Because I just have to write it down or else I'll forget, and I don't want to forget. Tonight Clayton, Ady, and I were riding in the car. I saw a billboard ad for a ski and snowboard sale. Ady wanted to know if she could go. I told her no, mommy and daddy don't need any new gear, and we're either going to rent her gear or find it cheap else where. She asked what stuff, so I very excitedly told her that daddy was going to teach her how to ski this year.
Ady: "on the water?"
Me: (not entirely sure how she even knows about water skiing) "no baby, not water skiing, daddy's going to teach you how to ski on the snow. "
Ady: "snow skiing is on water. "
Me: (after a couple minutes of stunned silence and a little laughter) "you're right baby, snow skiing is on the water."
It's amazing the things she picks up on and remembers. And apparently the things she honestly comprehends.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Way Too Much to Catch Up On
Holy Moly, Ady is 3 short months away from being 2! I can't even believe it. I didn't even check when the last time I blogged was, but I'm sure it has been quite some time. I don't even know where to begin to update the list of new "kid tricks" she does. I can tell you that she is absolutely the cutest girl you will ever meet. She's not always dressed the best (there's a plus and a negative side to getting hand-me-downs), her hair is often a mess (I cut her bangs, and they don't always hang right- I promise, they're straighter than you might think), and she's bound to have food or drool on her at least half of the time you see her; but the way she talks and what she says, the way she smiles and giggles at you, and the way she plays and gets excited, that's why she's the cutest girl every.
Talking. She talks up a storm. And it's not babbling nonsense. She's quite intelligent with her language. She tells me exactly what she needs or wants, she will take stories we've ready anywhere between 1-100 times and will read it to me (she gets most of the words she attempts right when she "reads" the books), she'll warn herself (or maybe me) to be careful when she's doing something that might make her fall down, she asks her friends to play (and admittedly, she kind of bosses them around sometimes), and she sings :o) She's tunes in to conversations that other people are having and will chime in, just so you know she's listening. She's also quite observant of other people and will let you know when someone needs help (that can get a little awkward in public when she points out the crying child you're trying to politely ignore by saying, "the boy is sad."
Signing. We like to watch the Signing Time videos. Sometimes I wonder if she's really learning anything from them because when I try to get her to practice the signs they are doing on the show, she just sits and stares and ignores me; but then randomly a few days later, when we see something in real life that we saw on the show, she'll say and sign it. It's fun.
Colors. At first Ady knew the signs for colors better than she knew her colors. Meaning, I would point to a picture of something and ask what color it was and she wouldn't know, but then I'd sign the color, and then she would say the correct color. Now she knows her colors pretty well. Today during lunch she was reading a book, the title is "Opposites" and every letter is a different color. She took her fork and pointed to each color and told me what color it was. She got them all correct :o) With any of her "tricks," the key is to let her show you that she knows, because if you ask, there's 50/50 chance she'll answer.
Numbers. Over Christmas break I tried potty training Adelyn (it didn't work, just FYI). Every 15 minutes we would go to the bathroom and Ady would sit on the potty. Sometimes she would sit there just fine, and other times she would want to get off immediately. When she wanted to get off too soon, I'd tell her she had to sit there for 20 seconds, and I'd count for her. It didn't take too long, and she was counting with me. She had a handle on 1, 2, 3 but then it would vary what came next and how high she went. After a week or two, she was pretty good going to "ten." It sounded like this, "one, two, three, four, six, seven, eight, nine, kiss." (Yes, five is missing) Well, sometimes it ended in "kiss" other times it ended in a mumble. After Christmas break she had a lot more practice counting when I told her that she had to share her toys with Aleigha (the girl I do a babysitting swap with) and that Aleigha could play with her toys for 10 seconds. Sometimes she made it to 10 and got the toy back, but mostly she made it to 7 and had found something else to play with by then. Lately she's just started counting in the middle of playing. Not prompted by me. She just starts counting. Today she made it to 13 all by herself (she counted 5 and she said 10). I'm pretty impressed with her :o)
Princesses. Obviously I love Disneyland and most things Disney, Clayton claims it's my fault how obsessed he's become with Disneyland now, so of course our daughter is intrigued with Disney characters as well. For Christmas Adelyn (and I- I'll be honest) got an interactive Fisher Price Disney castle. When you put a princess in the middle of the castle, she'll tell you her name, sing you her song, and say a few other lines. The castle taught Ady all the princess' names so when we let her know she was going to Disneyland, she let us know all the princesses she wanted to see: "See Tiana. See Snow White. See Cinderella. See 'Roura." etc. Plus, the castle (and Daddy's always listening to the Disney station on Pandora) taught Adelyn the princess' songs. My favorite memory of our last trip to Disneyland was when we went and checked out the lobby of the California Adventure Hotel (whatever that one's called) and there was a man playing the piano. We were walking through and Ady says "Elsa" and sure enough, the pianist was playing "Let it Go" from Frozen. Then we walked into a store to look around, the second we walked out Ady says, "Little Mermaid" it took me a second or two to realize that the pianist was now playing "Part of Your World." But far better than her recognizing the princesses that sing each song (although that is pretty good) is that she sings the songs too. Obviously she needs a little help, but when I'm singing and stop, she's right there to fill in the missing word (well, when she's in the mood to sing for you). It all started with "Ursula" meaning "Poor Unfortunate Souls" she also sings "Part of Your World" "Cruella Devil" "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" the 7am song from Tangled "Winnie the Pooh" and others that I can't think of right now.
Don't worry, it's not just Disney characters and songs she knows. She'll sings "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" "I Love to See the Temple" "Wheels on the Bus" "Patty Cake" and more. Princesses aren't the only people she knows, she knows who Jesus is and that we go to church to learn about Him, and that we should think about Him during sacrament (sometimes she lets everyone else know they should be thinking about him too when she yells out his name while the bread and water are being passed around). I show her pictures of her family (mostly my side) and she knows who her family is. She loves the Cat in the Hat and the Little Einsteins (aka Rocket). And there's Minnie and Mickey and that whole gang, but that's going back to Disney people.
Movement. She's been walking since the day before her first birthday, but now she has so many more ways to move around. She jumps places more than she walks or runs- there was even a point where I wondered if one leg was shorten than the other because it looked like she was hobbling, but it was just her jumping/leaping forward. She'll still crawl, when she's playing with Aleigha or when she's being silly or when she's going through a tunnel- one of her favorite activities as of lately. She loves to spin and run ovals (she does circles, but she calls them ovals). She goes up and down stairs upright now. She's careful enough that she'll only walk down stairs when Mommy is right there to watch her, otherwise she'll hold my hand and walk or sit on her bum or slide down on her tummy.
Friends. She LOVES going to nursery on Sundays. They get to play with playdough. And Sophie is there. We have 11:00am church. She went upstairs today a little after 9:00am (after we had breakfast) and so I decided we should just get ready for church. I told her that we were putting on her dress for church, and as soon as she had is on she was telling me she wanted to go to church, then she was telling me she wanted to go to nursery and that she wanted to play with playdough. We ended up leaving for church early because she couldn't take not being there any more. Once we were there, she had a hard time accepting that we had more than an hour of sacrament meeting before it was time for nursery. We had to leave the chapel 30 minutes early so she could roam the halls, and it turns out she was not the only one excited to go to nursery, half her class was out in the hall. I go in to nursery for a couple minutes each week to do a short singing time with them, and it's been fun to go in and see her in there with other kids. A few times I've gone in and gotten the impression that my little Ady is a bit of a ring leader. I'm pretty sure she was just off doing her own thing, not meaning to have anyone come with her, but come with her they did. I guess I'd better watch her. Other than nursery, she really only interacts on a regular basis with Aleigha, who is about 11 months younger than Ady. Ady LOVES Aleigha. She loves to give her hugs and kisses, she loves to play chase with her (some adult assistance required). She loves to give Aleigha toys (she loves it less when they are her own toys she has to share, but she's getting better and better at that). It's really fun to watch them play together, especially now that Aleigha is getting big enough to initiate play herself- she'll also initiate big sloppy open mouth kisses which is probably why Ady is a lot more sick now than she ever was last year.
I'm sure there are things that I'm forgetting, but Ady's been napping for almost 2 hours now and there's a chance she'll wake up any second and Clayton is in Malaysia, so it's not like he can help watch her while I finish up. I guess I'll have to do a post later to catch everyone up on Clayton and I, but that'll have to come another day. I'll try to put some pictures up now, but those will probably have to come another day too, it all depends on what pictures are already on the computer, and how long Adelyn chooses to sleep.
Talking. She talks up a storm. And it's not babbling nonsense. She's quite intelligent with her language. She tells me exactly what she needs or wants, she will take stories we've ready anywhere between 1-100 times and will read it to me (she gets most of the words she attempts right when she "reads" the books), she'll warn herself (or maybe me) to be careful when she's doing something that might make her fall down, she asks her friends to play (and admittedly, she kind of bosses them around sometimes), and she sings :o) She's tunes in to conversations that other people are having and will chime in, just so you know she's listening. She's also quite observant of other people and will let you know when someone needs help (that can get a little awkward in public when she points out the crying child you're trying to politely ignore by saying, "the boy is sad."
Signing. We like to watch the Signing Time videos. Sometimes I wonder if she's really learning anything from them because when I try to get her to practice the signs they are doing on the show, she just sits and stares and ignores me; but then randomly a few days later, when we see something in real life that we saw on the show, she'll say and sign it. It's fun.
Colors. At first Ady knew the signs for colors better than she knew her colors. Meaning, I would point to a picture of something and ask what color it was and she wouldn't know, but then I'd sign the color, and then she would say the correct color. Now she knows her colors pretty well. Today during lunch she was reading a book, the title is "Opposites" and every letter is a different color. She took her fork and pointed to each color and told me what color it was. She got them all correct :o) With any of her "tricks," the key is to let her show you that she knows, because if you ask, there's 50/50 chance she'll answer.
Numbers. Over Christmas break I tried potty training Adelyn (it didn't work, just FYI). Every 15 minutes we would go to the bathroom and Ady would sit on the potty. Sometimes she would sit there just fine, and other times she would want to get off immediately. When she wanted to get off too soon, I'd tell her she had to sit there for 20 seconds, and I'd count for her. It didn't take too long, and she was counting with me. She had a handle on 1, 2, 3 but then it would vary what came next and how high she went. After a week or two, she was pretty good going to "ten." It sounded like this, "one, two, three, four, six, seven, eight, nine, kiss." (Yes, five is missing) Well, sometimes it ended in "kiss" other times it ended in a mumble. After Christmas break she had a lot more practice counting when I told her that she had to share her toys with Aleigha (the girl I do a babysitting swap with) and that Aleigha could play with her toys for 10 seconds. Sometimes she made it to 10 and got the toy back, but mostly she made it to 7 and had found something else to play with by then. Lately she's just started counting in the middle of playing. Not prompted by me. She just starts counting. Today she made it to 13 all by herself (she counted 5 and she said 10). I'm pretty impressed with her :o)
Princesses. Obviously I love Disneyland and most things Disney, Clayton claims it's my fault how obsessed he's become with Disneyland now, so of course our daughter is intrigued with Disney characters as well. For Christmas Adelyn (and I- I'll be honest) got an interactive Fisher Price Disney castle. When you put a princess in the middle of the castle, she'll tell you her name, sing you her song, and say a few other lines. The castle taught Ady all the princess' names so when we let her know she was going to Disneyland, she let us know all the princesses she wanted to see: "See Tiana. See Snow White. See Cinderella. See 'Roura." etc. Plus, the castle (and Daddy's always listening to the Disney station on Pandora) taught Adelyn the princess' songs. My favorite memory of our last trip to Disneyland was when we went and checked out the lobby of the California Adventure Hotel (whatever that one's called) and there was a man playing the piano. We were walking through and Ady says "Elsa" and sure enough, the pianist was playing "Let it Go" from Frozen. Then we walked into a store to look around, the second we walked out Ady says, "Little Mermaid" it took me a second or two to realize that the pianist was now playing "Part of Your World." But far better than her recognizing the princesses that sing each song (although that is pretty good) is that she sings the songs too. Obviously she needs a little help, but when I'm singing and stop, she's right there to fill in the missing word (well, when she's in the mood to sing for you). It all started with "Ursula" meaning "Poor Unfortunate Souls" she also sings "Part of Your World" "Cruella Devil" "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" the 7am song from Tangled "Winnie the Pooh" and others that I can't think of right now.
Don't worry, it's not just Disney characters and songs she knows. She'll sings "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" "I Love to See the Temple" "Wheels on the Bus" "Patty Cake" and more. Princesses aren't the only people she knows, she knows who Jesus is and that we go to church to learn about Him, and that we should think about Him during sacrament (sometimes she lets everyone else know they should be thinking about him too when she yells out his name while the bread and water are being passed around). I show her pictures of her family (mostly my side) and she knows who her family is. She loves the Cat in the Hat and the Little Einsteins (aka Rocket). And there's Minnie and Mickey and that whole gang, but that's going back to Disney people.
Movement. She's been walking since the day before her first birthday, but now she has so many more ways to move around. She jumps places more than she walks or runs- there was even a point where I wondered if one leg was shorten than the other because it looked like she was hobbling, but it was just her jumping/leaping forward. She'll still crawl, when she's playing with Aleigha or when she's being silly or when she's going through a tunnel- one of her favorite activities as of lately. She loves to spin and run ovals (she does circles, but she calls them ovals). She goes up and down stairs upright now. She's careful enough that she'll only walk down stairs when Mommy is right there to watch her, otherwise she'll hold my hand and walk or sit on her bum or slide down on her tummy.
Friends. She LOVES going to nursery on Sundays. They get to play with playdough. And Sophie is there. We have 11:00am church. She went upstairs today a little after 9:00am (after we had breakfast) and so I decided we should just get ready for church. I told her that we were putting on her dress for church, and as soon as she had is on she was telling me she wanted to go to church, then she was telling me she wanted to go to nursery and that she wanted to play with playdough. We ended up leaving for church early because she couldn't take not being there any more. Once we were there, she had a hard time accepting that we had more than an hour of sacrament meeting before it was time for nursery. We had to leave the chapel 30 minutes early so she could roam the halls, and it turns out she was not the only one excited to go to nursery, half her class was out in the hall. I go in to nursery for a couple minutes each week to do a short singing time with them, and it's been fun to go in and see her in there with other kids. A few times I've gone in and gotten the impression that my little Ady is a bit of a ring leader. I'm pretty sure she was just off doing her own thing, not meaning to have anyone come with her, but come with her they did. I guess I'd better watch her. Other than nursery, she really only interacts on a regular basis with Aleigha, who is about 11 months younger than Ady. Ady LOVES Aleigha. She loves to give her hugs and kisses, she loves to play chase with her (some adult assistance required). She loves to give Aleigha toys (she loves it less when they are her own toys she has to share, but she's getting better and better at that). It's really fun to watch them play together, especially now that Aleigha is getting big enough to initiate play herself- she'll also initiate big sloppy open mouth kisses which is probably why Ady is a lot more sick now than she ever was last year.
I'm sure there are things that I'm forgetting, but Ady's been napping for almost 2 hours now and there's a chance she'll wake up any second and Clayton is in Malaysia, so it's not like he can help watch her while I finish up. I guess I'll have to do a post later to catch everyone up on Clayton and I, but that'll have to come another day. I'll try to put some pictures up now, but those will probably have to come another day too, it all depends on what pictures are already on the computer, and how long Adelyn chooses to sleep.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Ug
Okay, this post isn't really meant for any one to read, I just feel like I need to get some things out and this is my journal, so I figured this is where I could do it. So if you do read it, I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm not looking for you to tell me that life will get better, or that someone else's life is worse than mine, I just need to vent and get some stuff out.
Is that even how you spell "ug?" You know, the sound you make when you're too tired to scream or cry or have any type of real emotion? If that's not how you spell that word, that's what I mean anyway. This year has not been easy. And by year, I mean school year, not "this year" as in "it's only February." Ady's in my life now, so that's wonderful, but juggling everything... so many days I feel like I just CAN'T do it. Now that I finally sit down to write it all out, I can't even think of everything that sucks. But trust me... it sucks.
I'm telling you, if I just had one of singular life changing event, it'd be enough, but I've had a ton of major changes happen all at once to me and it's over whelming (most every day). To start with, I have an all new team at school and I'm the team leader even though this is only my second year in sixth grade, and I wasn't even there the last part of the year last year because I was on maternity leave. Not only is it a new team, but both of them are new teachers. Don't get me wrong, my team is AMAZING, and I forget most of the time that they are new teachers, but that doesn't mean that all the stress is off me. I still have to give them direction on what and how to teach, I'm the one to inform them about school rules and policies, and I'm the one that has to talk to them when they are forgetting to have their students follow the school rules. Yeah, that's not fun. In addition to new team members, now that I'm the leader, I realize that our team wasn't really functioning the way we were supposed to last year, so I have to form a "propper" team without having a good example of what that is.
On top of the team leader thing, we have a new math curriculum this year, so my students are struggling because there's a gap between what the new 5th grade math core expects out of 5th graders now and what the old core expected out of my students last year. That's not my students' fault, or their last year's teacher, or mine, it's just how a new curriculum goes. But that doesn't stop students from feeling frustrated, it doesn't stop parents from calling me with angry voices, as if I am purposefully trying to sabotage their students' math career, and it doesn't stop me from feeling like I am sabotaging my students' math careers. And don't worry that there is a new literacy curriculum that we will be implementing next year.
Think I'm done talking about school? Think again. Each of those paragraphs would be enough to deal with, right? Yeah, on top of that through in the issues of my personal students. Yeah, in case you ever wondered, a teacher's job doesn't just focus on math, reading, writing, science, history, pe, and curriculum topics like that. No, our job is our students. At Geneva, sometimes that means a little more than at other schools. This year I'm having to deal with disrespectful students who aren't even aware that what they're doing is wrong. I'm trying to teach them respect, and some of them are boogers who know what they're doing is wrong, but worse are the students who are so oblivious to the rules of society that they don't even realize that the comments they make are demeaning, hurtful, and disrespectful. I've got thieves in my class, and there are some in the other classes as well. There's bullying going on, and things worse than bullying. Because I can't remember if I made my blog private, and even if I did, this stuff is so intense that I couldn't write about it anyway. Let's just say that the other couple (notice it's not just one other thing, it's multiples) of things are something that no other 6th grade teacher before me (at this school) has faced, everyone in the office is stumped about what to do, the school psychologist is exhausting her resources, including her professor, who in 20 or something years of working with schools has NEVER had to deal with.
And if all I had to worry about was school, I'm hoping that you're thinking, "Yeah, that's enough." But it does get better. Remember how I have a daughter now? Remember how she's the sweetest, cutest, smiliest, most adorable thing you'll ever see? Now remember how I have to leave her ALL day long to go and deal with sh** at school? Remember how Clayton and I both work so we had to find the daughter of a person in our ward to watch our princess angel baby? (Don't get me wrong, it was a miracle that we found this random daughter of a lady in our ward so that we didn't have to put Ady in day care. That I am grateful for.) So by time I get home, I'm exhausted, but I keep pushing through because I only have 3 hours with Adelyn a day. I can't just collapse after I get home. So I play with Ady and feed her until she goes to sleep and then I have more school work to do, or more house work, or more often, I collapse in bed exhausted from it all, only to be woken up in the middle of the night because my 9 month old daughter is still not sleeping through the night. She is capable of it, but between vacations, and teething, and being sick, and the fact that I feel SO GUILTY about leaving her all day long that I CAN'T stand to let her cry it out, she doesn't sleep through the night very often. And because I do usually just plop into bed feeling exhausted and guilty, my school work gets backed up so I'm never fully on top of it like I need to be, or I used to be, so I go to school every day knowing that I'm not giving my students everything that I'm capable of. My house work gets backed up, so I'm constantly frazzled about how dirty and disorganized my house is (which is only made worse knowing that a stranger comes into my house every day to watch my daughter and in addition to praying that she treats Ady well is the prayer that she's not judging my house work (lack there of). And there never seems to be time to make any of this missing time up. I'm failing as a teacher because I can't find the time to prep lessons and grade essays, and solve student home issues. I'm failing as a mommy because I leave my daughter every day and as much as I want to come home full of energy and give Ady my undivided attention, I don't have the energy to be everything I want to be for her. And then I'm failing as a wife and home maker because my house is a mess, Clayton ends up cooking the meals most of the time, and I'm so frustrated and he's really the only one who I can take it out on. And then I don't even have time to think about myself and how I'm failing me. I don't have time to exercise, stress is bad on my heart, and who knows what else I should be doing to take care of me.
But don't worry, there is a little more. Bless his heart, Clayton is killing me as well. As soon as we can financially afford it, I would like to quit working. Not just because this school year is the year from hell, but because I want to raise my own daughter. As great as our sitter is, she's not Mommy. But I don't know if I'll ever be able to quit, seeing how Clayton can't settle down into a job. He gets one, he likes it for a while, then something starts to irritate him, then the people he works with start to irritate him, then he gets it in his mind that he has to quit, and then he looks to me for advice, like I'm supposed to tell him, "Sure sweetheart, go ahead, I don't mind if you start bringing in no money. Even though I know that you aren't going to be able to stop buying extra things like movies and computer parts and expensive phones." So no stress there, just the chance of cutting our income but not our spending.
So there it is. Like I said in the beginning, I can't remember it all, so know that there's at least something else that sucks right now. Oh, yeah, part of the sucking is that parent teacher conferences are tomorrow night and Thursday night. On parent teacher conference nights I have to be at school until 7:00 pm. And I HATE parent teacher conference nights because I do not like talking to parents. But in addition to my petrification of communication, with my drive, that means for the next 2 nights I will be away from my house from 6:40 am to 7:40 pm (if no appointments go over) and will only have about 20 minutes with Ady before bed time. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to the next 2 days!
Is that even how you spell "ug?" You know, the sound you make when you're too tired to scream or cry or have any type of real emotion? If that's not how you spell that word, that's what I mean anyway. This year has not been easy. And by year, I mean school year, not "this year" as in "it's only February." Ady's in my life now, so that's wonderful, but juggling everything... so many days I feel like I just CAN'T do it. Now that I finally sit down to write it all out, I can't even think of everything that sucks. But trust me... it sucks.
I'm telling you, if I just had one of singular life changing event, it'd be enough, but I've had a ton of major changes happen all at once to me and it's over whelming (most every day). To start with, I have an all new team at school and I'm the team leader even though this is only my second year in sixth grade, and I wasn't even there the last part of the year last year because I was on maternity leave. Not only is it a new team, but both of them are new teachers. Don't get me wrong, my team is AMAZING, and I forget most of the time that they are new teachers, but that doesn't mean that all the stress is off me. I still have to give them direction on what and how to teach, I'm the one to inform them about school rules and policies, and I'm the one that has to talk to them when they are forgetting to have their students follow the school rules. Yeah, that's not fun. In addition to new team members, now that I'm the leader, I realize that our team wasn't really functioning the way we were supposed to last year, so I have to form a "propper" team without having a good example of what that is.
On top of the team leader thing, we have a new math curriculum this year, so my students are struggling because there's a gap between what the new 5th grade math core expects out of 5th graders now and what the old core expected out of my students last year. That's not my students' fault, or their last year's teacher, or mine, it's just how a new curriculum goes. But that doesn't stop students from feeling frustrated, it doesn't stop parents from calling me with angry voices, as if I am purposefully trying to sabotage their students' math career, and it doesn't stop me from feeling like I am sabotaging my students' math careers. And don't worry that there is a new literacy curriculum that we will be implementing next year.
Think I'm done talking about school? Think again. Each of those paragraphs would be enough to deal with, right? Yeah, on top of that through in the issues of my personal students. Yeah, in case you ever wondered, a teacher's job doesn't just focus on math, reading, writing, science, history, pe, and curriculum topics like that. No, our job is our students. At Geneva, sometimes that means a little more than at other schools. This year I'm having to deal with disrespectful students who aren't even aware that what they're doing is wrong. I'm trying to teach them respect, and some of them are boogers who know what they're doing is wrong, but worse are the students who are so oblivious to the rules of society that they don't even realize that the comments they make are demeaning, hurtful, and disrespectful. I've got thieves in my class, and there are some in the other classes as well. There's bullying going on, and things worse than bullying. Because I can't remember if I made my blog private, and even if I did, this stuff is so intense that I couldn't write about it anyway. Let's just say that the other couple (notice it's not just one other thing, it's multiples) of things are something that no other 6th grade teacher before me (at this school) has faced, everyone in the office is stumped about what to do, the school psychologist is exhausting her resources, including her professor, who in 20 or something years of working with schools has NEVER had to deal with.
And if all I had to worry about was school, I'm hoping that you're thinking, "Yeah, that's enough." But it does get better. Remember how I have a daughter now? Remember how she's the sweetest, cutest, smiliest, most adorable thing you'll ever see? Now remember how I have to leave her ALL day long to go and deal with sh** at school? Remember how Clayton and I both work so we had to find the daughter of a person in our ward to watch our princess angel baby? (Don't get me wrong, it was a miracle that we found this random daughter of a lady in our ward so that we didn't have to put Ady in day care. That I am grateful for.) So by time I get home, I'm exhausted, but I keep pushing through because I only have 3 hours with Adelyn a day. I can't just collapse after I get home. So I play with Ady and feed her until she goes to sleep and then I have more school work to do, or more house work, or more often, I collapse in bed exhausted from it all, only to be woken up in the middle of the night because my 9 month old daughter is still not sleeping through the night. She is capable of it, but between vacations, and teething, and being sick, and the fact that I feel SO GUILTY about leaving her all day long that I CAN'T stand to let her cry it out, she doesn't sleep through the night very often. And because I do usually just plop into bed feeling exhausted and guilty, my school work gets backed up so I'm never fully on top of it like I need to be, or I used to be, so I go to school every day knowing that I'm not giving my students everything that I'm capable of. My house work gets backed up, so I'm constantly frazzled about how dirty and disorganized my house is (which is only made worse knowing that a stranger comes into my house every day to watch my daughter and in addition to praying that she treats Ady well is the prayer that she's not judging my house work (lack there of). And there never seems to be time to make any of this missing time up. I'm failing as a teacher because I can't find the time to prep lessons and grade essays, and solve student home issues. I'm failing as a mommy because I leave my daughter every day and as much as I want to come home full of energy and give Ady my undivided attention, I don't have the energy to be everything I want to be for her. And then I'm failing as a wife and home maker because my house is a mess, Clayton ends up cooking the meals most of the time, and I'm so frustrated and he's really the only one who I can take it out on. And then I don't even have time to think about myself and how I'm failing me. I don't have time to exercise, stress is bad on my heart, and who knows what else I should be doing to take care of me.
But don't worry, there is a little more. Bless his heart, Clayton is killing me as well. As soon as we can financially afford it, I would like to quit working. Not just because this school year is the year from hell, but because I want to raise my own daughter. As great as our sitter is, she's not Mommy. But I don't know if I'll ever be able to quit, seeing how Clayton can't settle down into a job. He gets one, he likes it for a while, then something starts to irritate him, then the people he works with start to irritate him, then he gets it in his mind that he has to quit, and then he looks to me for advice, like I'm supposed to tell him, "Sure sweetheart, go ahead, I don't mind if you start bringing in no money. Even though I know that you aren't going to be able to stop buying extra things like movies and computer parts and expensive phones." So no stress there, just the chance of cutting our income but not our spending.
So there it is. Like I said in the beginning, I can't remember it all, so know that there's at least something else that sucks right now. Oh, yeah, part of the sucking is that parent teacher conferences are tomorrow night and Thursday night. On parent teacher conference nights I have to be at school until 7:00 pm. And I HATE parent teacher conference nights because I do not like talking to parents. But in addition to my petrification of communication, with my drive, that means for the next 2 nights I will be away from my house from 6:40 am to 7:40 pm (if no appointments go over) and will only have about 20 minutes with Ady before bed time. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to the next 2 days!
Monday, June 18, 2012
2 Months
I cannot believe it- my baby is 2 months old already. When she first came home Clayton kept saying that he wanted her to get bigger so that he could play with her. He wasn't just satisfied with holding her and watching her every move and commenting on how precious it was and how sweet she was and everything that a mother is content to do when babies are so teeny tiny. In only 2 short months, however, Clayton is having more fun with her. He can't jostle her around or rough house with her yet like he wants, but she is way more interactive. She smiles and talks all the time and it is so hear melting that I would be seriously worried if Clayton wasn't more interested in interacting with her. So in addition to her smiling and laughing and talking now, she is getting bigger. I don't notice it as much because I'm with her every day, but it's getting hard to ignore that she is growing up. Her features have changed a little bit, but I think it's just because she's more awake and aware of what is going on around her. Her face is just more awake.
Poor girl just had her 2 month appointment today where she got 3 shots and an oral dose of vacinations. It was already a rough day for her because she really wanted a nap, but things kept getting in her way so she couldn't have a full nap. Then, after being so tired and not able to sleep, mean old mommy takes her to the doctor where they shine lights in her eyes, pull on her legs, stick things in her ear and mouth, and then they poke her with needles. I can't lie when I say that I think I was in as much pain as she was with those shots though. Her pain was physical (and maybe psychological) but mine was emotional. It killed me that she was in pain and there was nothing I could do about it- that she was screaming and there was no way that I could comfort her :o(
Even though Ady is growing up and getting bigger, apparently she's not getting big enough to please the doctor. Length wise and head wise, Ady is doing really well. Her weight, however, is not growing at the same rate as the rest of her. Looking at her, I thought she was chunking up pretty well, but I guess not because she's only in the 10th percentile for weight (not that I actually know what that means, but it concerned the doctor). I promise, I am feeding my child. And I promise that she knows how to eat. Some how she's just not getting enough, so we have to go back in a couple weeks just so the doctor can check her weight again. (Oh, she's 9 lbs. 8 oz. by the way.)
I kind of have a theory about her weight though, it's also what I finally pieced together about her daytime sleep patterns as well. Most babies sleep ALL day long, but not my little Ady, she's awake and interacting with me and not sleeping more than 2-3 hours in the day time. That's with me--when Mom, Kim, and Dana were watching her, however, she slept a LOT more. I thought about that and perhaps I'm over stimulating her in the day time and I'm keeping her up. If that were the case, then Ady is burning more calories than most babies too because you use more energy when you're awake than when you're asleep. So it's not that I'm not feeding her or that she's not eating, it's that the percentile is based on sleeping babies who super chunk up because they eat then sleep all day. That's my theory. I don't know what I'm going to do with that theory (if I'm going to change how I interact with Ady all day), but there it is.
Blessing and House Guests
Sunday morning wasn't as crazy as I thought it was going to be because most of the prep work for the luncheon had been done on Saturday, and the house guests were pretty mellow. Right before church, things got a little more hectic because Angie and her family came over because Corey had ridden his bike from Hooper to our house (I don't even like that drive and he freaking biked it- crazy!) and they brought his church clothes over so he could shower and change. Jan also came over with Grandma and Grandpa Johnson because she had food that needed to be dropped off. Add that to my family and it was just a little overwhelming and I was trying to double check that Ady was doubly covered with 2 diapers to guarantee she wouldn't blow out onto her dress, make sure her milk was thawed so if she was hungry I wouldn't have to take her out, and other last minute double checks. 
The whole gang made it over to the church building and doubled our ward's regular sacrament attendance (not really, but we did have a lot of people there). Clayton was the voice of a very sweet blessing (although there was no blanket "and bless her with anything else she stands in need of at this time" line to cover all his bases :o) and apparently Ady was smiling the whole blessing (we had several peekers who told us that one).
After sacrament the families were invited to our backyard for a light lunch. My family was forewarned that NO ONE would be allowed into the house for the luncheon because I didn't want 50 people traipsing around my house. Clayton's family didn't quite get the memo. Mostly people stayed out, but a few slipped through the cracks. I was pretty stressed about the luncheon and didn't particularly enjoy it to be honest, but it was what it was.
I really enjoyed having them all here. I can't say that the boys enjoyed the WHOLE time- Kim didn't bring anything extra for them to do. I really wish she would have told me that- I do have things they could have done: toys, balls, crafts, paper to color on, I don't have a ton, but I have stuff. The boys did get lots of park time, though. I think that's what I was most excited about before they came. We have pretty much the MOST awesome park right across the street from us and I was so excited that the boys would be able to play on all the different playgrounds (Ady can't really take advantage of them right now). They did dive into my bookshelves a little bit and they definitely explored the house- Roman approved the house for me, said he liked it.
I'm pretty sure that Kim and Dana had fun watching Adelyn for me, although it took until the last night they were there for her to really open up to them and show them just HOW adorable and happy she can be, with her smiley face and her giggles. The 3 of us got to go running together, so that was good for me to get out and exercise more, plus it gave us a designated time to talk without distractions. While they were here we also all went out to Uncle Brent's new house and had dinner with them out there. That was fun, but unfortunately Clayton and I had to cut our visit a little short because Ady had a major blow out and wasn't in the best of moods. Grandma and Grandpa Smith came down from Ogden to visit one of the days as well. I also appreciated that we took turns cooking, so I had good cooked meals every night they were here, but only had to make one of those meals! Plus I had left overs that lasted after they were gone. 
I'd say that there weren't too many down sides to their trip, although I can think of a few: the boys (and Kim and Dana) got home sick, Dana was supposed to be working while she was here but I don't know how much she actually got accomplished, and our water bill skyrocketed with all the showers that a house full of extra people take. Eh, it was all worth it. 
I'm sure there's tons that I'm forgetting to write about, but on the last day they were here, we took a walk down memory lane. When Dad used to take us to the Wild Animal Park or Zoo or where ever, we used to stop off at a Hostess Outlet and he'd let us pick out any treat that we wanted. Well, there is a Hostess outlet near our house that I hadn't been to yet, so before everyone left, we all got our shoes on a walked down to the outlet and got ourselves a treat. Pretty sure the boys didn't appreciate it like we used to when we were little, but that's because Kim has her own traditions with them- this one was ours.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Our Little Precious
Tomorrow, Adelyn will be one month old. And it's taken me this long to blog about her coming into the world. Yeah, she keeps me pretty busy!
Adelyn was due on April 16, but didn't come. That was no surprise, for the 5 weeks before her due date I hadn't dilated more than 1 cm and she hadn't dropped yet. On the 17th I had a doctor's appointment where I figured we'd schedule an induction for April 23 (the "mercy rule" my doctor has is that he won't make me be pregnant for more than a week past the due date). That wasn't exactly the case though. Ady had been transverse (laying sideways) my WHOLE pregnancy, and since the doctor had never said anything about it, I wasn't concerned about it. One the 17th though, the nurse acted like it was a HUGE deal that she was transverse. So when the doctor came in I asked him if he could tell which bump in my side was the bum and which bump was the head. He got his ultrasound equipment and and figured out Ady's head was poking out on my left side, and her bum was poking out on my right side. Then he told me we had two options. Option one was to try a version (turning her by pressing on my stomach) or a c-section. I didn't want a c-section so I opted for the version. He told me that there was a 1 in 5 chance that the version would work, and if it didn't we would have to have an emergency c-section. Then he told me that it would happen tomorrow. What!?! The nurse had told me earlier that Dr. Haskett was going over to labor and delivery after my appointment so I had joked about following him over, but really I planned on having a kid in 6 days, not 1!
On the drive home I made lots of phone calls. I know I called Clayton first, but after that, I don't know the order of who I called. I obviously had to call my family (I left Clayton to call his family) then I had to call my school to let them know I wouldn't be in, and then call my sub to let her know that she was starting tomorrow. I was so busy informing everyone about it and trying to take care of business (like calling the school and my sub) that it didn't really sink in that I was going to give birth the next day. Well, a little bit it did, in the fact that I thought it was so crazy that it was actually going to happen. I'd been carrying her so long and then all of a sudden I'm told "Oh yeah, you'll have a kid tomorrow."
Mom and Dad had great timing in coming up. They got there Tuesday evening and Mom, Dad, and Clayton went to get their whooping cough shots while I was at school scrambling to get some last minute things ready for my sub. After shots and subs we went to dinner at Chili's where Dana tried to upstage my big news of having a baby by telling us that she's pregnant- with twins! I guess it's okay that she tried to upstage me because I totally spoiled the her announcement. She and Josh called and wanted me to hold the phone up to everybody- why else would they both call?
After dinner we went home, visited a little while, double checked the hospital bag, and went to bed. I went to bed, but I did NOT sleep that night. I tried about everything I could think of, but sleep was not coming. For one thing, I wasn't comfortable, but mostly I was freaking out that I was actually going to have a baby to take care of and be responsible for tomorrow. In addition to that freak out, I was also worried how much the version was going to hurt, and then I was worried it wouldn't work and that I'd go through the pain of the version and then still have to have a c-section. By taking my body pillow to cuddle with into the rocking chair, I was finally able to get a little bit of sleep, but it still wasn't much.
We woke up at 5am to get ready and drive to the hospital. We checked into the hospital around 6:30 am and I got dressed in that oh so fashionable gown and socks. The nurse came and got me all hooked up and prepped and stuff. Some how it came up that the version was going to hurt and she told me that I would be on the epidural when it happened. My prenatal teacher had said that you don't get medication for that so I was surprised. The nurse said she'd double check with the doctor, but she was sure I got to be medicated first. Yep, turns out I have a really nice doctor (slash, with the possibility of an emergency c-section, it's better to be on the epidural already). I was absolutely terrified for the epidural too because I've only heard bad stuff about them. Oh my gosh, that was perfectly fine. There was a tiny pinch when he gave me a shot to numb the area where the needle would go, and then everything was fine. The anesthesiologist talked me through the whole process and it was absolutely fine, pain and worry free.
The epidural made me kind of sick for a little bit, but the nurse pumped some medicine into my IV (well, not some, she pumped kind of a lot) and I felt better. I only threw up once. Once the epidural had been placed, Dr. Haskett came in, drew a smiley face on my tummy with the gel, and started turning her. I don't think the epidural had really had too much time to kick in, so I did feel uncomfortable, but I'm sure it would have been much worse without it. Dr. Haskett pushed for about a minute and then stopped. He asked the nurse for a band to hold the baby in place and so I asked, "Did she turn already?" The answer was yes. She turned really easily, I swear it was only 2-3 pushes.
With Ady turned and locked in place with a tight band wrapped around me, they broke my water and pumped me with some patosine to start my contractions. Apparently I was carrying a lot of water because the nurse kept making comments and had to change the pad under me more times than she had obviously expected. Within the first couple minutes the nurse said she was sure I had just lost 10 pounds.
When they broke my water, I was dilated to 1.5cm, and I did not dilate all that quickly. So I laid in bed and waited. I tried to take a nap, but right when I was really sleepy (you know, when the epidural really kicks in and relaxes you oh so well) my parents showed up. Mom said she would be quiet and let me sleep, but then Clayton's mom came and they all chatted away and visited. Yeah, thanks for staying quiet for me. So I didn't sleep and I wasn't interested in watching a movie, so I was just up; bored and not progressing very far in my dilation. It was kind of a long day.
Although I was insanely bored in bed all day long (you know that's not my style), I felt mostly good. There were a couple of times that I threw up again (which was terrible because I wasn't allowed to eat anything so I was puking up stomach acid and whatever medication they streamed in threw my IV). It was kind of fun, too, watching the contraction monitor tell me that I was having a big contraction and then realizing I couldn't feel a thing. Although I felt fine, Ady was having kind of a harder time. Her heart rate was consistently above what they preferred and randomly her heart rate would drop way down and then come back up. Because they were confused and concerned about her heart rate, they took off the baby monitor that was on my stomach and inserted one that attached to the back part of Ady's head (they described it to me as sticking a pin through the top layer of skin in your hand- like some kids do- it doesn't hurt the baby at all). They also had me stay on my side, because it seemed to be easier for Ady, and they put me on oxygen. At first, it was just for a little while, but later in the day (technically later that night) they kept me on it. I don't remember why, but they also ended up taking off the contraction monitor from my stomach and inserted a vaginal one of those too.
Adelyn was turned and they broke my water around 8 am. The nurse who was helping me out was off at 6 pm. She kept hoping that Ady would come before her shift was over. I think that it was pretty close to 6 pm when I was finally dilated to 5 cm (after 5 cm dilation is supposed to move much faster). It was also at that time that the nurse got really scared that Ady had turned again and was sideways because what she was feeling did not feel like the top of a baby's head. The nurse was so concerned that she had to go and get the ultrasound equipment and check. No, the head was still pointed down, but something was weird. When she left, the nurse (who was SUPER helpful and nice by the way) said that she would come and see me tomorrow in the mother's room, or she'd see me here tomorrow if I hadn't pushed her out yet.
Another nurse came in took over my care. When she did the check she figured out that Ady was face up and that is why the other nurse was so confused. When Dr. Haskett came by to check in on me, the nurse had him feel it, and yep, she was face up and had her chin turned up. Dr. Haskett explained that in the position she was in, there was no way she was coming out. If she simply put her chin down, he could get her out, but in the exact position, no. He gave it an hour and said that if she didn't tuck her chin in in an hour, we were going to have to do a c-section. So, after 15 hours of labor, I was dilated to an 8, and she had not tucked her chin. It was time for a c-section.
I was a little frustrated because if they hadn't been able to turn her earlier that morning, we would have done a c-section. So, the fact that we were doing a c-section now anyway made me think, "seriously, we could have done this 15 hours ago and I would already have had a baby in my arms by now." Oh well, it is what it is. Dr. Haskett explained a little about the c-section, they really upped my dose of epidural, Clayton changed into some scrub type things, and I was wheeled two rooms down to the operating room. The nurses and doctors were in a really good mood and even put music on for the operation (they promised me they focus better with music on- and it actually was turned down so low that only the nurse working on getting things ready for the tests after the baby came out was able to hear it). I did start to feel a little nauseous while laying on the operating table, but they must have pumped that good stuff in my IV without me asking for it (and before me throwing up because I didn't have it).
Once I was on the table they cleaned off my stomach, put the big sheet up so that I didn't have to see anything, and Clayton came and sat by my head. Dr. Haskett asked if I could feel any sharp pains, and I told him no. I thought he was doing a test poke and waited for him to say he was ready to make the incision. He didn't say that, and that's because they started prepping my stomach for the c-section by pressing on it. Yeah, that's what I thought while they were doing it, but they weren't prepping anything. When he asked "do you feel sharp pain" that's when he was cutting me. The pressing was them trying to get Ady out. I only know that because while I thought they were prepping me, I hear Dr. Haskett say, "Oh man, she's still trying to come out face up." That threw me for a loop, I realized he could see my baby and that yep, I was already cut open.
Before going in for the operation, Dr. Haskett had already warned me that she would look pretty beat up when she came out just because of the way she was laying and had been laying for so long. When he pulled her out he said, "Yeah, she is pretty beat up, but don't worry, it will clear up." Ady didn't come out crying and didn't do much crying while the nurses were cleaning her up either. Dr. Haskett said not to worry too much about it because her face was so swollen, it was probably hurting her to cry so she didn't want to do it. But when she did cry, it was so quiet and pathetic. It was the saddest. Clayton left my side to go watch them clean her up. He said that he was the first one she saw when she opened her eyes! If we hadn't already known that Ady was a daddy's girl, we would have known it then.
For the last 5 weeks, Dr. Haskett had been calling Adelyn a booger because she was sideways, she wasn't dropping, she wasn't helping my cervix to dilate, and she just wasn't acting like she was wanting to come out. Then he had called her a booger again in the hospital after he found out she was face up and making everything complicated. While cleaning and sewing me up it all clicked for him. "Brooke, you have a ------ (I could look up the word, but I'd rather just explain it)." "Um, I don't know what that means." My uterus is in the shape of a heart. There is a fissure down the middle that lessens the amount of room that Ady had while inside of me. It turns out that she wasn't a booger at all. She was doing everything she could to do what we wanted. She had turned that morning, but didn't have room to turn properly, so she was squished and in pain, but she had done it.
Once they got her all cleaned up they brought her over to me. I knew that they needed to take her to the nursery to check her out because her cry was so weak, so I saw how beautiful she was (even with the swollen face and bruised eyes), I apologized for thinking she was a booger when she had done everything she possibly could have, we took a quick picture, then she was gone. Clayton was able to follow her down to the nursery, but obviously I had to stay and get all cleaned up.
That epidural they pumped into me was pretty strong! It was the craziest thing seeing the nurse pick up my leg but me not feeling it. The whole rest of the day, I was still able to move my legs around, even though I didn't feel pain, I could lift them, wiggle them, and feel something when they were touched. Now, I felt nothing and it was tripping me out! Worse was when they were wheeling me around or when I tried to shift positions in my bed. It felt like I was on a boat swaying in the water. I did not enjoy that part.
Once I was cleared to move to the mother and baby floor I was wheeled down in my bed (more boat rocking going on there). I met my new nurses and was told about hospital procedures and things like that. While listening to them talk, the only thing I wanted to hear was how Ady was and when I could see her. I had to wait for the epidural to wear off a little longer, but the second they cleared me I was in that wheel chair! They wheeled me into the nursery and I got to hold my little angel. Unfortunately, because of the medicine, I could hardly keep my eyes open. But I wasn't going to let that stop me from spending time with my baby. While I was holding her they clued me in on what was going on. Her lungs were expanding fully on their own and she needed to be taken to the level 2 nursery. Level 2 was only next store so they let me keep holding her while they wheeled me next door. Then it was time for me to go back to my room and let the doctors and nurses take care of Adelyn. I made Clayton wheel me really slowly because I was feeling sick again, but it wasn't slow enough because I threw up again on the way back to the room.
Ady was born at 11:31 pm and by time I was taken to the mother and baby floor, had time for the medication to wear off a little, visited Ady, and was back in my room, it was around 3:00 am. I went to sleep (Clayton sleeping on the pull out bed next to me) but wasn't asleep very long before a nurse came in to tell me that they needed to do a special procedure on Ady to help inflate her lungs. The nurse explained that because of all the stress during labor, a lubricant in the lungs called surfactine had burned off and so they needed permission to stick a tube into her lungs and put more surfactine in her lungs. I signed the paper and went back to sleep. I felt bad sleeping while my little precious baby girl was in pain and in need of help, but I was exhausted and there was absolutely nothing I could do. Even if I could have gotten out of bed, it's not like they would have let me be there with her. In the morning the doctor came in and told me that he had done the procedure and explained it a little more. The doctor came in around 5 am, and then I was up and awake around 6 am. I didn't get much sleep that night, but I was strangely awake the next morning.
When my nurse came in to check on me I didn't even have a chance to ask when I would be able to go see Ady, she told me that I had to take my medicine and give it a half hour to kick in before I could go see Adelyn. The thing was, she couldn't give me my pill right away. I had to wait a couple hours to take the medicine, so I was trying to wake Clayton up to go. He was still really groggy and didn't want to get up but I told him that I would give anything to be able to go in and hold her right then and that with everything she was going through she needed at least one of us there so it was going to have to be him. I think it still took him a while to wake up, but eventually he woke up and went to take care of his precious girl. When I was finally able to go to see Adelyn, she was in a little bed with tubes and oxygen attached to her. Her face was still bruised and swollen, so my heart broke for her, but I was so grateful to have the chance to see her. Her bed was raised and I was restrained to a wheel chair, so all I could do was reach up and hold her hand.
I hadn't been in the room more than 3-4 minutes when one of Ady's nurses came in and told us that injecting the surfactine wasn't enough, that Ady needed to be put on a ventilator to help her breath, but that they didn't have the type of ventilator they needed. She was going to have to be transferred to another hospital. I tried to hold it together, but within a minute of hearing she would have to be moved I started crying. It took a little while for all the arrangements to be made and the right people to be contacted, so while we were waiting they let me hold her. Although Clayton had been able to be with Ady more than I had, he hadn't been able to hold her. I was really lucky that they let me hold her, now for the second time. I had to go back to my room to try to pump some milk to send with them when they came to get Ady, but I was promised that I would be able to see her before they took her away. Once the ambulance was there, they sedated her because the ventilation tube needed to be inserted all the way down into her lungs. Then they put her and all the tubes and wires that went along with her into a clear box and wheeled her into my room. The paramedics explained a little bit about what they had done to Ady and how they were transporting her. I'm not exactly sure everything they said because I was just staring at my tiny little sedated baby stuck in the plastic box, about to be taken away from me. I of course cried while everyone was in my room, and then of course cried even more when they left. I did have a little comfort knowing that Clayton was riding in the ambulance with her and would be there with her in the hospital.
She was born on a Wednesday, and transferred to another hospital on Thursday. All Thursday Clayton was back and forth between both hospitals, sitting with Ady, and then coming back to check in on me and give me updates about her. I was stuck at the hospital worrying, recuperating, and pumping. You would have thought that without Ady there I would have been able to sleep and rest, but that's not the case. First of all, the nurses come in about every hour or two to check in on me, so that would keep me up if I were asleep, then I was updating so many people. Every day I was sending pretty much the same text to 20 different people wanting to know what was going on. I was surprised how much rest I didn't get when she was gone. I also spent every 3 hours pumping so that I could send milk down with Clayton when he went to visit Adelyn in her hospital. Down in Provo, Ady was on the ventilator, was hooked up to heart monitors and respiratory monitors, had an IV, and had a tube down her throat so they could feed her the milk I was pumping. Clayton was taking pictures of her and sending them to me. She looked pretty good, and the report was that she was doing pretty well.
On Friday I got some great news. My hospital was going to give me a temporary leave. I would have 4 hours to leave American Fork and go see Ady. I got the news around 9 am but would not be able to go down until 2 pm. The day didn't just fly by, but I sure was in a lot better mood that day knowing that I would be able to see my little girl. Come 2 o'clock I was so excited to go see my sweetie. Clayton and I drove down to Provo and went to the NICU. Ady was lying in her bed with all the tubes, wires, and ventilator on. Shortly after our arriving, the said that Ady was doing well enough to be taken off the ventilator. It was hard to watch them take the tubes out because she choked on them a little as they were pulled out, and her little cries were so quiet- but the ventilator was out!!
At first I was just able to touch her and look at her, but then it was time to feed her. When it's time to feed, they also change her diaper, and that's the time that I could hold her. Clayton and I just took turns holding her. Even though Clayton still hadn't held her, he let me hold her first. I was a little concerned that he never wanted to hold his daughter, but he explained that he knew it meant more to me to hold her because I'd been away from her, so he was going to let me hold her as much as I wanted. He did take the chance to hold her though, and I could tell how much he really loves her. After we had been there our allotted 2 1/2 hours, we had to leave. We found out when leaving that Ady was only supposed to be held and handled for half an hour- luckily the nurse was really nice and definitely understood the situation so she didn't inform us of the time limit until we were leaving.
Saturday morning Clayton called me and told me that they would let me nurse Adelyn as soon as I was able to make it down. I technically was supposed to stay in the hospital until Sunday night, but as soon as my nurse came in I asked her to get the discharge papers ready. My nurses were great, and so they knew what was going on and made sure that I knew the day before how well I was doing and that an early discharge wasn't out of the question. It took longer than I had thought to get everything together. I think that was mostly because they had had an insane amount on women deliver the day and night before so the nurses were all pretty busy. So, Saturday afternoon I was discharged and went right to Adelyn. Once I was there Clayton told me that they had a parents room right down the hall from the NICU and it wasn't being occupied, so we would be able to stay at the hospital with Ady. Not only that, but after monitoring Adelyn for the amount of time she had been off the ventilator, the doctors said that she was doing well enough to be moved across the hall to the less intensive NICU. By the end of the day, Adelyn was moved across hall to the room where the only problem any of the babies in that room had were nursing/feeding problems. I spent Saturday trying to nurse Ady, watching Ady, touching Ady, and holding Ady.
I spent Sunday doing the same things in the hospital. I would visit Ady when it was time to feed, then I would go back to my room and pump to keep the supply up, and because she wouldn't always fill up with me so sometimes they needed to top her off with a bottle. I did get a little more sleep that day. I only remember that I napped more because Clayton woke me up from a nap to tell me that they were having the sacrament outside of the room and that I could participate and take the sacrament if I went out. I thought that was really nice that they came into the hospital to do that. It was just the sacrament and a quick spiritual thought, but it was really nice.
Monday they told me that Adelyn was doing great and that if I could nurse her all day without her needing to be topped off with a bottle, and then they weighed her to make sure she was gaining enough weight through my feeding her, there was a high probability we could all go home on Tuesday. Monday was also the day that one of the nurses realized that Adelyn didn't move her left arm hardly at all. She had a great grip, and was able to move it if you picked it up first, but left to her own devices, she tucked it by her side and left it there. I was so focused on her face every time I held her that I had never noticed it, but apparently Clayton had noticed it and had tried to mention it casually to a couple of nurses, but none of them did anything about it. Although I was grateful that the nurse noticed it so that we could get it looked at while still in the hospital, I was scared that this was going to keep her in the hospital longer, after I had just learned that it was a high possibility to go home the next day. As far as the feeding goes, we were weighing her before and after feedings and at first she wasn't gaining much, but then I think someone let her in on the secret that if she eats well she could go home because she started putting on a higher number of grams each feeding. Come Tuesday morning, she still wasn't up to her birth weight, but all babies lose weight after being born, so they paid more attention to how much she was gaining with each feeding. As far as the arm went, they had it x-rayed to make sure that nothing was broken. Nothing was, and so they decided that some of the nerves in her shoulder had been strained while she was in that awkward position. If they were just stretched, then exercising her arm would most likely heal the problem over time. If the nerves had torn, however, it would be a permanent issue. The doctor looked at it, but the Occupational Therapist had left for the day and couldn't come take a look. Based on the fact that Ady had a strong grip and was able to move the arm a little when you touched it first, the doctor was pretty sure that the nerves had been stretched but not torn. But Ady could not be released until the Occupational Therapist cleared her. They made note that the OT would come first thing in the morning, same as the doctor to give us all the "all clear" if everything panned out.
Tuesday morning I was up feeding Ady when the doctor came. She informed us that everything looked pretty good- her weight was at an adequate number, she was breathing well on her own, we just needed the hearing test and for the OT to check out the arm. I waited in the NICU with Ady and Clayton and the audiologist came and gave Ady the hearing test- she passed. We waited a little longer and the OT came. She agreed that the nerves were just stretched and I watched some of the exercises she did with Adelyn so that I could do them with her at home- we were referred to the Head Start program who would come and give Adelyn another evaluation later and we would come up with a plan of attack to fix the arm. We had to fill out a few forms, sign a few papers, gather up our gear, and then we were heading home!
When writing it out day by day, it sounds like everything wasn't that bad and that the days flew by and then she was home. That was NOT the case. Hearing about how most babies stay in the NICU for weeks and months, 6 days really isn't that bad. But when you're in the hospital with your first child and you can't be with her and take care of her like you're supposed to, believe me, 6 days is a really long time. I'm not grateful that she had to be in the NICU, but I'm so grateful for all of the amazing people that helped Ady and I out while we were at both hospitals. Intermountain Health Care has some amazing staff members.
So Ady has been home for 3 weeks now. She is doing amazingly! The therapist came 2 days ago to evaluate Adelyn and developmentally Ady is doing great in all areas. There is a slight delay in the development of the left arm over the right, but knowing how far it's come, the therapist was very impressed. We decided that Clayton and I will keep exercising her arm, and in a month and a half he'll give us a call. If I am still worried that Ady isn't moving her left arm as much as the right, he'll come back for another check, but if Ady is moving well, then that's all there is to it.
Adelyn is getting into a pretty good night time schedule. It's roughly: eat at 9, bed by 10, eat at 2, sleep by 3, eat at 5, fuss for a while- bed times vary if bed is an option again at all at that point. So it's not perfect, but it's something. The only issue we are having with her (well, besides the fact that Monday and Wednesday she was oober fussy and inconsolable) is that she doesn't nap very much in the day time, so I a little bit worry that she isn't getting enough sleep, and when she does nap, it has to be in your arms. If she falls asleep in your arms and you try to put her down in her crib or bassinet, she wakes up within 30 seconds. She's crazy!
Tomorrow she will be 1 month old and I can't believe how much she is growing and changing already. If she is on the same trend she was at the last two doctor's visits (2 days after leaving the NICU, and then the normal 2 week appointment) she's gaining about an ounce a day. When we first left the hospital she looked so insanely tiny in her car seat. Now she looks like the car seat was made for her, it's barely too big :o( The fun part about her growing up is that she makes better faces now and the cutest noises. She smiles really big and plays with her tongue now. She also makes the best little "o" face right before she yawns. I've tried to catch these all on camera, but they are all so quick that I haven't managed it yet. I absolutely love her little gremlin noise. That's when she's really hungry, but has a pacifier instead- she chows down on the pacifier and makes a gremlin noise. She also has a "I can't tell if I want to be happy or fussy" noise that sounds like a monkey. Then there's the other cooing noises that are typical of most babies.
I love my baby with all my heart. She had a really rough start, but she's strong and brave and she made it through. She's amazing and I am so proud of her.
Adelyn was due on April 16, but didn't come. That was no surprise, for the 5 weeks before her due date I hadn't dilated more than 1 cm and she hadn't dropped yet. On the 17th I had a doctor's appointment where I figured we'd schedule an induction for April 23 (the "mercy rule" my doctor has is that he won't make me be pregnant for more than a week past the due date). That wasn't exactly the case though. Ady had been transverse (laying sideways) my WHOLE pregnancy, and since the doctor had never said anything about it, I wasn't concerned about it. One the 17th though, the nurse acted like it was a HUGE deal that she was transverse. So when the doctor came in I asked him if he could tell which bump in my side was the bum and which bump was the head. He got his ultrasound equipment and and figured out Ady's head was poking out on my left side, and her bum was poking out on my right side. Then he told me we had two options. Option one was to try a version (turning her by pressing on my stomach) or a c-section. I didn't want a c-section so I opted for the version. He told me that there was a 1 in 5 chance that the version would work, and if it didn't we would have to have an emergency c-section. Then he told me that it would happen tomorrow. What!?! The nurse had told me earlier that Dr. Haskett was going over to labor and delivery after my appointment so I had joked about following him over, but really I planned on having a kid in 6 days, not 1!On the drive home I made lots of phone calls. I know I called Clayton first, but after that, I don't know the order of who I called. I obviously had to call my family (I left Clayton to call his family) then I had to call my school to let them know I wouldn't be in, and then call my sub to let her know that she was starting tomorrow. I was so busy informing everyone about it and trying to take care of business (like calling the school and my sub) that it didn't really sink in that I was going to give birth the next day. Well, a little bit it did, in the fact that I thought it was so crazy that it was actually going to happen. I'd been carrying her so long and then all of a sudden I'm told "Oh yeah, you'll have a kid tomorrow."
Mom and Dad had great timing in coming up. They got there Tuesday evening and Mom, Dad, and Clayton went to get their whooping cough shots while I was at school scrambling to get some last minute things ready for my sub. After shots and subs we went to dinner at Chili's where Dana tried to upstage my big news of having a baby by telling us that she's pregnant- with twins! I guess it's okay that she tried to upstage me because I totally spoiled the her announcement. She and Josh called and wanted me to hold the phone up to everybody- why else would they both call?
After dinner we went home, visited a little while, double checked the hospital bag, and went to bed. I went to bed, but I did NOT sleep that night. I tried about everything I could think of, but sleep was not coming. For one thing, I wasn't comfortable, but mostly I was freaking out that I was actually going to have a baby to take care of and be responsible for tomorrow. In addition to that freak out, I was also worried how much the version was going to hurt, and then I was worried it wouldn't work and that I'd go through the pain of the version and then still have to have a c-section. By taking my body pillow to cuddle with into the rocking chair, I was finally able to get a little bit of sleep, but it still wasn't much.
We woke up at 5am to get ready and drive to the hospital. We checked into the hospital around 6:30 am and I got dressed in that oh so fashionable gown and socks. The nurse came and got me all hooked up and prepped and stuff. Some how it came up that the version was going to hurt and she told me that I would be on the epidural when it happened. My prenatal teacher had said that you don't get medication for that so I was surprised. The nurse said she'd double check with the doctor, but she was sure I got to be medicated first. Yep, turns out I have a really nice doctor (slash, with the possibility of an emergency c-section, it's better to be on the epidural already). I was absolutely terrified for the epidural too because I've only heard bad stuff about them. Oh my gosh, that was perfectly fine. There was a tiny pinch when he gave me a shot to numb the area where the needle would go, and then everything was fine. The anesthesiologist talked me through the whole process and it was absolutely fine, pain and worry free.
The epidural made me kind of sick for a little bit, but the nurse pumped some medicine into my IV (well, not some, she pumped kind of a lot) and I felt better. I only threw up once. Once the epidural had been placed, Dr. Haskett came in, drew a smiley face on my tummy with the gel, and started turning her. I don't think the epidural had really had too much time to kick in, so I did feel uncomfortable, but I'm sure it would have been much worse without it. Dr. Haskett pushed for about a minute and then stopped. He asked the nurse for a band to hold the baby in place and so I asked, "Did she turn already?" The answer was yes. She turned really easily, I swear it was only 2-3 pushes.
With Ady turned and locked in place with a tight band wrapped around me, they broke my water and pumped me with some patosine to start my contractions. Apparently I was carrying a lot of water because the nurse kept making comments and had to change the pad under me more times than she had obviously expected. Within the first couple minutes the nurse said she was sure I had just lost 10 pounds.
When they broke my water, I was dilated to 1.5cm, and I did not dilate all that quickly. So I laid in bed and waited. I tried to take a nap, but right when I was really sleepy (you know, when the epidural really kicks in and relaxes you oh so well) my parents showed up. Mom said she would be quiet and let me sleep, but then Clayton's mom came and they all chatted away and visited. Yeah, thanks for staying quiet for me. So I didn't sleep and I wasn't interested in watching a movie, so I was just up; bored and not progressing very far in my dilation. It was kind of a long day.
Although I was insanely bored in bed all day long (you know that's not my style), I felt mostly good. There were a couple of times that I threw up again (which was terrible because I wasn't allowed to eat anything so I was puking up stomach acid and whatever medication they streamed in threw my IV). It was kind of fun, too, watching the contraction monitor tell me that I was having a big contraction and then realizing I couldn't feel a thing. Although I felt fine, Ady was having kind of a harder time. Her heart rate was consistently above what they preferred and randomly her heart rate would drop way down and then come back up. Because they were confused and concerned about her heart rate, they took off the baby monitor that was on my stomach and inserted one that attached to the back part of Ady's head (they described it to me as sticking a pin through the top layer of skin in your hand- like some kids do- it doesn't hurt the baby at all). They also had me stay on my side, because it seemed to be easier for Ady, and they put me on oxygen. At first, it was just for a little while, but later in the day (technically later that night) they kept me on it. I don't remember why, but they also ended up taking off the contraction monitor from my stomach and inserted a vaginal one of those too.
Adelyn was turned and they broke my water around 8 am. The nurse who was helping me out was off at 6 pm. She kept hoping that Ady would come before her shift was over. I think that it was pretty close to 6 pm when I was finally dilated to 5 cm (after 5 cm dilation is supposed to move much faster). It was also at that time that the nurse got really scared that Ady had turned again and was sideways because what she was feeling did not feel like the top of a baby's head. The nurse was so concerned that she had to go and get the ultrasound equipment and check. No, the head was still pointed down, but something was weird. When she left, the nurse (who was SUPER helpful and nice by the way) said that she would come and see me tomorrow in the mother's room, or she'd see me here tomorrow if I hadn't pushed her out yet.
Another nurse came in took over my care. When she did the check she figured out that Ady was face up and that is why the other nurse was so confused. When Dr. Haskett came by to check in on me, the nurse had him feel it, and yep, she was face up and had her chin turned up. Dr. Haskett explained that in the position she was in, there was no way she was coming out. If she simply put her chin down, he could get her out, but in the exact position, no. He gave it an hour and said that if she didn't tuck her chin in in an hour, we were going to have to do a c-section. So, after 15 hours of labor, I was dilated to an 8, and she had not tucked her chin. It was time for a c-section.
I was a little frustrated because if they hadn't been able to turn her earlier that morning, we would have done a c-section. So, the fact that we were doing a c-section now anyway made me think, "seriously, we could have done this 15 hours ago and I would already have had a baby in my arms by now." Oh well, it is what it is. Dr. Haskett explained a little about the c-section, they really upped my dose of epidural, Clayton changed into some scrub type things, and I was wheeled two rooms down to the operating room. The nurses and doctors were in a really good mood and even put music on for the operation (they promised me they focus better with music on- and it actually was turned down so low that only the nurse working on getting things ready for the tests after the baby came out was able to hear it). I did start to feel a little nauseous while laying on the operating table, but they must have pumped that good stuff in my IV without me asking for it (and before me throwing up because I didn't have it).
Once I was on the table they cleaned off my stomach, put the big sheet up so that I didn't have to see anything, and Clayton came and sat by my head. Dr. Haskett asked if I could feel any sharp pains, and I told him no. I thought he was doing a test poke and waited for him to say he was ready to make the incision. He didn't say that, and that's because they started prepping my stomach for the c-section by pressing on it. Yeah, that's what I thought while they were doing it, but they weren't prepping anything. When he asked "do you feel sharp pain" that's when he was cutting me. The pressing was them trying to get Ady out. I only know that because while I thought they were prepping me, I hear Dr. Haskett say, "Oh man, she's still trying to come out face up." That threw me for a loop, I realized he could see my baby and that yep, I was already cut open.
Before going in for the operation, Dr. Haskett had already warned me that she would look pretty beat up when she came out just because of the way she was laying and had been laying for so long. When he pulled her out he said, "Yeah, she is pretty beat up, but don't worry, it will clear up." Ady didn't come out crying and didn't do much crying while the nurses were cleaning her up either. Dr. Haskett said not to worry too much about it because her face was so swollen, it was probably hurting her to cry so she didn't want to do it. But when she did cry, it was so quiet and pathetic. It was the saddest. Clayton left my side to go watch them clean her up. He said that he was the first one she saw when she opened her eyes! If we hadn't already known that Ady was a daddy's girl, we would have known it then.
For the last 5 weeks, Dr. Haskett had been calling Adelyn a booger because she was sideways, she wasn't dropping, she wasn't helping my cervix to dilate, and she just wasn't acting like she was wanting to come out. Then he had called her a booger again in the hospital after he found out she was face up and making everything complicated. While cleaning and sewing me up it all clicked for him. "Brooke, you have a ------ (I could look up the word, but I'd rather just explain it)." "Um, I don't know what that means." My uterus is in the shape of a heart. There is a fissure down the middle that lessens the amount of room that Ady had while inside of me. It turns out that she wasn't a booger at all. She was doing everything she could to do what we wanted. She had turned that morning, but didn't have room to turn properly, so she was squished and in pain, but she had done it.
Once they got her all cleaned up they brought her over to me. I knew that they needed to take her to the nursery to check her out because her cry was so weak, so I saw how beautiful she was (even with the swollen face and bruised eyes), I apologized for thinking she was a booger when she had done everything she possibly could have, we took a quick picture, then she was gone. Clayton was able to follow her down to the nursery, but obviously I had to stay and get all cleaned up.
That epidural they pumped into me was pretty strong! It was the craziest thing seeing the nurse pick up my leg but me not feeling it. The whole rest of the day, I was still able to move my legs around, even though I didn't feel pain, I could lift them, wiggle them, and feel something when they were touched. Now, I felt nothing and it was tripping me out! Worse was when they were wheeling me around or when I tried to shift positions in my bed. It felt like I was on a boat swaying in the water. I did not enjoy that part.
Once I was cleared to move to the mother and baby floor I was wheeled down in my bed (more boat rocking going on there). I met my new nurses and was told about hospital procedures and things like that. While listening to them talk, the only thing I wanted to hear was how Ady was and when I could see her. I had to wait for the epidural to wear off a little longer, but the second they cleared me I was in that wheel chair! They wheeled me into the nursery and I got to hold my little angel. Unfortunately, because of the medicine, I could hardly keep my eyes open. But I wasn't going to let that stop me from spending time with my baby. While I was holding her they clued me in on what was going on. Her lungs were expanding fully on their own and she needed to be taken to the level 2 nursery. Level 2 was only next store so they let me keep holding her while they wheeled me next door. Then it was time for me to go back to my room and let the doctors and nurses take care of Adelyn. I made Clayton wheel me really slowly because I was feeling sick again, but it wasn't slow enough because I threw up again on the way back to the room.
Ady was born at 11:31 pm and by time I was taken to the mother and baby floor, had time for the medication to wear off a little, visited Ady, and was back in my room, it was around 3:00 am. I went to sleep (Clayton sleeping on the pull out bed next to me) but wasn't asleep very long before a nurse came in to tell me that they needed to do a special procedure on Ady to help inflate her lungs. The nurse explained that because of all the stress during labor, a lubricant in the lungs called surfactine had burned off and so they needed permission to stick a tube into her lungs and put more surfactine in her lungs. I signed the paper and went back to sleep. I felt bad sleeping while my little precious baby girl was in pain and in need of help, but I was exhausted and there was absolutely nothing I could do. Even if I could have gotten out of bed, it's not like they would have let me be there with her. In the morning the doctor came in and told me that he had done the procedure and explained it a little more. The doctor came in around 5 am, and then I was up and awake around 6 am. I didn't get much sleep that night, but I was strangely awake the next morning.When my nurse came in to check on me I didn't even have a chance to ask when I would be able to go see Ady, she told me that I had to take my medicine and give it a half hour to kick in before I could go see Adelyn. The thing was, she couldn't give me my pill right away. I had to wait a couple hours to take the medicine, so I was trying to wake Clayton up to go. He was still really groggy and didn't want to get up but I told him that I would give anything to be able to go in and hold her right then and that with everything she was going through she needed at least one of us there so it was going to have to be him. I think it still took him a while to wake up, but eventually he woke up and went to take care of his precious girl. When I was finally able to go to see Adelyn, she was in a little bed with tubes and oxygen attached to her. Her face was still bruised and swollen, so my heart broke for her, but I was so grateful to have the chance to see her. Her bed was raised and I was restrained to a wheel chair, so all I could do was reach up and hold her hand.
I hadn't been in the room more than 3-4 minutes when one of Ady's nurses came in and told us that injecting the surfactine wasn't enough, that Ady needed to be put on a ventilator to help her breath, but that they didn't have the type of ventilator they needed. She was going to have to be transferred to another hospital. I tried to hold it together, but within a minute of hearing she would have to be moved I started crying. It took a little while for all the arrangements to be made and the right people to be contacted, so while we were waiting they let me hold her. Although Clayton had been able to be with Ady more than I had, he hadn't been able to hold her. I was really lucky that they let me hold her, now for the second time. I had to go back to my room to try to pump some milk to send with them when they came to get Ady, but I was promised that I would be able to see her before they took her away. Once the ambulance was there, they sedated her because the ventilation tube needed to be inserted all the way down into her lungs. Then they put her and all the tubes and wires that went along with her into a clear box and wheeled her into my room. The paramedics explained a little bit about what they had done to Ady and how they were transporting her. I'm not exactly sure everything they said because I was just staring at my tiny little sedated baby stuck in the plastic box, about to be taken away from me. I of course cried while everyone was in my room, and then of course cried even more when they left. I did have a little comfort knowing that Clayton was riding in the ambulance with her and would be there with her in the hospital.
She was born on a Wednesday, and transferred to another hospital on Thursday. All Thursday Clayton was back and forth between both hospitals, sitting with Ady, and then coming back to check in on me and give me updates about her. I was stuck at the hospital worrying, recuperating, and pumping. You would have thought that without Ady there I would have been able to sleep and rest, but that's not the case. First of all, the nurses come in about every hour or two to check in on me, so that would keep me up if I were asleep, then I was updating so many people. Every day I was sending pretty much the same text to 20 different people wanting to know what was going on. I was surprised how much rest I didn't get when she was gone. I also spent every 3 hours pumping so that I could send milk down with Clayton when he went to visit Adelyn in her hospital. Down in Provo, Ady was on the ventilator, was hooked up to heart monitors and respiratory monitors, had an IV, and had a tube down her throat so they could feed her the milk I was pumping. Clayton was taking pictures of her and sending them to me. She looked pretty good, and the report was that she was doing pretty well.
On Friday I got some great news. My hospital was going to give me a temporary leave. I would have 4 hours to leave American Fork and go see Ady. I got the news around 9 am but would not be able to go down until 2 pm. The day didn't just fly by, but I sure was in a lot better mood that day knowing that I would be able to see my little girl. Come 2 o'clock I was so excited to go see my sweetie. Clayton and I drove down to Provo and went to the NICU. Ady was lying in her bed with all the tubes, wires, and ventilator on. Shortly after our arriving, the said that Ady was doing well enough to be taken off the ventilator. It was hard to watch them take the tubes out because she choked on them a little as they were pulled out, and her little cries were so quiet- but the ventilator was out!!
At first I was just able to touch her and look at her, but then it was time to feed her. When it's time to feed, they also change her diaper, and that's the time that I could hold her. Clayton and I just took turns holding her. Even though Clayton still hadn't held her, he let me hold her first. I was a little concerned that he never wanted to hold his daughter, but he explained that he knew it meant more to me to hold her because I'd been away from her, so he was going to let me hold her as much as I wanted. He did take the chance to hold her though, and I could tell how much he really loves her. After we had been there our allotted 2 1/2 hours, we had to leave. We found out when leaving that Ady was only supposed to be held and handled for half an hour- luckily the nurse was really nice and definitely understood the situation so she didn't inform us of the time limit until we were leaving. 
Saturday morning Clayton called me and told me that they would let me nurse Adelyn as soon as I was able to make it down. I technically was supposed to stay in the hospital until Sunday night, but as soon as my nurse came in I asked her to get the discharge papers ready. My nurses were great, and so they knew what was going on and made sure that I knew the day before how well I was doing and that an early discharge wasn't out of the question. It took longer than I had thought to get everything together. I think that was mostly because they had had an insane amount on women deliver the day and night before so the nurses were all pretty busy. So, Saturday afternoon I was discharged and went right to Adelyn. Once I was there Clayton told me that they had a parents room right down the hall from the NICU and it wasn't being occupied, so we would be able to stay at the hospital with Ady. Not only that, but after monitoring Adelyn for the amount of time she had been off the ventilator, the doctors said that she was doing well enough to be moved across the hall to the less intensive NICU. By the end of the day, Adelyn was moved across hall to the room where the only problem any of the babies in that room had were nursing/feeding problems. I spent Saturday trying to nurse Ady, watching Ady, touching Ady, and holding Ady.
I spent Sunday doing the same things in the hospital. I would visit Ady when it was time to feed, then I would go back to my room and pump to keep the supply up, and because she wouldn't always fill up with me so sometimes they needed to top her off with a bottle. I did get a little more sleep that day. I only remember that I napped more because Clayton woke me up from a nap to tell me that they were having the sacrament outside of the room and that I could participate and take the sacrament if I went out. I thought that was really nice that they came into the hospital to do that. It was just the sacrament and a quick spiritual thought, but it was really nice.
Monday they told me that Adelyn was doing great and that if I could nurse her all day without her needing to be topped off with a bottle, and then they weighed her to make sure she was gaining enough weight through my feeding her, there was a high probability we could all go home on Tuesday. Monday was also the day that one of the nurses realized that Adelyn didn't move her left arm hardly at all. She had a great grip, and was able to move it if you picked it up first, but left to her own devices, she tucked it by her side and left it there. I was so focused on her face every time I held her that I had never noticed it, but apparently Clayton had noticed it and had tried to mention it casually to a couple of nurses, but none of them did anything about it. Although I was grateful that the nurse noticed it so that we could get it looked at while still in the hospital, I was scared that this was going to keep her in the hospital longer, after I had just learned that it was a high possibility to go home the next day. As far as the feeding goes, we were weighing her before and after feedings and at first she wasn't gaining much, but then I think someone let her in on the secret that if she eats well she could go home because she started putting on a higher number of grams each feeding. Come Tuesday morning, she still wasn't up to her birth weight, but all babies lose weight after being born, so they paid more attention to how much she was gaining with each feeding. As far as the arm went, they had it x-rayed to make sure that nothing was broken. Nothing was, and so they decided that some of the nerves in her shoulder had been strained while she was in that awkward position. If they were just stretched, then exercising her arm would most likely heal the problem over time. If the nerves had torn, however, it would be a permanent issue. The doctor looked at it, but the Occupational Therapist had left for the day and couldn't come take a look. Based on the fact that Ady had a strong grip and was able to move the arm a little when you touched it first, the doctor was pretty sure that the nerves had been stretched but not torn. But Ady could not be released until the Occupational Therapist cleared her. They made note that the OT would come first thing in the morning, same as the doctor to give us all the "all clear" if everything panned out.
Tuesday morning I was up feeding Ady when the doctor came. She informed us that everything looked pretty good- her weight was at an adequate number, she was breathing well on her own, we just needed the hearing test and for the OT to check out the arm. I waited in the NICU with Ady and Clayton and the audiologist came and gave Ady the hearing test- she passed. We waited a little longer and the OT came. She agreed that the nerves were just stretched and I watched some of the exercises she did with Adelyn so that I could do them with her at home- we were referred to the Head Start program who would come and give Adelyn another evaluation later and we would come up with a plan of attack to fix the arm. We had to fill out a few forms, sign a few papers, gather up our gear, and then we were heading home!
When writing it out day by day, it sounds like everything wasn't that bad and that the days flew by and then she was home. That was NOT the case. Hearing about how most babies stay in the NICU for weeks and months, 6 days really isn't that bad. But when you're in the hospital with your first child and you can't be with her and take care of her like you're supposed to, believe me, 6 days is a really long time. I'm not grateful that she had to be in the NICU, but I'm so grateful for all of the amazing people that helped Ady and I out while we were at both hospitals. Intermountain Health Care has some amazing staff members.
So Ady has been home for 3 weeks now. She is doing amazingly! The therapist came 2 days ago to evaluate Adelyn and developmentally Ady is doing great in all areas. There is a slight delay in the development of the left arm over the right, but knowing how far it's come, the therapist was very impressed. We decided that Clayton and I will keep exercising her arm, and in a month and a half he'll give us a call. If I am still worried that Ady isn't moving her left arm as much as the right, he'll come back for another check, but if Ady is moving well, then that's all there is to it.
Adelyn is getting into a pretty good night time schedule. It's roughly: eat at 9, bed by 10, eat at 2, sleep by 3, eat at 5, fuss for a while- bed times vary if bed is an option again at all at that point. So it's not perfect, but it's something. The only issue we are having with her (well, besides the fact that Monday and Wednesday she was oober fussy and inconsolable) is that she doesn't nap very much in the day time, so I a little bit worry that she isn't getting enough sleep, and when she does nap, it has to be in your arms. If she falls asleep in your arms and you try to put her down in her crib or bassinet, she wakes up within 30 seconds. She's crazy!
Tomorrow she will be 1 month old and I can't believe how much she is growing and changing already. If she is on the same trend she was at the last two doctor's visits (2 days after leaving the NICU, and then the normal 2 week appointment) she's gaining about an ounce a day. When we first left the hospital she looked so insanely tiny in her car seat. Now she looks like the car seat was made for her, it's barely too big :o( The fun part about her growing up is that she makes better faces now and the cutest noises. She smiles really big and plays with her tongue now. She also makes the best little "o" face right before she yawns. I've tried to catch these all on camera, but they are all so quick that I haven't managed it yet. I absolutely love her little gremlin noise. That's when she's really hungry, but has a pacifier instead- she chows down on the pacifier and makes a gremlin noise. She also has a "I can't tell if I want to be happy or fussy" noise that sounds like a monkey. Then there's the other cooing noises that are typical of most babies.
I love my baby with all my heart. She had a really rough start, but she's strong and brave and she made it through. She's amazing and I am so proud of her.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Spring Break
Our Spring Break started out with Easter Sunday. Just because we have a yard and it was sunny and we could, we hid Easter eggs outside. I was super excited to have a yard to hide eggs in and I thought it was going to be so much fun. Clayton on the other hand, did not share my vision. I hid his first and I must have done an excellent job because he didn't find them all too quickly. His problem was that he wanted them all hidden in the grass, but there were only like 2 hidden in the grass, the rest were in trees, propped on fences, and stuck against the house. 
Hehe. 
Not that I think he'd admit it, but once he got looking for the eggs, I think Clayton got a little more excited. After Clayton found all his eggs it was his turn to hide and my turn to seek! I thought I was going to go right out and find them and leave Clayton in the dust. Yeah, it didn't quite work out like that. I found most 
of them quickly, but there were a few that stumped me. Ew.... the booger hid most of my Easter eggs in the grass, so I had to (9+ months pregnant mind you) bend over and pick up all my eggs. That part was not that much fun :o( After the Easter egg hunt we went to church and came home and had steak, potatoes, and corn for 
dinner. I know, it's not the typical Easter Sunday dinner, but last year I made ham and we ended up throwing away so much of it that I couldn't bring myself to do a ham again knowing that so much would get wasted.
Monday day Clayton had errands to run up north so I stayed home and graded a few papers and cleaned the house a little bit. Monday night, however, we used our sweet Chuck E. Cheese coupon where you buy a pizza and get 150 free tokens! Yeah, I just didn't know that their
pizza was $20. Oh well. I have to admit that the Sandy Chuck E. Cheese is not as great as the Orem one, but it was still fun. We played several rounds of Ski Ball, one round of Family Bowling and then mostly spent our coins on the "gambling games." The big jack-pot games are Clayton's favorite because he's pretty luck sometimes. I don't like them because they suck up your tokens, but unfortunately those were pretty much the only games they had. Oh, except they did have this whacking game that I thoroughly enjoyed, although Clayton may have been a little embarrassed to claim me while I was killing all those aliens ;o) When Clayton was down to just a few tokens he spent them at a ball drop game trying to win the 100 ticket jack-pot. He didn't hit it. When I was down to a few more tokens I followed the same strategy. With my last few tokens I one a "2 free plays" where I dropped the ball into the 50 token space twice, and then I got the 100 token jack-pot twice. Thanks to that ball drop game, I beat Clayton in tickets! He had 530 ish tickets and I had 620 ish tickets. Clayton kept on saying, "we're going to combine tickets, right?" The answer was yes, but I still wanted to know who got more. With our 1100 plus tickets we got a squooshy/spiky ball and 10 airheads. It was a pretty fun night!
Tuesday Clayton had to go to school and I had a doctor's appointment. The nurse came in all excited and said "Oh, you're almost done!" (You know, because my due date was less than a week away from that appointment.) But I wasn't as excited because I know that I've got an extra week on top of the due date- just she doesn't know that. Then the doctor comes in and asks, "so, you're almost there, is she ready to come out yet?" I said, "I'll let you check me and then I'll ask you that same question." The doctor laughed at this, but then he checked and he held onto that smile as he informed me that I'm still not breaking any records in dilation. I asked him if there was a number to go along with that statement and he told me that I'm still just dilated to 1 cm. So, here's the recap of dilation checks for the last 5 weeks. 5 weeks ago- 0 cm; 4 weeks ago- 1/2 cm; 3 weeks ago- 1/2 cm; 2 weeks ago- "closer to a 1"; this week- 1 cm. The doctor kept talking and said something where I replied, "Yeah, I don't think she's even dropped yet." He then informed me that she's still pretty high up there and so, no, she hasn't dropped yet. We did talk about the up coming storm on Thursday and how that could put me into labor, since storms have a way of doing that to women, but... My next appointment is the day after my due date. At that appointment the doctor says that we'll start talking about the "mercy rule," you know, the mercy of induction so that I don't have to be pregnant forever (because let's face it, I'm sure if it was 100% up to Ady, she would have me be pregnant forever). So we'll see how next Tuesday goes.
Wednesday the storm hit, it wasn't supposed to hit til Thursday, but it came early- and Ady did not! Clayton actually didn't have to go anywhere on Wednesday, but I had to go into school. Well, I guess I could have planned that better so that I went to school on a day Clayton left me alone, but I really wanted to get this giant stack of papers out of the way. So I went down to Orem and was pretty productive. I input scores that I had with me, and then more that were waiting for me at school, I graded papers and then input those scores, I hung up student work around the room, and I got a few more smaller details ready for the sub. By time I came home though, Clayton had run off to a meeting. Little did either of us know that it was going to be a 3 hour meeting that was an hour away. So much for spending any time together on Wednesday. I think we got in one episode of something before we went off to bed.
Thursday we were both home, but it was a cleaning day. I had done some more cleaning on Wednesday, but Thursday was the day to make sure that it was ALL done. There are several reasons that the house needed to be ALL clean this week. One- it's Spring Break, so it's the only time I have to really spend the time truly cleaning (not just wiping off) everything. Two- when I bring baby home, I don't want to have to think about the dirty house and when I'm going to have time to clean it again, so if I clean it now, it should (emphasis on should) stay clean through delivery. Three- Mom and Dad are coming soon so they can be here for Ady's birth and when company comes (even if it's just family) the house needs to be clean. There are other reasons, but those are the big ones. When I told Clayton that it was going to be a cleaning day, he immediately went to the office to work on cleaning that up. You know, it's amazing how we've been in our house 2 months already and Clayton STILL hasn't put the office all the way together. Don't worry, after a whole day in the office while I cleaned the whole rest of the house, the office still isn't put together. Lame! Oh, but what was glorious about Thursday was that we took full advantage of the fact that we didn't have anywhere to be and we don't have any kids yet. We slept in until 10:30 am. I know that's never going to happen again, so I'm glad we were able to do it. Before when I would sleep in too long I would feel like I wasted a day, but seriously, I don't feel like I missed anything, I enjoyed it!
Today is Friday and Clayton is off putting a network together for a company and talking all freaking day to do it. So I'm left here alone. I'm working on laundry, I went and got my hair cut, and then I'll do a few more school-y things when I'm done blogging. And I'll wait for my hubby to get home (I've already called him 3 times today, but I don't think he appreciates it, so I'll try to restrain). I usually get my hair cut by a friend, but she's not answering my message, so I had to find somewhere else to go. It was terrifying- especially since I did a drastic change. I figured since I'm going to be a mommy, I had to get the "mommy hair cut." That's where you cut off all your hair so the baby can't pull it out. So that's what I
did. I cut off 10 inches so that I could donate it and then added some layers. It didn't turn out quite how I wanted, you can't even tell she put layers in it, so that's kind of lame. But at least baby can't rip all my hair out, because I already cut it all off. I knew this Spring Break wasn't going to be the most eventful, but I've had a TON of down time and I wish we would have done a little more. Hopefully tomorrow Clayton will be home and we can go for a picnic or something (although it's supposed to rain/snow again tomorrow, so probably not the picnic thing).
One (two) more days of Spring Break and then it's back to school for me- even though my sister thinks it's absolutely ridiculous to teach right up until I pop her out, that's pretty much my only option. Oh, unless the dream I had the other night comes true. I dreamt that I went back to school on Monday and the kids were being super disrespectful and rude and I wasn't going to have it. One kid that gave me attitude I called over to my desk and I started lecturing, then when he rolled his eyes at me I laid into him. While yelling at him, I was thinking that my next step was to go tell Mr. Parkes that I was going to take personal days until the baby came and then I was just going to be on maternity leave. So, I guess if Monday really does go that badly, I do have the option of using personal days so that I don't compromise having a job next year :o)
Hehe. 
Not that I think he'd admit it, but once he got looking for the eggs, I think Clayton got a little more excited. After Clayton found all his eggs it was his turn to hide and my turn to seek! I thought I was going to go right out and find them and leave Clayton in the dust. Yeah, it didn't quite work out like that. I found most 
of them quickly, but there were a few that stumped me. Ew.... the booger hid most of my Easter eggs in the grass, so I had to (9+ months pregnant mind you) bend over and pick up all my eggs. That part was not that much fun :o( After the Easter egg hunt we went to church and came home and had steak, potatoes, and corn for 
dinner. I know, it's not the typical Easter Sunday dinner, but last year I made ham and we ended up throwing away so much of it that I couldn't bring myself to do a ham again knowing that so much would get wasted.Monday day Clayton had errands to run up north so I stayed home and graded a few papers and cleaned the house a little bit. Monday night, however, we used our sweet Chuck E. Cheese coupon where you buy a pizza and get 150 free tokens! Yeah, I just didn't know that their
pizza was $20. Oh well. I have to admit that the Sandy Chuck E. Cheese is not as great as the Orem one, but it was still fun. We played several rounds of Ski Ball, one round of Family Bowling and then mostly spent our coins on the "gambling games." The big jack-pot games are Clayton's favorite because he's pretty luck sometimes. I don't like them because they suck up your tokens, but unfortunately those were pretty much the only games they had. Oh, except they did have this whacking game that I thoroughly enjoyed, although Clayton may have been a little embarrassed to claim me while I was killing all those aliens ;o) When Clayton was down to just a few tokens he spent them at a ball drop game trying to win the 100 ticket jack-pot. He didn't hit it. When I was down to a few more tokens I followed the same strategy. With my last few tokens I one a "2 free plays" where I dropped the ball into the 50 token space twice, and then I got the 100 token jack-pot twice. Thanks to that ball drop game, I beat Clayton in tickets! He had 530 ish tickets and I had 620 ish tickets. Clayton kept on saying, "we're going to combine tickets, right?" The answer was yes, but I still wanted to know who got more. With our 1100 plus tickets we got a squooshy/spiky ball and 10 airheads. It was a pretty fun night!Tuesday Clayton had to go to school and I had a doctor's appointment. The nurse came in all excited and said "Oh, you're almost done!" (You know, because my due date was less than a week away from that appointment.) But I wasn't as excited because I know that I've got an extra week on top of the due date- just she doesn't know that. Then the doctor comes in and asks, "so, you're almost there, is she ready to come out yet?" I said, "I'll let you check me and then I'll ask you that same question." The doctor laughed at this, but then he checked and he held onto that smile as he informed me that I'm still not breaking any records in dilation. I asked him if there was a number to go along with that statement and he told me that I'm still just dilated to 1 cm. So, here's the recap of dilation checks for the last 5 weeks. 5 weeks ago- 0 cm; 4 weeks ago- 1/2 cm; 3 weeks ago- 1/2 cm; 2 weeks ago- "closer to a 1"; this week- 1 cm. The doctor kept talking and said something where I replied, "Yeah, I don't think she's even dropped yet." He then informed me that she's still pretty high up there and so, no, she hasn't dropped yet. We did talk about the up coming storm on Thursday and how that could put me into labor, since storms have a way of doing that to women, but... My next appointment is the day after my due date. At that appointment the doctor says that we'll start talking about the "mercy rule," you know, the mercy of induction so that I don't have to be pregnant forever (because let's face it, I'm sure if it was 100% up to Ady, she would have me be pregnant forever). So we'll see how next Tuesday goes.
Wednesday the storm hit, it wasn't supposed to hit til Thursday, but it came early- and Ady did not! Clayton actually didn't have to go anywhere on Wednesday, but I had to go into school. Well, I guess I could have planned that better so that I went to school on a day Clayton left me alone, but I really wanted to get this giant stack of papers out of the way. So I went down to Orem and was pretty productive. I input scores that I had with me, and then more that were waiting for me at school, I graded papers and then input those scores, I hung up student work around the room, and I got a few more smaller details ready for the sub. By time I came home though, Clayton had run off to a meeting. Little did either of us know that it was going to be a 3 hour meeting that was an hour away. So much for spending any time together on Wednesday. I think we got in one episode of something before we went off to bed.
Thursday we were both home, but it was a cleaning day. I had done some more cleaning on Wednesday, but Thursday was the day to make sure that it was ALL done. There are several reasons that the house needed to be ALL clean this week. One- it's Spring Break, so it's the only time I have to really spend the time truly cleaning (not just wiping off) everything. Two- when I bring baby home, I don't want to have to think about the dirty house and when I'm going to have time to clean it again, so if I clean it now, it should (emphasis on should) stay clean through delivery. Three- Mom and Dad are coming soon so they can be here for Ady's birth and when company comes (even if it's just family) the house needs to be clean. There are other reasons, but those are the big ones. When I told Clayton that it was going to be a cleaning day, he immediately went to the office to work on cleaning that up. You know, it's amazing how we've been in our house 2 months already and Clayton STILL hasn't put the office all the way together. Don't worry, after a whole day in the office while I cleaned the whole rest of the house, the office still isn't put together. Lame! Oh, but what was glorious about Thursday was that we took full advantage of the fact that we didn't have anywhere to be and we don't have any kids yet. We slept in until 10:30 am. I know that's never going to happen again, so I'm glad we were able to do it. Before when I would sleep in too long I would feel like I wasted a day, but seriously, I don't feel like I missed anything, I enjoyed it!
Today is Friday and Clayton is off putting a network together for a company and talking all freaking day to do it. So I'm left here alone. I'm working on laundry, I went and got my hair cut, and then I'll do a few more school-y things when I'm done blogging. And I'll wait for my hubby to get home (I've already called him 3 times today, but I don't think he appreciates it, so I'll try to restrain). I usually get my hair cut by a friend, but she's not answering my message, so I had to find somewhere else to go. It was terrifying- especially since I did a drastic change. I figured since I'm going to be a mommy, I had to get the "mommy hair cut." That's where you cut off all your hair so the baby can't pull it out. So that's what I
did. I cut off 10 inches so that I could donate it and then added some layers. It didn't turn out quite how I wanted, you can't even tell she put layers in it, so that's kind of lame. But at least baby can't rip all my hair out, because I already cut it all off. I knew this Spring Break wasn't going to be the most eventful, but I've had a TON of down time and I wish we would have done a little more. Hopefully tomorrow Clayton will be home and we can go for a picnic or something (although it's supposed to rain/snow again tomorrow, so probably not the picnic thing).One (two) more days of Spring Break and then it's back to school for me- even though my sister thinks it's absolutely ridiculous to teach right up until I pop her out, that's pretty much my only option. Oh, unless the dream I had the other night comes true. I dreamt that I went back to school on Monday and the kids were being super disrespectful and rude and I wasn't going to have it. One kid that gave me attitude I called over to my desk and I started lecturing, then when he rolled his eyes at me I laid into him. While yelling at him, I was thinking that my next step was to go tell Mr. Parkes that I was going to take personal days until the baby came and then I was just going to be on maternity leave. So, I guess if Monday really does go that badly, I do have the option of using personal days so that I don't compromise having a job next year :o)
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