Ahhh- the Dreaded 30!

Okay so it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.  Probably because I was too sleep deprived to care. :)

Aaron was awesome and made me breakfast burritos for breakfast.  My only requests that day were to stay home, have no visitors, and hold Hannah all day.

I got some movies and nice knives that I've really been wanting and all of my requests were fulfilled.

Aaron made me french dip sandwiches for dinner and even made the buns from scratch.  For dessert he made me an ice cream pie.  I have an amazing husband!

Since it was on Sunday we went to Iggy's for dinner Monday night.  It was a really nice low key birthday which is just what I wanted.

We celebrated with my family the week after.  My parent's gave me yard work which I was very grateful for!  And I got shirts from Steve's family and Michelle's.  Michelle even surprised me by coming up from Nevada for my birthday dinner.  Sadly though I have no pictures.

Newborn pictures

We went and had newborn pictures done of Hannah when she was a week old by one of my good friends Emily.  I love them, but you can't go to wrong when you have such a cute little subject! 

Gavin was being a major twerp and not wanting to cooperate!  This is the only one I love of all of the kids, but I do LOVE it!

 

First day home and First bath

The boys were very excited and eager to hold Hannah as soon as we got home.

Zack is so sweet with Hannah!  He kisses her every couple of minutes when she's not in her bed and constantly (seriously at least 30 times a day) tells her how beautiful she is.

 Austin also loves her to pieces and likes to kiss her constantly and give her hugs.  The first time that she cried he immediately started singing "I am a child of God" to her.  It was all on his own and totally unprompted and he has continued to sing it to her whenever she cries.  I think it is the sweetest thing!

 I was really worried about how Gavin would feel about her.  He still likes to be called my baby and still likes to be held a lot, but he has been great with her!  He loves her and is so sweet with her.

All of the boys are constantly updating us on her every movement and noise that she makes.  This little girl is very adored by everyone and I think she is going to have a lot of loving protectors.

 Her first time in her crib.

 

 Her first night at home.  I love this nightgown on her!  I hated nightgowns with my boys, but this time around I am loving them!  The quilt she is laying on is the first quilt I have ever made that wasn't tied.  It's very deceiving in that it wasn't near as hard as it looks to make.  She wakes up around every 3 hours to eat, but it's so much fun holding her that I don't mind, yet.

 And finally, her first bath at home.  I made the big mistake of doing it when she was hungry so she was mad!

 And she just got madder!  She has liked her baths since the first one.

Cuddling with Daddy after.  It cracks me up to wrap her in her towel because she's so tiny that she just gets lost in there.

The Hospital

We did a really bad job of remembering to take pictures of our visitors at the hospital.  Pretty much all of the members of our families that were able to came the first couple of days to meet Hannah.  However, the 3 most important visitors to me weren't allowed in to the hospital because of visiting restrictions.  To say I was unhappy about it doesn't even begin to cover how I felt!  Let's just say that I wasn't happy that because people choose to be irresponsible and not get themselves and their kids immunized I had to pay the price and I think that the hospital was being stupid!

 We skyped with the boys a few times and they came up to the floor and tried to see her through a little window in a door.  I love how after a few seconds they are ready to go play again.

Aaron was so excited to get to change her meconium diapers; don't you love the expression on his face. :)

 I only got 45 min of sleep the night before so I was really looking forward to sleeping that first day and night because don't all newborns sleep the first 24 hours?  Well Hannah didn't get that memo!  Her eyes were wide open for the first 4 hours after she was born and after that she would take hour long cat naps (at most!) every 3-4 hours.  She was a very vocal baby, not necessarily fussy she just wanted attention and to nurse constantly.  Needless to say I didn't get hardly any sleep!  Combined with that and the pain meds I don't know if I was very good company.  I kept falling asleep when our guests and hospital staff would be talking to me.  Somebody from registration was asking me questions and I fell asleep in the middle of talking to her and woke up to Aaron answering her questions.  I was so embarrassed!

Her pediatrician came the day after she was born to assess her and was concerned that her arms and legs were short in proportion to her body; plus her feet are tiny.  A baby was born in our ward with a form of dwarfism a couple of months ago so I was very nervous.  She left saying that she would look up the correct measurements for an infant and let us know the next day, I did not like being left to worry the whole day.  Then that night while the nurse was assessing her she noticed that her bum dimple (I don't know what else to call it) still had a little opening which can be consistent with spina bifida and just said she would leave a note for the pediatrician to look at it in the morning.  I'm already a worrier so none of this stuff was very helpful for me.

The next morning the pediatrician came and said that she had a hard time finding what the measurements are supposed to be, but from what she had been able to find she wasn't worried enough anymore that she would expose her to the radiation from doing x-rays which would be the only way to diagnose her for sure.  She also said that the opening in her bum was small enough and down low enough that it wasn't concerning.  I felt much better after she left!

 We decided to give her a little sponge bath after being in the hospital for a couple of days and she did not like it!  By the second day my milk came in and she was a much happier baby and would actually sleep for 2-3 hours at a time.  She dropped down to 6 lbs. 1 oz., but luckily by the time we left the hospital she was up to 6 lbs 3 oz and her bilirubin was 12 so they weren't as concerned about her dropping so low.

 

 Her parents are slightly smitten!

 

 

 

 

 

 Her first outfit getting ready to go home.  We stayed until Sunday morning and were ready to leave!  The booties I made her were newborn size, but her feet are so little the booties are about double the size of her feet.  I think her doctor commented at least 5 times on how small her feet were and at least twice that many times on how vocal and loud she was.

 This is pretty much how she always feels about her car seat.

The boys came to the hospital to pick us up to go home and they all had to get our of their car seats to give her kisses.  They were so excited so see her and commented many times on how beautiful she was.  It was such a great moment!

Hannah's Birth Story

I started having pretty frequent contractions and at times pretty consistent contractions when I was 37 weeks so I thought for sure that I would go early again, but it wasn't meant to be.  My c-section was scheduled April 18th at 7:30 in the morning.  

My sister was coming to sleep at our house that night so she could take care of the kids in the morning and wasn't able to get to our house until about 11.  We were up for awhile giving her instructions and by the time we finally got in bed neither Aaron nor me could fall asleep.  We stayed up talking for about 2 hours and then I decided to just finish crocheting myself some slippers since I couldn't sleep.  Aaron was finally able to fall asleep about 20 minutes later and I finally fell asleep around 2:40.  I had to wake up at 3:30 so I could shower, shave, and get ready, but I thought for sure I'd be able to sleep that day and night since most newborns sleep the first 24 hours so I wasn't too worried.

Notice the multiple gauze on my arm.  It took them 4 times to get an IV in because they all kept blowing or infiltrating.  I've got quite the bruises from the 3 that went bad.

 It's a lot more painful getting an epidural when you aren't in active labor!  I asked Aaron if I could squeeze his hand while they were doing it and I'm apparently a lot stronger than either of us thought.  His ring was digging in to the 2 fingers that were on the other side of it and by the time they were done the pain made him start to go in to shock.  (I guess that's a risk when you just had surgery 5 days before and have lost a good amount of blood.)  He had to go out in to the hall and sit on a gurney, but luckily he was fine in time for Hannah's birth.

 Sorry if you didn't enjoy the last 2 pictures, but I think they are amazing!  I really wanted to be able to watch them do the c-section with a mirror, but they don't do that at McKay so I told Aaron to take a ton of pictures.  He was hoping to not watch it this time so he wasn't very excited, but he's a good husband and did it anyway.  Hannah Isabelle was born at 7:58 am.

 She was 6 lbs. 10 oz. and 19 inches long.  I thought she looked a ton like Gavin when she was first born.  We were pleasantly surprised to find out we got another red head.

 My first time seeing my beautiful little girl.  It was love at first cry! :)

 Her first bath.  She has a set of lungs on her and let them all know what she thought of them from the second she was born.

 Her daddy picked out her first bow.  It thought he did a great job and loved how cute she was!

 Mom and babe reunited after her bath and after they got me stitched up.  She was a pro nurser from the start and was only happy when she was nursing.  She nursed for over 30 minutes and then we skyped with the boys before they had to go to school since they weren't allowed to come up to the hospital (dumbest visiting policy ever!).  Then the nurses took her away so they could clean me up and transfer me to my room and Aaron said she cried pretty much the whole time she was gone from me.  Neither of us liked being separated!  I love this little girl!

Aaron's Adventurous Surgery

On Thursday March 29th Aaron went in to have a tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy and deviated septum repair.  We had heard a lot of horror stories about these surgeries and knew it probably wasn't going to be a fun recovery, but we had also heard about how much better people feel after so we figured it would be worth it.

The first thing Aaron said when I saw him was "What in the heck was I thinking, kill me now."  I should have known by that to be ready for what was to come.  He then proceeded to tell me to call his mom and yell at her for not having him have the surgery when he was younger, he was not happy with her!  I had a hard time not giggling at that.  He was in a ton of pain and had a horrible head ache!  

 

 The doctor had said to make sure to give him his pain meds right when they were due and to not wait even if he said he didn't need them.  So because of that and because he was in so much pain and we never had it very much under control I was setting my alarm for every four hours to give him his pain meds and his anti-nausea meds- he was also very nauseous.

The next day he actually didn't feel too bad, I think because he was still pretty well hydrated from the day before.  I was really trying hard to push fluids on him and to keep him drinking.  

Saturday he woke up with a horrible headache and was pretty miserable all day!  I was still trying very hard to get him to drink, but he was not very interested.

By Sunday the headache was not any better and if anything it was worse.  He had been moaning and groaning all night long and I didn't know what to do anymore.  I couldn't get him to drink hardly anything by that point.  I decided maybe I needed to be the mean nurse and show him some tough love.  He hadn't showered since Friday and he stunk so I told him he had to get up and take a shower.  He didn't feel like he could even stand up though so I got the bath all ready for him.  It was probably around 3 or 4 in the afternoon and he hadn't peed since Saturday evening so I was getting a little worried.  He tried to get up and couldn't walk by himself so I had to help him in to the bathroom and in to the bathtub.  Just the movement of being up made his head a lot worse and he started throwing up.  So I helped him back to bed and decided if he didn't drink something in the next couple of hours I would take him in to the Instacare for some fluids (we had been told that dehydration was a common problem with this surgery).

I got the kids dinner and got them in bed.  By then Aaron was if anything worse so I called his surgeon.  They told me to take him up to the ER, but I really didn't want to go there so I asked them if I could just take him to the Instacare which they said was fine.  So I called a neighbor girl to come sit with the kids and away we went. 

When we got to the Instacare they checked his sats and they were 84%.  I had thought his color looked a little off all day, but I just figured it was because he was laying in our dark room and I couldn't really see him.  The doctor came in pretty fast and Aaron had started throwing up again.  He took one look at Aaron and said we needed to call an ambulance.  I asked him if that was really necessary because it would only take me 20 min to drive him there.  He told me it would be the difference between being in the ICU and a regular floor.  He thought Aaron was going in to shock and that his body was starting to no longer compensate. 

They got oxygen on him and put in a couple of IV's which they were running antibiotics and fluids through and the ambulance got there and we were off.  Once we got to the ER we found out that the doctor was being a bit of a spaz and Aaron was sick, but not that sick.  He was severely dehydrated and had aspiration pneumonia.  The ER doctor wanted to admit him overnight, but Aaron didn't want to stay so they told us we could do whatever he wanted.  His sats were still sitting in the 80's which I wasn't very comfortable with, but I was outvoted so after 3 bags of fluid, more antibiotics, and several hours we came home.  He still couldn't pee after getting that much fluid because he was so dehydrated and since his sats were still lower than normal they wanted us to come back to the ER the next day for a check-up.

We went back the next afternoon and his sats were still in the 80's so they put the oxygen back on him.  They gave him 2 more bags of fluid and after another 4 hours his sats were finally in the 90's so I felt much better bringing him home at that point.

He was pretty miserable for another week and then I think it was about 2 weeks after the surgery he went back to work.  He worked for 2 days and other than his throat being really sore he was starting to feel more normal.

Then he woke up at 11:50 on the 12th and could feel something running down the back of his throat.  He was coughing and went in the bathroom and spit and saw pure blood in the sink.  He called my name and when I went in there I knew immediately that we were going to be going back to the hospital.  I called his surgeon and a neighbor again to come sit with our kids.  The neighbor got there in a couple of minutes and we jumped in the car and rushed up to the hospital.  He was kind of freaking out in the car because blood was gushing constantly out of his mouth and he kept pulling big blood clots out of his mouth.  He looked like a vampire!  I wish I had a picture now, but I didn't dare take one at the time because he was so stressed.  

We got to the ER where they paged the surgeon and the OR.  One of his scabs had partly come off and he lost about a quart of blood in 30 min.  They took him in for emergency surgery to stop the bleeding.  It was a LONG sleepless night especially because I was so pregnant!  They released him from the hospital the next day around 11 and he was pretty weak from the blood loss for a couple of weeks, but finally a month later he feels like he is back to normal.  We just finished getting all of the hospital bills and after adding them up the surgery should have cost us around $5000.  Because of all the complications it cost around $22,000.  I just hope that his health really is as improved as everyone says it should be and then the surgery will have been worth it.