Leila Rose's Arrival

In the early morning hours of Thursday, March 17th I woke up to some pain and the urgent need to go to the bathroom. As I laid in bed, I timed my pains - after I realized they were contractions - for about a half hour before I woke up Ramin. At that point each contraction was about 5 minutes apart from the last - the sign that you need to head into the hospital. But, they still weren't as painful as I'd remembered them to be from Gunnar's birth.

I still woke up Ramin nonetheless and we discussed our options. We decided it was best to head into the hospital and so we made the calls to my mom and Chris to let them know. We didn't leave the house until about 45 minutes after I had woken up - by that time the contractions were more painful and more frequent.

We calmly got Gunnar out of bed and I packed up the remaining I'd need into my hospital bag and we headed out. We dropped Gunnar off to Chris & Tara around 4:30-4:45 - they were waiting outside for us because we were in a hurry at that point. We then headed the additional 15 minutes to the hospital and we arrived around 5am. By this time my contractions were 2-3 minutes apart.

The nurses put us into a triage room to make sure I was actually in labor before moving to the final labor and delivery room. By this point my mom had gotten to the hospital as well and was with us. So, I buckled down for a few hours...I believe I was dilated to 5cm at that point and I was trying to bare the pain as much as I could.

I don't remember the exact time but I finally asked for my epidural and the anesthesiologist arrived a short time later. This epidural was a bit more painful for me than the one I had with Gunnar, probably because the baby was so much bigger this time. But, I got through it OK and was very happy when it started to take effect.

All this time I was hoping for my Dr. to arrive - I knew there was a chance he wouldn't be able to attend the birth and I was prepared for it...but around 10am he came into my room and I was so relieved! He had delivered Gunnar and I wanted him so badly to deliver Leila as well :)

Dr. Esplin did have me start pushing but quickly realized that Leila's heart rate dropped too dramatically for too long. Her normal heart rate was about 145-150 bpm...but during the times I was pushing she would drop to 60 bpm and sustained it that low for a few minutes. Dr. Esplin did not like that so he had me stop pushing AND they put an oxygen mask on me for the rest of the delivery.

At some point during one of his checks he realized that the baby was facing with her face pointed toward the floor - not what we want. We want the head up to be facing the ceiling when she comes out. So he had the nurse move me to a weird position with my leg sticking in the air resting on a prop. Apparently that trick worked and the next time he checked me she was facing the right way! I started really pushing around 11:00 am with the help of my main nurse, Claudia, Ramin and my mom.

At noon, Dr. Esplin came back into the room and told me he could only stay for another half hour - that kicked things into high gear for me (plus the fact that I'd already been pushing for 45 minutes). It only took me another 20 minutes of pushing (and encouragement from Dr. Esplin) before baby Leila arrived. It is the WEIRDEST feeling to finally feel her head break through and her entire body just slither out. The epidurals are so good these days (at least for me), that I could literally feel everything happened without the pain - something I've heard didn't used to happen - everything would just go completely numb.

They immediately placed Leila on my chest as I had asked and started cleaning her up. But, they realized that she was a bit purple for too long - even though she was crying. So, they took her from me (I was sad), and kept her in the room while the NICU specialists worked to suction her out. She had apparently swallowed some meconium AND had a ton of mucus in her (from me being sick so often while pregnant).To be on the safe side they decided to whisk her off to the actual NICU for monitoring. Ramin went with her while my mom stayed with me.

There's a LOT of after birth stuff that goes on once the baby is out. I did have a 2nd degree tear so Dr. Esplin spent his remaining 10 minutes sewing me up. I also had to push one more time to deliver the placenta and Claudia had to compress my stomach in order to get all of the remaining blood out - it's not pleasant.

About 45 minutes later Ramin came back with the baby and said that she was doing just fine breathing on her own and they weren't worried :) I finally got to really hold Leila.

From there we headed up to our maternity room and got to know our new baby. Chris and Tara brought Gunnar to the hospital to visit - he was more interested in the room with all of the gadgets than his actual baby sister :P

We ended up only needing to stay in the hospital for one night - I was doing so well and so was Leila. Since we've been home everything has been running as smoothly as it can with a newborn and a toddler - but it gets better every day :)

Here are the pictures of Leila's birth :)

Gunnar's 2nd Birthday!!

I've been horrible at keeping up on the blog during these last few months of pregnancy. I also had to update my personal home computer and we didn't complete that until just recently. Now that it's done and now that I'm no longer working (baby still isn't here - 39 weeks), I have the time to keep the blog semi-updated!

This past Sunday we celebrated Gunnar's 2nd birthday! I was so relieved to know that Gunnar would be 2 before baby sister arrived (for some reason that was important to me). We didn't do a major party like we did for his first birthday, but we still celebrated nonetheless. Grandma Marilee and Uncle Chris and Aunt Tara joined us for dinner and then we came home to open presents and Gunnar blew out the candles on a special cupcake!

Here are some of the pictures and video from the birthday!

Opening Great-Grandma Celia's present

Golf clubs from Uncle Chris and Aunt Tara!

Bubble wands gift from Grandma Marilee!

The card that went along with the gift was very cool to touch and play with

As Gunnar says "Oh Boy!!" - he also said "Roooooar" when he opened his dinosaurs from Grandma Marilee

Grocery basket from Aunt Tara and Uncle Chris

BIG present from Uncle Chris and Aunt Tara (video below)

Playing with Thomas the train and dinosaurs!

Now there's a place to play with all of the toys - the picnic table!

Video Time!!!!

Ramin and I got Gunnar his BIG BOY gift of a new tool workbench. We've noticed over the past few  months that every time Ramin would bring our a hammer, screwdriver or the power drill that Gunnar would be mesmerized watching him. He would take anything he could find and mimic the motions of a screwdriver - so we knew that we had to get Gunnar a set of his own tools at some point. We debated getting him either the workbench for his birthday or the Lil Tikes car that Chris had as a child. Because the weather is still a bit chilly and unpredictable, we decided to go with the workbench. We'll probably get the Lil Tikes car sometime in the later Spring or Summer.

Here is the video of Ramin bringing out the workbench:

Here is Gunnar playing with his train set and dinosaurs while sitting on his new picnic table:

Here is Gunnar playing with his golf clubs:

And finally, after we let him open and play with all of his toys, we had to sing Happy Birthday and let him blow out his candles!

Summer Wrap Up

Wow, I just looked back on the last post I made from May and I'm realizing how much Gunnar has grown in the past 6 months since that time. He's grown not only in the physical sense but also emotionally - he is so smart and can understand much of what we tell him. He still isn't talking in complete sentences but he definitely says specific words (ball, plane, dog, truck, book, etc.). Next week he will be 19 months old and he is extremely curious and gets into everything!

We moved houses last week and the build up toward moving has been stressful the past few months. I'm also now 4+ months pregnant and am just finally starting to feel the effects of it (backaches, sciatic pain, fatigue). Now that we're getting settled into the house I'm hoping to be able to have more time to dedicate to posting pictures once again and keeping the blog up-to-date!

Here is a round up of my favorite pictures from the summer!

Gunnar goes to Aunt Tara's house on Tuesday's about twice per month. We bring an extra car seat for him in case she needs to go anywhere - he likes to get sit in it just for fun.

At Aunt Tara's Gunnar gets to play in their complex park - he loves it!

He also has a friend named Cayden when he goes to Tara's. Cayden is a bit older than Gunnar but they've definitely become buddies.

Gunnar loves watching a few select music videos - he gets entranced by the singing and dancing in them!

We had lots of boxes around the house before the move, of course they made great play toys!

Gunnar came with me and Grandma Marilee when we got our hair done. He only sat still while having his bottle :P

At the park again :P

Playing with Legos

One morning before I went to work Gunnar wanted to get in the basket with his stuffed animals. He took all of them out of the basket, got it in himself and then motioned for me to put all of the animals back in on top of him!

Our old neighborhood swing - he's getting close to outgrowing those shoes!

Over at Jenn's house (where he goes on Tuesday's he's not with Tara) he LOOOOOOVEs playing with the magnets from the fridge.

We usually eat out at a place called Costa Vida once per month - he loves the rice and beans and has recently started getting better at using utensils.

This is our morning routine. Get bottle, lounge in chair and watch Curious George.

Gunnar got his very own cell phone (play of course) that lights up and has music!

Happy face for when his music videos come on the TV!

Our official pregnancy announcement!

This was the day I packed up most of Gunnar's room. I broke out the "real" books and let him play for a little while. These are the books with paper pages - he doesn't normally get to play with these because he just rips up the paper...but he sure had fun looking through them!

All of us went with Chris and Tara to the Utah State Fair one Sunday. Gunnar absolutely LOVED seeing all of the animals and being able to touch them. He's definitely getting to the point where going to the zoo in the spring time will be fun!

Got a new basketball bath toy to play with!

Zoned out watching something on TV while eating dinner.

Last day in the old house Gunnar found the fooseball table. He spent a good half hour playing with the guys and moving the ball around. Of course, he had to climb on top of it too.

 On moving day Aunt Tara took Gunnar for the entire day and night (so we could move everything)...here they are taking a selfie together!

First couple of days in the new house, Gunnar found out he LOVES the railing/banister for the stairs. Don't worry he can't fall down and he hasn't gotten stuck :P

The new house has it's OWN playset with a rock wall to climb and a slide to go down. Gunnar loves climbing up! We have purchased a baby swing so he'll be able to swing as well.

Gunnar loves examining (and picking) flowers he finds - these are in our new backyard and he had fun exploring!

More photos to come over the next little while :)