Cuteness Overload - and updates....

Wow! Sorry its been so long since I last updated. I could have sworn I had updated since my last "home sweet home" post...oh well, moving on...

Things are going well! Baby Abigail is a month old now. Wow! She still sleeps mostly all the time. She does at least wake up to eat, however sometimes she even tries to sleep through those feedings. She only is wide awake for about one 30 min period a day. I love the newborn phase, but I really can't wait until she feels like an actual new family member who is awake when we are and interacts with us. :)
Her last weight check-up put her at 5 lbs 6 oz. That was at 2 weeks old. Yay! She has another weight check-up the end of this week. I am hoping she'll be around 6 lbs 4oz. She should be gaining 1 oz per day or so.  I have included tons of new pictures of her - so enjoy!

The boys are doing well in school. It was a bit bumpy at first, but I think things are settling into a routine. Now *I* need to work on my routine. I would rather just sit and hold the baby all day. :) However, things fall apart fast when mom just sits around all day (sigh). So I'm trying to get one project done a day and do a bit of quick picking up in between the baby's feedings. Sometimes she will let me lay her down for an hour or so, but sometimes she cries as soon as I put her down....so each day is different in my productivity.

Gabe turned THREE! I thought I put a post up when he had his birthday. :( I guess not! I will make sure to update that soon. Alex, Brayden, and Billy Jr all have their birthdays in a couple weeks - so it will be BIRTHDAY OVERLOAD here soon...

Not much else to report, although I'm trying to think up new names for the blog and a new design. Perhaps: Bunches O' Boys and a Little Lady, or Bunches O' Boys & One Girl...hmm I'm not very creative. I'll have to keep thinking!

A size comparison with her Gloworm!

Home Sweet Home

I'm a bit late on posting this...but Sunday we got to come HOME!

But let's back up a bit first...
On Saturday daddy brought the boys to come visit and meet their sister the first time. We didn't know when we could bring her home. Each day was day by day, but we wanted the boys to meet their little sister. :)
They loved her, of course. Each of the boys got a chance to hold her, several times. We had to rotate turns because they were fighting over who got to hold her! She is much smaller then she looks in pictures - so the boys were surprised at how little she is.
Billy Jr's first words when he saw her was that she was "so cool"!

Then Sunday at midnight she had her nightly weigh-in and she had gained a whole ounce! A few hours later the doctors gave us the good news that she could go HOME!

The ride home took quite awhile. We left Seattle around 3pm and got home just before 9pm. It is usually a 3-hour trip. However we had to stop every hour to let baby out of her carseat (because its hard work sitting up right like that for a tiny baby for too long). She had to eat one of those stops also, and that takes her around half-an-hour to finish.

Adjusting at home has been difficult. I've been gone for three weeks (plus a week of strict bedrest in which I couldn't do anything anyway), so saying that our house is in disarray is an understatement.
I'm just hoping to slowly get things back to normal...but it may take a couple months!

In more big news...the oldest three boys went back to school this week. I was hesitant and felt like we were giving our homeschool dream. However, I do see how its important for them to be back to a routine, around other kids, and doing school work. I couldn't imagine doing school work with them on top of everything else right now. So I know its a good thing, but I feel like I failed at homeschooling. :(

Baby Abigail will be 2 weeks old on Monday. Her check-up today showed she's still gaining and is now within 2 oz of her birth weight! YAY!! 
Our schedule is pretty crazy right now. Every three hours I wake her up to feed her, which can take 30-60mins depending on how sleepy she is. Next I have to pump for about 15 minutes. Then I have to repeat the whole cycle again three hours from when we STARTED. This is 24/7... So it was a big sleep adjustment for me at first. I was pretty emotional for a few days, running on very little sleep and dealing with "baby blues". However I feel better now. Each day I feel more and more "human" again and am slowly getting things done.  Like today I gave the little two boys haircuts they desperately needed.  Tomorrow I may fold some laundry. lol

Okay, enough update - TIME FOR PICTURES!

Owen loving on baby sister:



Gabe kept giving her kisses...we didn't tell him to!


Billy jr was so proud!



Biggest and littlest...



Brayden and Abigail:

Bunches O' Boys...and one little girl!

We are proud to welcome our little drop of pink in our bucket O' blue....
Miss Abigail, born Jan 2, 2012!

She decided to come early, but we are happy to announce that besides being a tiny little thing - she is totally healthy!

Here is her birth story, and yes pictures too!

Our original plan was to induce labor on New Year's Eve. However, everyone's baby decided to come that day as well! Since I was stable and not in labor, we kept getting bumped from the schedule. All the labor and delivery rooms were full!
We kept waiting and wating and waiting all day. Finally that evening the doctors said they'd tried Cervidil over night to see if that would help get things started. But when the Dr. checked me I was 3 cm so no need for Cervidil! The plan was to use Pitocin bright and early in the morning to start things.
As the Dr. promised, we had a room at 5:30am and started Pitocin within the hour. Not much progress at first, to our disappointment.
I had contractions every 3 min or so but I didn't feel them much. Finally, I started to just get a little uncomfortable and I opted to have them start the epidural incase things went fast.
When I was checked, I was found to be 4 cm. The doctors said the Pitocin wasnt really kicking things into gear yet (labor).
More and more waiting...it was all still the same.
Finally around 9pm the doctors decided to stop the Pitocin for the night and give my uterus a rest to resume in morning. Talk about disappointing!
Laboring all day, to try again in the morning. We were all worried and just wanted her out. :( So I asked the Dr. to check me and see if any progress was made all day at least. She did, and I was 6cm. So they decided to keep going on the Pitocin through the night to see how things go...
Hubby and I went to sleep (epidurals work so great lol). At some point the nurse woke me up to tell me to turn over on my other side and that they were taking me off the Pitocin. I think baby wasn't tolerating it well and needed a rest. I was tired, no problem.
Back to sleep I went.
Then I was woken up a couple hours later with the doctor in the room saying she needed to check me. I thought that was weird since I wasnt really feeing any contractions and they turned the Pitocin off. Epidurals work great. lol I was found to be 9 cm!!

There was a little bag of water cushoning baby's head, so the doctor broke that and had me push a couple times to see if it brought baby down. She was still so high, that the doctor said she'd never seen someone dilated to  9cm and the baby being so high still!
Well that worked and baby came down nicely. The doctor told me to stop and rest and she'd get the rest of the team ready. Now I felt the pressure and it was hard not to push!
Finally, everyone was in place and I could start pushing. It took about two good pushes to get her head right there, and then several small pushes to get the rest of her out.
Pretty easy actually. ;) I felt like a dream..I was still waking up!

 Afterwards she did great and hubby went with her to the progressive care nursery (not NICU) to help with her bath, etc. Took an hour to get an IV in her, poor thing. :( And her hands and feet are so sore from all the poking from IVs and various blood sugar, etc tests. She was 5 lbs 1 oz and 18" long.

She's done great with breathing and eating from day one. She had a tiny setback with maintaining her temperature and had to be put in an isolette (incubator). However, she's getting taken out of that tomorrow and should be in my room with me!
The nurses can't get over how hungry she is, waking up to eat every 3 hours on the clock. They joke that she doesn't seem to know she's 6 weeks premature.
We should be on schedule to take her home by the end of the week...but some things are day by day, so nothing can really be predicted.

So with that...we welcome little miss Abigail to our family! The boys haven't met her yet, but I can't wait for when they do.

Tomorrow is the day!

These are my last few hours pregnant...its always a weird feeling. I think its almost better to just go into labor on your own - because then its there, its time, no going back. However, having this day set in mind makes the waiting harder and plays on the nerves.

I don't know when I'll get to start the induction tomorrow, but I'll post an update after the little miss comes. :)

Now, I just need to try and get some sort of sleep tonight! This is my last night of uninterrupted sleep for a great while. :)

New Year's Baby...Maybe?

So I haven't updated since 2.5 weeks ago...
After my last post, things were going pretty well. In fact I got to go home for a week (still on bedrest ) and we were pretty optimistic. Slowly the boys starting trickling back home from grandparents' houses.  However then Christmas Eve I noticed some suspicious "leaking". Although it was so sporadic and minimal that it could have been anything. My midwife told me to watch and see, so I just kept note of things and laid low.

Christmas Eve night I got to spend a glorious night in my own bed, snuggling with my boys. Christmas morning we had a nice time opening presents and having family time. However, the suspicious leaking was increasing so we decided it was time to get it checked out.

I hoped to be proven wrong.

But instead it was confirmed that my water was leaking...

In my town hospital, they can't take care of babies younger then 34 weeks. Since I was 33 weeks, that meant I had to be transported to a bigger city hospital 3 hours away. I got an ambulance ride to the jet (lights, sirens and all...but that was to not make the jet wait too long). Then the jet ride was only about 15 minutes!

The doctors here are great - so calm and reassuring. After all, they are used to much more serious cases and much more premature babies.

The plan is to wait here, let baby keep growing, until 34 weeks. Then I will be induced (yikes! Never been induced!). We're hoping to avoid a c-section, which should be a do-able. *crossing fingers*

We've been blessed to have so much great help with the boys these past 2.5 weeks. Although the boys are starting to tire of this and just want their normal back. :( Its hard for the younger ones to understand. In good news - Grandma potty trained the 2 yr old while she had him for the week! Yay!

I will be 34 weeks on Saturday, New Year's Eve...so I will either have a New Year's Eve baby or maybe even New Years! I'm nervous but hoping for a quick and relatively easy birth. I'm really nervous for afterwards and how baby will do. She could be here a few days or a few weeks...chances are she'll do great though. Apparently preemie girls do better then boys!

So that's my update for now..little miss attention getter keeps changing the plans though, so really its day by day.

I hope to have a great update with adorable pictures in a few days!

Little Miss Drama Queen

So...I post this blog update sitting from the hospital. Not where I expected to be during my finals week for school, and not at 31 weeks pregnant!
But, I'm where I need to be for now, so that's all that matters.

Long story short - I woke up Saturday morning with unexpected bleeding issues and some minor contractions. We went to the hospital and was soon diagnosed with some sort of partial placental abruption. I was put on a variety of meds to stop the contractions, however they didn't seem to be working. We were told they were sending me to a bigger city hospital via helicopter (!) because the hospital here doesn't deliver babies/keep them here until 34 weeks. I was given steroids to mature baby girl's lungs and the OB tried one more thing, some lovely magnesium sulfate (sp?). It worked and I didn't have to go anywhere!

Today is day three...I was set to go home, but after a trial run last night of allowing me bathroom priveledges (uggh!) I had some more contrax this morning and a little bleeding. So back on some meds I go, and not going home today.

Baby has been doing great throughout...loving the attention. ;) But she is giving the nurses a workout-she moves so much that they have a heck of a time chasing her around with the heartbeat monitors!

So that's my update for today. I hope to have great news next time I update, and I hope to have a January/February baby still!!

30 weeks down...10 weeks (or less!) to go!

Its hard to believe that I'm in the final few weeks of my pregnancy now. The time has gone really fast. Of course, now, the next 8-10 weeks will crawwwwwwl by.

Everyone is getting very excited. Thankfully we have the holidays to keep us entertained for now. However, once January 1st hits...its going to be all baby baby baby talk.  I could have the baby as early as the last week of January. SO...I *could* say that I "may" have the baby next month! Wohoo!
Alex was born 2 weeks before his due date and Gabe was born 1.5 weeks before his due date. The other three boys were either on or within a few days after their due date. So...who knows?!

In other exciting news, we DO have a name! AND we were going to keep it secret, but the boys knew and they started spilling the beans. To keep it fair we announced it to everyone. Little sister's name will be.....Abigail! Nickname Abi is possible, but I also love Abigail just as it is. The middle name is up in the air, however we'd really like to honor Billy's grandmother Bonnie.

That's about it for exciting news right now. We've been busy with preparing for the holidays and me finishing up my classes (which end the week after next, wohoo!!!!).  I have some cute pictures of the boys decorating the Christmas tree, which I'll post later when I'm not hiding from my homework (as I am presently...haha).

Happy Holidays!