Olivia's Birth

Well, we did it. Wednesday was an exciting but hard day. I am sure no one looks forward to major surgery, at least I have a beautiful baby girl when everything is said and done. Ryan and I headed into the hospital early Wednesday morning, we got settled into our room and headed off to the OR about 8 o'clock. I ended up getting a spinal instead of an epidural, unfortunately it affected my circulation and I had trouble throughout the surgery keeping my blood pressure up. I would look over at the machine and it would read 40/20 and it was making me really sick- kind of scary. When Olivia was born she was screaming bloody murder. She looked and sounded so amazing- God is good!

It seemed like the surgery took forever, I just wanted to get my hands on my little girl. Ryan and I were both surprised by the fact she was 7 pounds and 5 ounces- she would have been a whopper if I had gone 2 more weeks. When we made it back to the room, it was overflowing with our families, how nice to share this experience with the people we love.

I struggled the rest of the day with managing my pain. The pain medication took a bit too long to make it to my room and by the time it arrived I was in agony. They had to give me extra doses to get control of it, which made my mind pretty cloudy. By day 2 I had the medication/pain under control. The rest of the week went smoothly. I have been feeling great!

Chase did great with my Mom. The second day he was starting to get nervous and needed some extra loving so I am glad we were able to head home on Friday. He has been great with Olivia, he has asked to hold her several times and is quite interested in her presence. He was so excited to find her in bed with us the first morning we were home, he kept sitting up and pointing to her as if he were saying, "Look, she's here." He is still a little nervous, especially at bed time, since that is usually special time with Mommy. We have had some much need snuggle time with Mommy to help reassure him.

My mother and sister will be here at least through December to help us heal and get adjusted so we have lots of extra hands- thankfully.

...and three became four

We are so blessed!

Erica gave birth to our beautiful baby girl - Olivia Lee

We're all overjoyed and looking forward to heading home tomorrow.

More pictures and details to follow.

Happy Thanksgiving

We enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving. My in-laws were nice enough to supply the whole dinner (and deliver it!) We had planned on going to their house but my back has been hurting too much to handle the ride so they packed it up and brought the whole sha-bang to our house. It was so sweet of them, they took care of every last detail so it would be a relaxing day for us!

We needed a relaxing day since the past few weeks have been filled with stress and worry. A few weeks ago I began itching pretty intensely, concerned that it was related to my pregnancy we went to have additional blood work and found out my liver isn't working properly. This condition is called cholestasis, which can have some serious consequences on the baby. We are going in for bi-weekly monitoring/ ultrasound and they have moved my c-section date up 2 weeks (Dec. 5th). Please be praying for us. My mom flies in on Sunday, I am sure she will really help distract me while I count the days down.

Chase is doing great and has really started trying to talk. The cutest thing he says right now is please.