When I finally was able to call the clinic I was told to stop breastfeeding Blondie immediately and she needed to be put on a soy formula because of some abnormal results for a condition called galactosemia from her PKU screening! I got this message on a Saturday, the day after DH left for Scotland. That was all the information that I was given because the pediatrician & pediatric nurse wouldn't be back into the clinic until Monday!

In the meantime, my dad was leaving to fly back home so I was left with a newborn & 2 young kids in a neighborhood where I didn't know anyone. My dad was able to make some contacts for me before he left so we did have some people that were aware of my situation in the ward. I contacted my midwife as well and let her know what was going on. She came over to see me and thought that the test result was probably a false positive because Blondie was healthy in every way. I was able to use the internet at my neighbor's house to look up what galactosemia actually was and was able to print out some information to go off of. The main thing that I found out that didn't fit in with Blondie at all was that babies with this condition are very fussy & irritable when they are breastfed and they spit up a LOT. Blondie did not have this problem. My oldest brother also had a doctor friend that he talked to about the condition and he said that if the doctors were really concerned that her condition was life-threatening, they would have had her in the hospital on dialysis. It was very hard for me to feed Blondie a bottle with formula because I love nursing my kids. It is an awesome bonding experience for me & the baby. I would feed her formula and then I would pump as much as I could so that my milk supply wouldn't dry up.

On Saturday I was supposed to be cleaning up our old apartment and having a checkout with the managers but with everything going on I was able to postpone that until Monday. Thankfully Tan & Chez & Taryn were able to step in and help out and they went over to the apartment on Saturday and cleaned for me! I was VERY grateful for their help. On Monday I went down to the BYU Health Center to see the pediatrician and to have the second PKU test done. It had to be sent to a special lab for testing and the results were to be sent to the genetics research dept in Salt Lake. I actually started breastfeeding again at this point because I was pretty confident that Blondie did not have this disorder.

My midwife advised me to contact the genetics dept after 2 days to see if the results were in. I did this and they had just gotten the results and were in the process of sending them to the pediatrician down at BYU. The lady at the genetics dept told me that Blondie has a variant form of galactosemia which is not the full-blown condition. The condition that she has is the most mild form of galactosemia - she has one normal gene and one duarte gene - which means that her enzyme activity to break down lactose is just below normal. I was then told that I could resume breastfeeding and that Blondie would not need any type of diet change. The nurse then asked for my address so that she could send me a copy of the results. This was on a Wednesday that I found out the results. The next day I got a call from the nurse down at BYU who told me that they had just gotten the results from the genetics dept and that I would have to permanently stop breastfeeding and Blondie would have to follow a strict diet!?! I informed the nurse that I had called the genetics lab myself and had been informed that the mild form of the disorder that Blondie was diagnosed with didn't require any diet changes - to which she sheepishly responded, "Oh, sorry about that." Boy was I glad that I had taken my midwife's advice and called the lab myself!! As you may imagine, that was my last visit to that pediatrician!!

During all of this mess I was able to get in contact with DH's professor, who had gone to Scotland as well, through email and he gave DH to message to call home ASAP. DH ended up being delayed in Chicago for a day because of bad weather and didn't have any idea what was going on with Blondie until he got my message in Scotland on Sunday! After my dad left on Saturday my younger sister came out to spend some time with us while DH was gone which I was grateful for. Also that week M&M started kindergarten! Talk about a roller coaster ride! Thankfully though everything turned out fine in the end!!

It's a...

GIRL!!!

Wish a warm welcome to baby girl #4!

We had the baby early this morning, April 1st, around 5 a.m. It was my quickest labor so far and my midwife barely made it in time. Everything went well though and we are resting now. We haven't decided on a name yet and will post pictures when we get a spare minute...



Or not... since it's April Fool's Day!!