In Love

Its official, Mike is already in LOVE with his baby girl :)

I Am a Mother of Two

Am I ready for this?!!!!!!

[big brother will]

I have been so anxious to see Will and introduce him to his little sister Emmie.  I was so excited to see his reaction :)  Stacy has been watching Will and I was so excited when they got here today! 

Will meets Emmie :)

Seriously loves baby Emmie already!

(ps don't mind Will's hair :) thanks for trying Gammy!)

Will was pretty cute watching his little sister!

Will decided he wanted to take some pics of his new sister and Emmie woke right up and posed for him!  So cute!

One thing that we have LOVED is seeing so many familiar faces that we got to know so well when Will was born and his stay in the NICU.  I just couldn't have imaged the comfort it has been to see so many of our previous Nurses, we love them!  When my nurse walked in today I immediately recognized her from our stay in the NICU and when I told her I remembered her and explained things she immediately said Will like as in "little Will"!!! I love it!  She totally remembered even though she had actually never been Will's nurse.  It was definitely a special moment to realize just how much these nurses loved and took care of our little Will :). 

When Will got here this afternoon she just couldn't believe how big Will was!  She was so sweet and made Will a special big brother hospital band and he thought it was the coolest thing ever!!!

The nurses here at LDS are amazing!

Sweet Baby Emmie

We are officially in LOVE with this sweet little lady :)

Even though I am so exhausted I cant force myself to send Emmie to the nursery.  I am seriously savoring every moment of being able to keep her with me :)  Its definitely a different experience than it was with Will and I have spent almost every minute since she arrived memorizing every little detail about her!  I just don't want to put her down!

I love you Emilie Olivia!

I couldn't resist posting this:

Labor is hard on guys ;)

{welcome to the world baby emmie}

I was so excited to have a birth story photographer this time with baby Emmie so we could really capture the experience of meeting our sweet baby girl! 

{our birth story}

{our room}

{ready for baby emmie}

We arrived at the hospital around 5:30pm on May 30, 2011.  After observing me for just over an hour my water broke around 6:45pm so we were definitely staying and meeting our sweet baby girl soon!  I immediately got my epidural since I have literally felt like I was in labor since Saturday night.


Labor went really well and my body progressed through labor on its own and I chose not to have pitosin since things were going so well.  Around 1:30am this morning I started to have some not so fun things start to happen though, I started to feel my contractions again!  Yikes!!!!  And since they were every few minutes I was in some serious pain fast and could completely move both my legs and feel everything on the left side of my body and most everything on the right side.  So after pushing the little button a zillion times with absolutely no relief my nurse paged the anesthesiologist to have him check things out.


He gave my an extra bolus and said things should ease up in 10-15 minutes.........but they didn't!!!!  So my nurse seeing I was in some obvious pain :), paged him again.  He checked everything and couldn't explain why I was still feeling things.  Thinking maybe my epidural had migrated to one side he pulled it out a little, gave me another bolus, but since I was almost dilated to a 10 and pushing was right around the corner there was not much else he could really do.  Super fun right?!!

I was crying super hard and had the shakes the whole last hour of my delivery.  It was pretty rough and I honestly give props to the women that give birth 100%, you ladies rock!!!

I decided to invite Whitni to be there with us and was amazed how well she did through out the whole process :).  She stayed super calm and it was so nice to have her share in our special experience.  

My doctor (Alyson Servoss) was not the doctor on call but had been monitoring my labor the whole time.  She instructed the hospital to page her when I was ready to push but somehow the on call doctor got paged instead.  My doctor had literally been waking up every 2 hours to check my progress and when she woke up at 2:30am and saw they paged the other doctor she was pretty upset (how awesome is it that she really cared about me?!).  She called the hospital and they asked if she wanted them to wait for her but I was so close to pushing she said no way (thank goodness for me!).

{dr jennifer holmes md)

Thank goodness the on call doctor was nice this time!

{feeling labor}

{meet dara}

Dara was my labor and delivery nurse with Will and it was so perfect to have her again, she is awesome!!!

  {last big push}

{meet emilie olivia}

{daddy cut the cord}

{one proud daddy}

{a little O2 for our girl}

{all checked out and ready to meet mom}

{we love you baby emmie}

We had such a special experience welcoming our sweet baby Emmie into our family.  Although the last little bit of my labor was pretty rough I was so relieved things went well with no complications.  I wish the pics were more glamorous........but then that wouldn't be reality of how things really happened :).  I was really panicked Emmie was going to stop breathing especially when she needed a little oxygen but everything was much different this go around.  It was such a different experience for us to be able to keep baby Emmie with us and not have her rushed off to the NICU.  We just couldn't be any happier to have baby Emmie here and healthy!

She's On Her Way!!

We just couldn't be any more excited to be at the hospital getting ready to meet baby Emmie!  I've had a rough couple days and I am so glad we are finally here and ready to go.  On Saturday (after Will split his lip open and got stitches) I started to loose the dreaded mucus plug (ha ha the joys of being pregnant) and so I was thinking my water was going to break sometime soon.  Then Saturday night the contractions started all through the night, all through Sunday, all through Sunday night, and ALL THROUGH TODAY!  But my contractions were nothing close to regular and anywhere from 4-12 minutes apart.  Finally around 4:30pm after having 3 major contractions right in a row I decided it was time to head up and see if I was in labor.  So we called Whitni and she rushed right up to watch Will.  So naturally as soon as she was on her way my contractions stopped!  We decided to head up to the hospital anyway and I was just seriously hoping I wasn't "that" girl they had to send home :).

So we got here at LDS hospital around 5:30pm and they hooked me up to monitor my contractions and checked to see if I was dilated.  I am still at a 1 but luckily as soon as they hooked me up my contractions started up again and every 5 minutes!!!!  Then after observing me for about an hour my water broke at about 6:45pm so guess who's having a baby tonight?!!!!!  Yay we just couldn't be any more excited to meet this little girl! 

I got my epidural pretty much asap and now the waiting begins!!

{Baby Emmie Coming?!}

In their usual fashion, our children can't wait to get here! We're just glad that Emmie decided to wait a bit longer than her older brother! We checked in to the hospital just after 5:00 PM on Monday May 30th. We're excited and hoping things go well!

[one tough mr will]

Today Will had his first set of stitches (besides both PICC lines from when he was little) and I am pretty sure it was way harder on me than him!  Will and I spent our whole morning outside riding his bike, driving his car, going for a walk and playing at the park and had such a fun time enjoying the beautiful weather.  We headed in for lunch and Will climbed up on a bar stool (like he has done a million times before) and next thing I knew the poor kiddo was on the floor crying with blood dripping out his mouth :(.  I immediately scooped him up and just held him for a few minutes until he calmed down.  When I finally had him calm enough to look at his little mouth I was shocked at how bad his lip and mouth was split open.  His bottom lip had a huge hole and the inside was just as bad.  The worst was his top lip since the frenulum (the part that connects the upper lip to your gums) was completely cut through.  It was pretty bad :(.  Luckily Mike got home just in time and we jumped in the car to go get it stitched up.

Poor little Will :(

He was one sad little boy :(

I have to say I am pretty proud of myself for how well I held myself together while we had to pin him down for both the numbing and then the stitching.  I only cried a little bit and was able to keep my anxiety in check while the doctor stitched his lip up.  He ended up needing 4 stitches in his bottom outside lip and the inside will heal itself in a few days.  The hardest part was seeing how scared Will was the whole time we were at the doctor :(.  

We made it home and I had one sad little boy:

Then he was angry for a few minutes:

Then the next minute back to our happy Mr Will!

Seriously I have one tough little man!  He amazes me with how little he cries when he gets hurt and I couldn't believe how fast he was back to himself.  We had to laugh as the Doctor stitching him up noticed his scares from his PICC lines and was shocked to hear that he was a Preemie :).  I seriously love having a big healthy tank and couldn't be anymore grateful!