Three Months

'Sleeping'....or at least supposed to be.

Well, its here.  We are officially three months old today.  I can't hardly believe it.  Every day seems to bring new developments and quirks.  At this point Lillie is a karate kicking machine.  She loves kicking her feet at the most inopportune times, holding her legs and bum up in the air when trying to change her diaper, and grins all the while.  


Her heart melting smile and giggles make everything better no matter how bad the day may be.  Not long after our two month post she began to laugh, real true belly laughs.  It was amazing.  Luckily we actually had the camera on at the time.  Sadly, different things make her laugh each day, and most of the time you will never know what the next funny thing may be.  Lillie loves her daddy, as he reads her stories, and plays silly games with her. The past few days have been ones of constant jibber jabber.  

Blessing Day

Other than this she has slowly but surely figured out that she has hands and a tongue that must lick everything.  Fingers are constantly in the mouth, raspberry bubbles dawn dishsoap would be jealous of, and great gobs of drool.  Bring on those bibs

The difference six months makes....sadly not much she is growing like a bean.

With Great Grandma Stoneman

On the home front life rolls on.  David has started a new block in his culinary program.  The company he works for has transferred him to a new restaurant, at first this caused a lot of stress and worry but one day maybe we will put faith in the path the Lord has placed us and let go of such cares....one day.  Work continues as normal for me, I have started a new blog and twitter account for Dining Services and continue to try to find the perfect combination of recipes for the Valley View.  

David's youngest sister has joined the Marines, something she has dreamed of since before we were married.  She leaves for boot camp this spring.  Brent is quickly finishing up his mission, less than six months to go.  Crazy.  

We LOVE our elephant. 

Two Months

Wow, that went WAY too fast.  Little Miss is growing up.  It is so fun to see her change daily, and sucks at the same time.  She recognizes her mommy and daddy and smiles when they come to pick her up.  Her smiles brighten any bad day.  I gotta say I love getting up at night with her.  David has been working a crazy schedule and as such does not get home until really late so I try to get her out of the room as soon as she starts to squawk.  After turning on a light and laying her down we begin to talk and she coos and giggles at me as I change her diaper.  What is not to love?  Late nights and stinky poop.

So far she has mastered holding her head up, although at times she kinda looks like a bobble head doll.  We have night time down to a routine, bath and bed by nine, and usually sleep until 3 or 4, or even some times all through the night.  She loves being held and cuddled and is becoming very interested in the world around her.  Television intrigues, people amuse, although loud or surprising noises are still scary.  We have a variety of cries for various different things, although most of these are completely fake.  My favorite is her little growl when being picked up and hugged she sounds like a puppy, which she imitates when eating she will bite down on her bottle and shake her head while growling.  Thursday is her 2 month well baby check, I am excited to see where she lands in her growth percentile, and am absolutely dreading the shots.



 Sunday, February 5th will be the baby blessing.  We are going to use my blessing dress, something I have always wanted to do.  David's family is coming in and will be able to see her again, basically everyone is excited.  The hard part is giving her up to all the people who want to hold her.  Where we both work so much  we don't get much time with Lillie so every little moment is held sacred.

One Month

Wow. I can hardly believe it has gone by so fast, our little one is here.  I am honestly suprised how little it feels like life is changed.  At our last doctors appointment Lillie measured in at:

December was an amazing month.  It was wonderful spending time together as a family, what little time there was.  David finished his second semester of the UVU Culinary program.  Two down, two to go!  Between that and work we did not get to see a ton of him but what little time there was we held on to jealously.  Lillie loves her dad and tracks his every move when he enters the room. 

My mom was able to come and stay with us the first week we were home from the hospital.  Honestly, I felt like a burden to her and kept trying to get her to back away, then when she did I had a complete come apart as I didn't feel I could do this without the help of my mother.  I guess in a way we will always be out mommy's little girls.  After getting life into a bit of a groove, David's sister Katherine came and visited for a couple of weeks during Christmas break.  We were able to create our own little routine while she was here, where I would feed and she would burp/cuddle.  The rest of David's family arrived on Christmas Eve.  It was a bit tricky juggling the two families during the holidays, especially with Lillie here and the demand to see her.  All in all though everyone had a good time and we tried to hold on to every little moment of the holidays.

Lillie's first month practically flew by.  She is characterized by her tendency to poop, her first week home she once went through 12 diapers in 2 hours.  She has the most adorable quirky smile, just like her daddy, where she will turn up one side of her mouth.  While looking back on photos I have realized that she does this with both sides of her mouth.  If you are truly lucky you will get a full smile, and at times even an adorable laugh.  She is not a fan of the car seat or rides in the car.  We go NO WHERE without her green bink.  We have tried every type of pacifier we can buy and there is only one that she will deem worthy of her attention.

 Sad the difference one month makes isn't it!

Uncle Stephen and his little Elf.

At six weeks her favorite thing to do is wake mommy up in the middle of the night and then coo and giggle as I bemoan her "stinky bum."  I swear she is going to think that is her name.  We have even slept through the night, twice!  With all that boasting, we are all still adjusting a bit, the new semester really threw us for a loop.

Birth Story

Well it has almost been two weeks so I guess I should probably get this all written down before I start to forget the details of the day.  Sadly, as many of you know labor never started for us.  As sad as it was, we had the understanding that our favorite doctor would induce on Thursday, December 1st. 

Now before we get into this lets talk about birth plans.  As Lillie is my first child I had no idea what to expect, so we really never made up a birth plan.  Instead we talked between the two of us as to what I really did NOT want to happen.  Remember dear readers:  I am deathly afraid of needles.  

• Did not want to be induced.  I have heard that labor during induction is more painful and intense.
• Really didn't want them to break my water.  Have heard that this really hurts.
• Dreading an epidural, but understood that I would really want one.  Hello NEEDLES!
• Cathedar...really didn't want one, kinda hoped we could make it without one
• C-Section.  Uh, duh this is a HECK NO!  My mom had all of her children via c-section as her pelvis was too small to deliver.  Lucky her however, she was given a general each time so she never had to live through the whole being awake while they have cut into you. 

7:00 a.m.  Arrive at the hospital for our induction.  David and my mom came with me.  We had an awesome nurse who made sure I felt comfortable and explained exactly what would be happening.  Not sure if this was for my benefit or that of the nursing student she had following her around.  Soon after we arrived they started my i.v.  Poor David, he had no idea how afraid I really was.  We had talked about my fears, but he has never been with me during a needle attack.  As the nurse approached my mom realized that I was about to loose it so she offered to come hold my hand.  By the time David realized what was happening I was surrounded by nurses and mom, so he got stuck at the foot of the bed rubbing my feet.   Just after the i.v. was placed he had to leave for school as he had a test he had to take.  We had believed that our induction would be later in the day so he had scheduled his test for first thing in the morning. 

8:02  Literally minutes after David walked out the door in came our Doctor.  He checked everything and decided that it was time to break my water.  As this was our first and I was not sure how fast things would proceed (that and I was scared) I asked the doctor to please wait until my husband reappeared.  Doc was not necessarily excited about this but he did as I asked and left for surgery.  Pit was administered at this point and once again they encouraged me to get my epidural as soon as possible.  Once again, I felt that I should wait, kinda wanted to see if I could withstand the pain and maybe make it without one.  David was back with in the hour and we continued to wait.

10:45  Doctor returns.  David has left the room (to go to the bathroom) once again.  After checking things out we have finally started to dialate and have now progressed to a 3.  Water was then broken.  Didn't hurt at all, just felt really gooey.  It was then that we learned that she had had a bowel movement (aka she pooped) in the womb and there was a considerable amount of meconium in the water.  The doc and nurses remained calm and explained the complication to me and that we would have an extra couple of people in the room during delivery to watch out for our daughter.  He then placed what he called 'babies first toy,' a foley cathedar into the womb, which would flush out the bad water and replace it with clean amniotic fluid so the baby was less likely to breath in the bad when she was born.  At this point I asked for my epidural (unless you are the doctor then it is called a happy-dural).

11:00  A very nice epidural man comes into place the contraption.  Gotta say as much as I dislike needles, I really liked this guy, he gives great back rubs!  Didn't take too long and the epi was placed.  After checking for problems he gave me some meds and left me to continue along my way.  Give or take ten minutes later I started to cry because of a blinding pain in my right side.  The nurse ran and grabbed Dan the epi man and as he returned he said the now dreaded words, "it didn't work."  Back up the the edge of the table I went and he tried again, and again, and a few more agains.  Eventually admitting defeat a new epi man appeared and he tried four more times before we were able to successfully administer the epidural.  In all it took 12 tries and 2 hours to place...all while the contractions were getting stronger and stronger because oh yes, that's right, the pitocin was turned up too high.  Ooops.

Eventually things calmed down, the epidural is my new best friend.  Honestly, getting it placed was not that bad.  I was all for them continuing the poking as longs as they took the pain away.  After sending my support crew (by this point Dad, Mom, David, and Stacy who had just left for work) to get themselves some lunch my nurse returned to place the cathedar.  No fun stories there.  Then we sat and waited the afternoon away.  At one point the nurse thought were were at a 5+ and at 6:00 she left for the day. 

6:00 brought on a new nurse who was agast at the state of my room.  she cleaned the room up and prepared the baby warmer, stating that this was the real reason that the baby had not yet arrived.  As she checked our progress we were sad to hear that she would not consider us to be as dialated as previously thought, instead she placed us at a 4.  Not so excited by this news we continued to wait as we started to notice that the monitor was loosing the babies heat rated.  Continually moving the monitor and even holding it in place proved not to help, this is where the nurse started to worry.  What little bit of information we had was showing her heart rate as much lower than we wanted.  At first the nurse told us not to worry as this just meant that the baby was starting to feel the 'squeeze,' and that she should be here soon.  But as we watched the heart rate continued to drop and for longer periods of time.  At this point the doctor was contacted. 

7:00  Dr. Melendez arrived from the other hospital and checked the computer feeds.  He decided to place a monitor on the baby to better track her heart beat.  At this point I have cords and cables all over my body, made it very awkward each time I tried to move.  After placing the monitor the doctor told me he did not like how low the heart rate was and that if it continued or dropped much lower we would be rushing to the operating room for a c-section.  Not gonna lie, at this point in the game I started to freak out.  I remember shaking, alot, crying, and asking for strength.  David and my dad gave me a blessing of strength and comfort and away we went. 

As I entered the operating room I remember being very afraid that the epidural was not working.  To reassure me they kept pinching me and rubbing me down with cold towels.  Dan my dear anesthesiologist was there calming and talking to me, explaining what would be happening.  As they started the surgery David entered the room and sat on his 'throne' at my head.  My strength proved to be my husband as he did his best to be a calming force, he talked, he soothed, he shushed, he even sang to me and disgusted me with the fact that he got the words wrong!  When I called him on this he admitted that he was just trying to distract me from what was actually happening.  It was not long into the actually surgery before I suddenly yelled out that I could feel what they were doing and that it hurt.  Dan reminded me that it was just pressure not pain that I could feel.  I quickly assured him that, NO, this was pain and I know the difference.  At this point I started to cry out and swear, apologize, and swear some more.  Dan asked more than once if I would be able to deal with the pain, to which I asked how much longer would it last?  I figured if it was only a minute or two I would be okay, but if it were much longer I probobly would not be able to.  Crying I told Dan that I did NOT want to be put to sleep, to which he reassured me he did not want to put me under as I was a high risk for anesthesia. 

It was around this point that I heard the doctor comment that they were too the baby, they had her head and were pulling her out.  Silence followed.  Scared I asked why she was not crying, almost instantly after asking this she let out her cry.  David turned to me only to see his wife dead to the world.  Before he could get to worried Dan reassured him that I had been given a sedative and I would be just fine.  It was then that David was able to focus on our beautiful daughter and go with her. 

Eight minutes later I awoke, no husband, no baby, and almost completly sewn back up.  The doctor joked with me that he wanted to rename my child Elfaba, as she had come out completly green from the meconium.  I was told about how beautiful she was, her head of dark hair, and how I would be reunited with her soon enough. 

All in all it was a day to grow up, to confront all of my greatest fears, and confront we did.  David proved he would be my strength through it all and we have a beautiful little angel in our lives.  Sorry the photo is so horrible, it really does not do her justice.

Announcing Lillie Mae Dexter

Born:  7:46 p.m.

7 lb 6 oz.

19.5 inches

The Beginning in the End

Well, this is it.  One last night of just two, one last late night rushing around getting things done and enjoying sometime with my husband.  One last attempt at a solid nights sleep.  Today was one last trip to the grocery store without a care in the world, one last long relaxing soak in the tub, and one last sleeping in until 10 a.m.  With all of these lasts you would think that we were pretty depressed, instead we can't wait to throw it all out of the window, in fact, we wish that it would have ended a few weeks ago.  Funny ain't it?

Tomorrow morning at 7:00 we begin a new journey.  That's right, one of my biggest fears is now being faced, at 7:00 we are being induced.  My sweet little one will officially be evicted from my body.  Not going to lie, I am scared and yet excited at the same time.  Hope and despair come in alternating waves.  Currently we are floating back towards despair....but earlier today things were all rosy. 

Well I had planed on posting a lot more, but it is getting late and David has finished his assigned task so it is off to bed so we can attempt to get a good nights sleep....HA yeah right, like that's gonna happen.

Pregnancy

Well, this is it.  40 weeks of excitement.  280 days of wondering and dreaming, and yet....she is still not here.  I am going crazy!  In all honesty this has basically been a dream pregnancy.  I haven't been very sick, unless you count falling asleep at the drop of a hat a sickness.  Lost weight until the third trimester, now slowly gaining it back.  David has been very supportive of my every request and I know he is very very excited for her birth. 

He said the cutest thing the other day.  We were driving to our appointment when he turned to me and told me he is tired of being in 'baby limbo.'  He has been discussing this with a friend at work about how they as fathers just want their babies out!  They are tired of being pregnant and just want their daughters to be here.  I love how excited he is, how much he obviously loves her already, and honestly I can't wait to see the look on his face when he meets her for the first time.

Sadly I doubt she is coming today, and not tomorrow, prob not for who knows how long.  I started maternity leave on Monday, and am really glad I did.  This week has been wonderful, I have accomplished so much, spent time with family, and had 'me' time.  For the past three weeks we have been stuck at a one, and honestly I think I may burst into tears if the doctor says one on Monday.  We are basically as ready as we can be, not much more we can do.  Guess we should just focus on the approaching holidays and how to make them all that we can, all the while hoping each and every day that our little star will make an appearance in our lives.