Babysitting

I decided on Friday that I'm not teaching Will to crawl and the jury is still out on whether I'll teach him to walk. Last weekend I watched my friend's 8 month old boy for the day while she was out of town. I was quite apprehensive about having an 8 month old and 3 month old at the same time but it actually went better than expected. However this 8 month old can crawl and that's a whole different ball game. My living room looked like a wrestling ring. I had the table in front of the TV cords and the piano bench in front of the stairs. Then he decided he wanted to stand up using the back of my piano so I placed the dining room chairs in front of the piano and despite my best efforts I still had to keep pulling him back from the electrical outlets and our rock fireplace. It was exhausting. Hence my decision to keep Will immobile for as long as possible. But despite my efforts it seems like Will has a determination of his own evidenced by this...

My baby can roll over! I can't believe it. The funny thing is he looks like he's not even happy to do it, he just looks like it's something to do. We were up at his Aunt Jamia's house when it happened and he did it 3 times in a row. I can't decide if I'm proud and happy or terrified :)

Mormon Message

I don't know if you've seen this video:

But I'll be honest, when I first saw this video I was depressed. That is a realistic crappy day and in no way did I like to see it on film. It really bugged me that she missed dinner with her cousin and it was almost heralded because she did all these nice things for everyone else. I had been pondering this video for a couple of days trying to understand why the video was made this way. Having no answers, I decided that for FHE last night Jason and I could watch it and have a discussion. I was not expecting it to be different the second go around but it was. I realized the point of the video for me. The message was that no matter how bad you feel about your day, no matter being on Facebook in the morning, not being the instantly willing person to watch your neighbor's kid, no matter forgetting your dinner appt, or letting your cousin down because you can't meet with her, no matter how much these little instances build upon each other to make you feel like a failure Heavenly Father still loves you. The message wasn't that we should self sacrifice everything for everyone. The message was that no matter how shoddy our effort feels as we try to live the gospel Heavenly Father still loves us in our weakness and still accepts our efforts.

Sometimes having a newborn is hard. Sometimes I really dislike the fact that I'm the only person on earth who can give this child what he needs. Especially after a day when I've already given so much and I still am asked to give. And it never stops. On Saturday I was feeling pretty rotten after giving so much to put on a relief society activity and dealing with a baby who hadn't slept all day. I went to church the next morning feeling like I had nothing left and I had no idea how to replenish myself. Not to mention that I felt unworthy because of my attitude to approach God. Then in testimony meeting the whole theme of the meeting was how we are loved by God and he cares about what we care about, even if it is just a silly little game we play that has no significance to our eternal salvation. He cares.  And that's what this video reiterated to me.

Happy Three Year Anniversary!

So far we have spent each anniversary in a different state. Year 0- Utah, 1- Maine, 2- Florida, 3-North Carolina. That's right this year we went and found fall in Asheville, NC. Some days I think it must just be all in my head that I don't like Charleston, the place of endless summer and humidity. And then I go to a place like Asheville where there are mountains, the air has a chill about it, the smell of apples linger in the air and the leaves are telling you that it is indeed the end of summer and my heart sings. And then I remember that I'm not crazy but I actually know something about myself: I miss out on happiness when there is no fall or winter. *sigh* And that is why Asheville restored a piece of happiness, not to mention celebrating three wonderful years of marriage and eternal families with my boys.

It was a little different traveling with an infant. We had to do something for the hike so we tried this hiking pack we bought a while ago, decided he's a little too small but I couldn't resist how cute he was when we tried it on him.

I know this is a random picture but this was our first adventure from the trip. Will was an excellent little traveler. He slept the whole 4 hour ride up there and we were priding ourselves on it :) We stopped for gas before heading to the mountains and as I went into the grocery store (which was like dying and going to grocery heaven, they do exist!) Jason got Will out so I could come and nurse him. Well as I approached the car Jason starts crying out for help. Turns out that Will had a major blow out that he had been saving for a few days. It was all over his carseat, clothes, diaper, and blanket that Jason was changing him on. It was hilarious. So I come over to look at the damage whilst Jason is mid diaper change when Will start's to pee and continue to get the blanket more wet while I start dying from laughter. Whoops, didn't think about stopping for a diaper change.

 And this is the beginning of our hike. I've always wanted to see what mountains were like in the East and I was pleasantly surprised. They are more than hills and more like mountains than I had imagined. They are covered in trees instead of rocks which is the biggest difference between them and their cousins across the country. They also are more gradual instead of steep cliffs. We hiked Graveyard Fields which had two waterfalls with it. It wasn't strenuous but we felt like wimps since higher elevation meant harder to breathe, dang it. Not acceptable for Rocky Mountain dwellers. We also felt like we were really high up which gave us the willies as we were driving up there, living at sea level has made us soft! But I think we were able to appreciate them more, truly spectacular. 

 Forgive all the pictures of our family. I think in the past I take too many pictures of scenery and not of people so this time I made sure to get people but neglected the scenery.

 My little family, I love them!

 getting a diaper change in the mountains. Will was a trooper through the whole thing and even seemed to really like it. He was really happy to stretch out though and cried when he had to be put back in the bjorn. 

 Happy Anniversary Jason! It's been a marvelous three years and I can't wait to see where the next adventures take us. 

 look! Color! 

 Saturday before we left we made sure to go apple picking. It's something that we thoroughly enjoyed in Boston so we wanted to recreate the memory. It wasn't quite the same and this was the first activity where Will cried the whole way through. Not letting him take a morning nap was not cutting it. But Jason took it like a champ and sang a song about patience while I laughed and Will cried. I hope we continue to laugh and see the bright in a potentially otherwise stressful situation. 

Happy three years! Here's to the number 4!

Baby Blessing

Will is two months old this week! It's pretty crazy, I can't believe it's been two months but I'm also glad that I have made it two months as well. We commemorated his being two months old by blessing him in church today. It was a wonderful day full of lots of love. My dad came out for it as well as Jason's sister Jamia and her family. We felt so blessed to have family when we're so far away. I felt today like I've fully accepted and embraced my role of motherhood. It's amazing to me how full my heart is with love for Will and Jason. I feel more fully complete as a person and I'm loving the days I get to spend with him. I bore my testimony and my dad said it was akin to hearing a newly called bishop bear his testimony and seeing him changed and taking on the mantle. He felt like a mother is a part of the priesthood and as such you receive the divine help and growth and development that is appropriate for it. And that's how I feel, I've received the mantle of motherhood from the Lord and I'm changing. It's a wonderful calling.

Here's a few of my favorite pictures of the day.

Will was in a baby blessing outfit that my mom made and a blanket that my grandma crocheted before she passed away. Therefore he was surrounded by three generations of mothers. It was pretty special.

 We sure love you Will!

Sunday School

Some days I'm convinced I have an angel baby. Most days this correlates with how much sleep I get at night. And sometimes it really is determined by the mood Will is in. Like yesterday. Jason and I were sitting in sunday school when this happened:

 this turned into 

 this which turned into this

Which turned into this. And then Jason captured this one below

Guys, seriously I have never seen anything more precious in my entire life. He has only smiled a handful of times with his eyes open and this topped them all. We may have been a little irreverent in Sunday School as Jason told me to whip out my phone as proof that Will does smile. Yes, I suppose we've become those annoying doting first time parents but hey, when I see this face I really can't help it. 

Also my mom sent me this comparison yesterday. Most people say he looks just like Jason, which I tend to agree with but do you see any similarities? I think this is proof he has my nose, and quite possibly my lips.

One Month Old!

This week Will turned one month old! Although I of course miss his newborn smallness, I'm loving watching him discover his hands and seeing his eyes learn to focus and hearing him coo and grunt, lots of grunting. Yesterday he even smiled at me! That was big, and I may have cried. I will say that the first month for me has been like what everyone told me the last month of pregnancy was going to be like...swollen feet, big mood swings, extreme tiredness, not being able to do much, can't think, sore. On the other hand it has been awesome. Jason and I have already laughed so much at little things Will does, like cooing when we're listening to the radio, and the increase of the spirit and love in our home has been wonderful.

The store of Delivering Will

When I was pregnant I was obsessed with birth stories. I read books and books on people's birth stories because I loved them so much. And now I have my very own! I still can't quite believe it. I thought that after having gone through labor and delivery I would understand more of what happens but no. I still don't know how it happens. Anyway, here's my story...

4 weeks ago today (Monday, July 7th) I entered the hospital to get induced. But let's back up for a moment. Before getting to my 40 week mark I was all about experiencing labor. So much so that I had a dream that I had woken up in the hospital and already had my baby and slept through all the labor and excitement and I was distraught. I just felt like this is a part of living that I wanted to experience. Call me crazy, (Jason did), but that's what I wanted. Therefore I really, REALLY, did not want to get induced, it seemed really anti-climatic to me to just waltz into the hospital and have a baby. I guess I dealt with that by assuming that little Will would come early and I wouldn't get to that point that I'd have to be induced. As my due date got closer my doctor decided to set a date for induction, Monday, July 7th, 5 days after I was supposed to give birth (by her calendar, she only would let me go over by a week.) I didn't think to push back on it because he was going to come by July 6th, (my own due date) so it wasn't something to worry about. Ha. 

So  I got to my 39th week and mom flew in. I was so glad that Will had waited to come till she got her because I knew she would help me stay calm when labor started and Jason and I would have someone to take care of us when we got home. Well the days came and went and nothing happened. Mom kept me busy with finishing the last minute touches and then we tried everything we could think to make labor start, which mostly included going on really long walks and doing some jumping jacks, massaging accupressure points, all that good stuff. Here's what we did:

Playing Cornhole after eating at Low Down Oven and Bar the Thursday before I delivered aka best burger place in Charleston

Visiting Angel Oak Tree, one of the largest trees that exists here, it feels like you walk into a fairy land

Don't let the picture below fool you, this picture is accurate to what I felt...yes I'll pretend to smile but I really am just done being pregnant right now...

The Saturday before I delivered we went to Fort Moultrie and honestly I can't remember much about the fort but we found a beach and I enjoyed that. 

And this is me the Sunday before I delivered.

This waiting part was my emotional and mental challenge, something I wasn't prepared for. Each day that I woke up and wasn't in labor I was distraught. One morning I woke up at 4am just crying because I wasn't having contractions. I really didn't want to be induced! I thought about pushing the doctor back two days but by the time Sunday came I was so emotionally drained that I knew if I pushed the doctor back by two days and nothing started I wouldn't be able to handle labor. So I decided I would go ahead with the doctor's plan. So at 1:00pm on Monday July 7th I was started on Pitocin. That made contractions stronger but certainly nothing I couldn't handle. It really just felt like really bad indigestion pains which was I've been so used to in my life so no big deal, I've got this I thought. The nurses would come in and just say they weren't doing their job because I wasn't in pain. So Jason and played Super Mario Brothers waiting for something to happen. 

At 8:00pm the doctor came in and told me that they wanted to break my waters. I was so hesitant to do that because if contractions didn't start the only thing to do was from there was a C-section. The doctor pushed me on it and assured me that they would start so after a prayer and a blessing I had the doctor break my waters which is when things really got started. Right after this I dilated from a 4 to a 5. About a half hour in to the contractions and I could no longer talk.  I was so curious what contractions were like before they started and now that I've had them the best way I can describe them is the pain of menstrual cramps combined with the feeling that you have to have the biggest bowel movement of your life and then add to that the feeling like you're going to explode from the inside. That's about how they felt. Now imagine feeling that pain and not fighting it, just letting it happen and even trying to relax through it. Yeah, I found out why people get Epidurals. I however was determined to have the experience. So my mom and Jason were my team. Mom would sit behind me and tell me how to relax and Jason had tennis balls that he would dig into my hips every time a contraction came. Props to them, they were on their feet for 7+ hours without food and hardly having any time to go to the bathroom. I started out on my hands and knees and eventually I moved to the bed and laid on my side. Laying down was nice because I could fully relax to the point that I pretty much lost consciousness in-between the contractions but that lasted for seconds. During this time I had absolutely no concept of time or what was happening around me. I couldn't talk because the just took too much energy and I could barely chew on the ice chips. At one point, now looking back this was probably the transition point but I had no idea, I yelled out that I wanted an epidural. Jason, the sweetheart that he was did what I asked and told me that I should wait an hour but at that moment that wasn't going to work for me. I told him I didn't care and that I wanted one.   They all jumped in and told me that it wasn't going to be immediate which I knew and I was totally fine with I just was done. But then my angel of a nurse came over and told me that she thought I was farther than I thought I was and she thought I could do it. I asked her "are you sure?" and she said yes so I kept going. Besides that moment ironically one of the most painful things was when they put a catheter in me for a minute to empty my bladder. It wasn't long after that that I wanted to lay on my back and create more room for my pelvis to open up. At that point the nurse, Carla, checked me and told me I was almost fully dilated, that there was just a lip of my cervix left so after a couple of contractions she stretched me and I was fully dilated and ready to push. You'd think that once you get to this point the baby would kind of just slip out. I had no idea how exhausting this part would be. I still can't decide if pushing was the best or the worst part. It was awesome because instead of trying to relax I could actually do something during the contractions. It was horrible because it took everything. What happened is that every time I had a contraction I would take a deep breath and then pull myself up either by my knees or hand rails on the bed and push. I did that three times with each contraction. I did that for two hours and with only a minute between each contraction that was a lot. Eventually the nurse wadded up a sheet and we played tug of war during every contraction and that was my favorite because I could actually pull myself up. Eventually Jason stood on the other end of the "rope" and just to give you an idea of how hard I was pulling, Jason had his feet planted firmly and he had to brace himself against the bed with one hand while holding the rope with the other. By the end (probably more like an hour into it, like I said, no concept of time at this point) I was convinced I would never have this baby. I kept asking everyone if they were sure the baby was coming down. My legs were cramping, my arms were sore, my mouth was so dry but I couldn't chew on ice chips because I didn't have any energy to chew, and eventually the nurse had me put an oxygen mask in-between because my baby's heart rate would drop in between. Finally the doctor came in and I finally felt like this was the end. She had me reach down to feel his head but I was so done that I knew that should be so amazing but I just wanted him out. After a half hour of pushing with the head right at the opening, the doctor said she could make a tiny cut and then he would come out so she did and with the next push he came out! 

The nurse handed him to me and he was put on my chest. I remember people saying how beautiful he was and I remember looking at him and he was all purple and covered in goo and I thought "are you serious? How can you even tell?" But then they put him on my chest and he just stared and stared, no crying, it was amazing. Then they took him in the little bed right next to me and took his measurements and everything and Jason changed his first diaper. I was so exhausted at this point. Many people say that when that baby is first put on your chest it's the most amazing feeling. For me my thought was "I don't know if I'm ever going to do that again. And if I do I think I'll get an epidural." My greets joy at that moment came from watching the amazement and love that was on Jason's face. He was so happy and in awe. That was my favorite.

Because of all the adrenalin running through me I was shaking and the doctor was stitching me up. I remember just wanting to push the placenta out and for it to be over. It felt like forever when finally I was stitched up, the placenta was out, and they brought Will back on my chest. It was at that point that I could finally relax and stop shaking. And at that point I was able to enjoy Will. Still though I couldn't decide if I wanted to sleep or drink more. Sleeping eventually won out. That was until the nurse told me that they had to put a catheter in me if I didn't go to the bathroom within six hours. Then I started drinking everything I could get my hands on because I had no desire to repeat that experience. Overall it was an amazing experience. That first day I just kept staring at my baby wondering how he was inside of me. I thought once I had a baby I'd understand pregnancy and birth more but I'm going to be just as amazed the next time it happens as I was with this one. I also couldn't stop talking about the experience. I was so proud of myself for doing it without an epidural. I honestly couldn't believe I had that in me. When they wheeled me to the room upstairs that we would stay in for the next day I felt like people should clap as I was wheeled by for what I had just done (totally prideful of me, I know). 

After birth was all over and I was waiting for Will to be weighed

Jason putting on the first diaper!

Here he is!

And here's my boys!

It really was a surreal experience. Honestly though what I did learn is that whether you have an epidural or not you're still going to get the experience of child birth. I had a newfound respect for every mother. No matter what you do to dull the pain you still have to do the pushing and you still have the recovery the week after. You can't walk because of the stitches and you're sore from head to toe from pushing. Your tail bone is bruised and you don't get any time to sleep and recover, and you have the hormones that come when your milk comes. And the transition from being you to being a mother is a huge change and you just want time to stop so you can comprehend it all before your baby grows up. It's the hardest thing I've ever done but I'm quickly learning how rewarding it can be!