Day 4- Molly's Last Day in the Hospital!

Day 4 was an exciting day!  Dr. Thackeray stopped by first thing in the morning (well, not first thing for us... we'd been up since the first thing in the morning 12:01am), gave us the go ahead on the going home.  He made sure we didn't want to stay a day longer this time, but for some reason, that was not on my list of things I wanted to do this time.  I was very anxious to get home.  I decided it's because we have our own home now!  Almost all the other times, I had to come home to places I was wishing we were weren't coming home to :).  Negative Nelly.  Anyway!  We got all excited and started cleaning up and packing to go home!  The nurses started rolling in, helping us get things all finished up- taking off Molly's sticker of death, and gave us some forms to sign.  They told us they could have us out of there by 11:00!  WAHOO!

So I called Nate.  We wanted to have him here and ready to go the minute they discharged.  My mom came to the house and watched Jack.  All was going well and then the nurse came in and gave me the bad news that it would be more like 1:00 or 2:00 before the Pediatrician could come and give us the okay to go.  RATS!!!!  I was totally bummed.  Nate was already on his way, so he just came anyway.  And we waited.  There really wasn't much left to do.

I did try to take a few pictures of Molly.  I'd been wanting to do a hospital shoot like we did with Sarah for Jack and Erika, but it just wasn't happening.  Things were just not falling into place.  Even the sheets weren't white!  So we decided we'd just wait til we get home to get some of those shots... I'm still bummed about that.  

I do love this picture though... so precious!!  That blanket turned out to match her little go home outfit perfectly with the pink and gray!  So cool :)

When it was almost 2:00 the nurse came back in and informed us that the pediatrician was going to be even later and now we were looking at not getting out of there until 5:00 or 6:00!!  WHAT?!!!  Look at Molly's charts!  She's the picture perfect baby!  Had ZERO problems the entire time we were there!  Temps were perfect, eating was better than perfect, she passed all her tests, never had to go down to the nursery for ANYTHING but routine stuff, and even all her poopings and peeings were on schedule!!!  WHY DO THEY EVEN NEED A PEDIATRICIAN TO CLEAR HER!!!!  We were ticked.  It's so funny to be in the opposite situation that we were in a few years earlier... I think it was with Noah, I got discharged, but Nate was not off work yet, so I sat in the empty room, they took all the linens, cleaned the whole place up with us in there watching tv, and then eventually sent us out to the waiting room.  They wouldn't let us leave the floor of course because they have to watch you put them in your car, but we were kind of like orphans for a little while :).  So this was a funny change of scenery.  Asking the nurse how much trouble we could possibly get in if we just left without the okay.  Kicking ourselves for not leaving the day before.  We'd decided we didn't want to have to come back to get my staples out... dumb decision.  So anyway.  We waited.  Impatiently... but we waited.  

She finally showed up around 6:00, luckily I'd ordered dinner- that was still free and came to me while we waited.  She apologized when she got there, so we didn't feel right about chewing her out, but I got very restless while she was talking about who knows what... just shootin' the breeze it felt like... I wanted to go home!!!  I pretty much dragged us all out of there in the middle of her shpeel... 

Not loving the car seat.

But she did really well once she realized she was staying in it.  And we did put a blankie on her.. made it a little more cozy.  I just think it's so cute to see their tiny little bodies in these huge car seats.

We pulled up and there was a fun sign waiting for us on the door!  Cute kids!

And lots of fun big sibs waiting to hold their sister again!  

It was a lot of fun to have Emily, Lisa, and Jami show up as well.  They got to see her and hold her for the first time.  These three have been key in getting me through this pregnancy.  I don't know what I would have done without good friends this time.  It was not an easy road!  They have been so loving and supportive though.  

Will gave Molly the nickname "Molly-pop" so cute!

Erika was THRILLED to have her sister home!!  I think now she is just counting down the days until we can put her little sister in her room with her!!  

And once everyone left, the evening was pretty much over.  Kind of a drag since I'd planned on getting home much earlier and having time to play, but oh well.  The next day was Saturday- we could play then!  

She was finally home with us!!  Sure seems unreal.  Such a blessing to have had things go so smoothly and to be able to bring home a perfectly healthy baby.  I couldn't be more grateful.

Day Three- Good Golly Miss Molly

Day 3 brought some fun new adventures.  Molly and I got up early, got dressed, and tried to feel like human beings.  I was in love with this girl's feet from the minute I laid eyes on them.  They are so stinkin cute!  And long!  Long toes, long and slender, little feet!  They're beautiful.  Her fingers too.  So pretty!

I loved the picture we got of Jack in his little bed with his name behind him... tried to recreate it.

I have always loved how wrinkly they are on the bottom when they first get here :)

Okay, so Nate showed up with Jack Jack that morning.  We were able to all hang out together.  That was a lot of fun.  We went on a little walk through the hallways with him and it was just so fun to get him acquainted with his little sister.  He really opened up to the idea of her being ours.  I'll never forget the look of surprise when we told him that she was the baby that was in my tummy!  He looked back at my tummy like, "Well, who's in there now?"  Unfortunately, I'm not the "rubber band" I was back when I had Charity.  That's okay though :).  Then Jack reached down to his tummy and talked about HIS baby.  It was adorable.  I guess his is still in his tummy.  But he was being all possessive of his "litto sidder".  He even pushed her little bed for part of the time.  He mostly liked looking out the window at the rocks on the roofs below.  It was a lot of fun really.  More so than I thought possible.  

My mom came a little later to get Jack and take him to McD's.  Unfortunately he feel asleep on the way there, so they just got it to go.  He came back with her and we all hung out.  Steve showed up.  Nate and Jack left to go home for the big kids.  I had the company of my Mom and Steve for a while.  Not the most enjoyable evening, but whatever.  

Luckily, Nate showed up with the kids and we were able to snap this gem:

What a horrible attempt at a family picture.  Not framable.... oh well.

The kids were there for a while again and did really well.  Most of them drowned themselves in the screens of course.  Not the girls though!  They were right there with Molly and enjoyed her ever coo.  Fun stuff.

We did have to say goodbye to them too.  That was a bummer.  It's always hard to watch the room clear out.  Emotions were running pretty high that day, I'm pretty sure I cried.  

That night ended up being much like the first two.  I had high hopes of my last night in the hospital being a good one where I caught up on all the missed sleep the nights before... no such luck.  Although, I did skip the up and down of the bed game and went right to holding her in my arms next to me.  Not the most comfortable, but I'll take it.  Last night over.

Things to Remember Week of 8-30-15

TWO HOURS
We had this combined two hour meeting after Sacrament meeting this week.  With all the adults and youth.  I had heard it was going to be about not overdoing things and keeping things simple and not running faster than we have strength.  It wasn't really about that.  I'm not sure if it was me or if the things they were teaching really were annoying, but I was annoyed through that whole meeting.  I wish I hadn't been.  I was distracted by some negative thoughts about whether my baby was going to make it here or not, and then the hard chairs weren't helping, but it just didn't feel right.  Most of the things they talked about felt like they were coming from one person's perspective.  They talked about relationships and one thing that really stood out to me that I didn't love was when the one lady complained that her parents never fought in front of her and her siblings so they "didn't learn how to resolve arguments because they never saw that".  I don't think that could be more wrong.  And I don't think parents should fight in front of their kids.  I think disagreements and discussions that are actually resolved the right way in front of the kids are fine, but it shouldn't happen too often.  Kids need to feel safe if you ask me.  So anyway.  Not my favorite two hours.
The rest of Sunday kind of panned out to be okay.  I struggled with those negative feelings for quite a while, talked to Bliss about some of it even when she came over, and after a blessing from Nate before he had to go to work, I was able to turn some of it off.  It was really heavy.  Felt too real.   8-30-15

SHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GO NOW?
I am very set on having this baby in September!  I wanted her to have her own birth month.  It was really important to me for some reason.  Even when it came down to me possibly going into labor, I wanted to make sure that I was actually in labor if I went in because I knew that they would just take her if I was there.  So Sunday night, I woke up to go to the bathroom and smelled something kind of fishy.  Not sure what it was, I got back in bed and waited to feel the baby move.  I just wanted to make sure she was okay.  I know fishy usually means infection and I wasn't sure how that would affect a full-term baby... so anyway.  I laid there for QUITE a while, waiting for her to move.  Nothing.  I started to get worried.  Obviously.  I finally woke Nate up after a couple of hours.  He wanted us to go in.  I was bummed because I didn't think it was time for her to come yet!  But we piled ourselves into the car at 4:30 am.  We got all the way to the gas station before she finally budged!  There was enough movement to satisfy my need, so we headed back home.  That was a huge relief.  Felt kind of like that first or second pregnancy where I thought I needed to decide when to go in.
Then the next day was sort of frustrating because I kept having contractions.  Pretty strong ones that I hadn't had during this pregnancy before.  They weren't long enough or close together enough, but with my uterus the way it is, I was never sure if it was going to be too much for my uterus OR this sweet baby.  I downloaded a contraction app and started keeping track of them.  They continued most of the day.  I finally drove home to pack a bag, and of course, once I had the bag packed, I stopped contracting.  The dumb app told me to call an ambulance which seems weird.  But then they would only show up if I started doing things.  If I sat still they were gone.  Kind of funny.  It was a weird last day.  8-31-15

NESTING ON STEROIDS
I think I officially nested this pregnancy.  It was crazy nesting though!  It was nice to get everything done, but that last day, I was struggling so much with the pain and unable to do so many things that it all came to kind of a screeching hault.  Luckily, Nate and the kids helped pull it all off.  We got so much done in just that one day!  We were all so excited for our baby to come and wanted a nice clean place for her.  8-31-15

BOONDOCKS
We always like to do something fun with the kids before we ditch them to go have a baby.  This time it was Boondocks.  Everyone had a blast!  Even Jack Jack thoroughly enjoyed the arcade!  Charity and Kelly got passes to ride the go karts too.  I could barely move that night, walking around was pretty painful and I was definitely still having a LOT of contractions.  I was so glad that we did something with the kids though.  They deserve something fun before bringing home the new baby.  I was glad we were able to do that.  Came home and got everyone in bed!  It was time!!!

8-31-15

HEIDI AND JOHN IN CHARGE

(I copied and pasted this from Heidi's blog.  Thought it would be fun to have record of what everyone else did that day!)

Christa had her baby! Her name is Molly. It's nice for us because we always know what day she is going to deliver since she has C-sections and gets to schedule them. They asked John and me to kind of take over things at their house for a couple days while they were in the hospital with the baby.

It was so fun taking care of these cuties and we were honored they asked!

They were all so helpful!

They were so excited the morning of! Christa left a big gift for all of them. Actually it was from Molly.

On the first evening we went to the hospital to visit mom and baby.

Got to watch the first bath.

She kinda looks like Kelly.

She was so alert after her bath.

Christa was very upset about the green hat.

Proud uncle and aunt of now 12 nieces and nephews between the two of us!

Beautiful view from the room. And the baby and her uncle are pretty cute, too.

On day 2, John and Jack spent the majority of the morning gathering rocks from the creek to throw.

The big rocks made a big "pop" and the little rocks made a little "pop"

Getting them all sugared up for their dad later that night!

Jack wanted chocolate ice cream in a cup. He focused on the French fries first and then moved on to the sweets.

That morning we took Jack to get baby doughnuts at Bowman's, then when Erika got home we went to get ice cream (what can we say, we're the aunt and uncle. We are supposed to spoil them!) We told them not to tell the other kids when we picked them up from school about the ice cream. Within a matter of seconds of the other kids being in the car, Erika couldn't handle the secret anymore and proclaimed "We got ice cream!!" Ha ha!

To all of you allergy sufferers:  I was having the worst allergic reaction to the dog, cats, and trees in their back yard the first day. I don't know why I thought that it wouldn't bother me. And usually the only thing that works is Benadryl, but we all know how that story ends. So on that first day, I had to eventually take some Benadryl cause I couldn't handle it anymore. And so of course I fell asleep for about an hour (and John took over everything). That evening at the hospital I felt exhausted from my day of allergies. Christa told me to make sure to use the peppermint essential oil that she had in her bathroom. She and Charity have been claiming for a while that it works wonders (they both have bad allergies too). They've told me this for years but I've been too skeptic to really give it a chance. So I decided to try it the next day. I sniffed it every 15-30 minutes (probably not THAT often, but it totally felt like it). I basically took it with me wherever I went. And let me tell you- my throat wasn't itchy, my nose wasn't itchy or runny or stuffy, my eyes weren't itchy or red, and the muscle spasms I usually have in my upper back seemed relatively relaxed. And I maybe sneezed twice the entire day. It truly was a miracle worker!!! I've suffered with this my entire life, and I've never seen anything work like this! I am sold! As soon as I got home I ordered some for John and me. Apparently there are many benefits to peppermint. It has a calming effect on muscles and helps with headaches. Christa is probably pretty bugged right now, cause she has been telling me for years to use it. I'm converted, Christa! Just took a while.

A few fun/meaningful memories that we had from the time we had there:

-We're grateful we were both able to get the time off of work. On the first morning John and I got there in time to see Christa and Nate off. Before they left John helped with administering a priesthood blessing. He's glad he got to be a part of that. It turned out that the surgery went very well and Molly is a beautiful, healthy little sweetheart. This was C-section #8! That's some kind of world record!

- On the first morning, all of the kids (except for Jack and Luke) got up way early, due to their excitement that they were about to get a new baby sister. While we were all gathered around the kitchen table, eating breakfast (thankfully they love cold cereal), we all of a sudden heard this cute and loud squeal. So of course this alarmed us. We went upstairs to check out the source; apparently Jack had opened the door to his parents' bedroom and saw that they weren't there (probably the first time that had ever happened for him). The squeal/scream was his reaction. It was so cute and sad though. We, of course, all comforted him the best we could.

-On the second morning, John, Jack, Buddy and I were down by the creek, just chilling. Jack found a spot of dirt that he started digging with a small stick. Buddy must have viewed Jack's method as very inefficient. He quickly went over and started digging with his paws in the same spot. I mean, REALLY digging, like dogs do; just helping out. However, Jack was not impressed and quite bugged.

-On the second day John, Erika, Buddy, Jack and I took a walk down to the pond. John and Erika threw sticks into the water and Buddy was more than willing to fetch them (it was great exercise for him cause he was exhausted when we got home). Erika found a really big "stick," which was basically part of a tree trunk (a chunk of a tree like 6ft long). She dragged it over to the water and Buddy immediately jumped in and got it and some how brought it to shore! His eyes got so big as he did so. He was overwhelmed, to say the least, but very determined. He did it many more times, and thanks to John's muscles he was able to throw it pretty far. The only time Buddy didn't fetch the stick was when the ducks were too close to it. He was very intimidated by them. On our way home Erika told us about the boy at her school who told her he liked her. Very cute.

-As soon as Erika got home from school the 2nd day, Jack started playing with her. This went on for hours. She reached a point where she was done, but he was still soliciting play time with her. She cried a little bit (out of sheer frustrating, I'm sure) and then went up to her bed to lie down. Meanwhile, Jack was crying "ka Ka! Ka ka!" around the house. After a wile she fell asleep. So Jack went in to her bedroom (while she was still sleeping) and started "playing" with her. Which means he was sitting as close to her bed as he could and played with her sock and shoe. I went up to her room and saw him and asked him if he wanted to swing outside. He responded "My playing with Ka Ka." I said "But she's sleeping." He said "uh huh." So funny!

Kids are so fun. We had so much fun taking a couple days out of our normal routine to experience parenthood. I was so impressed with John. He was the one reminding us of prayers and he had basically everyone's schedule memorized. I had to keep referring to the written itinerary. He also put all the kids to bed the first night when I felt super sick, for whatever reason. And he made it way fun too! Everything is more fun with John.

PICTURE DAY
Of all the days :).  But I kind of think it will be fun to always remember that those pictures were taken on the day Molly was born.  Not that I bought any.  I am going to attempt to take some on my own!!  We'll see how it goes.  If it's worth saving $120ish.  9-1-15

FLAG FOOTBALL
Bradley started playing Flag Football the Wednesday we were in the hospital.  He keeps telling us how he's the best player on the team.  I'm really excited to go watch him play!  9-2-15

TOO COLD
I got these free passes to go to Seven Peaks but since it closes Monday we were going to try to go on Saturday.  Unfortunately the weather had a different plan.  It was barely 70 degrees outside and after that last pool party with Heidi being in the 70's, we knew a water park, where you spend little time actually IN the water, in 70 degrees would not be as fun.  Maybe Monday? 9-5-15