11/19

Evelyn 20 months

I think Evi has been in size 3 diapers for over a year now...crazy.

She does the cutest thing when we have finished our bedtime routine and it's time for one of us (Joshua or me) to put her down.  She asks to pray and sing, everytime.  And usually she will ask to "prays" multiple times.  She will fold her arms and close her eyes, it's adorable.  I love the time I get with her when it's my turn to put her to bed.  I love holding her like a baby and rocking in our chair and singing and praying with her.  I love staring at her perfect face and being reminding that I am the luckiest girl to be this angels mama, I cherish this time.  I know that in no time at all she will be too big for me to rock my baby and even thinking about that makes me want to cry.

The other night when I was rocking Evi before bed she asked me to sing again and I told her no she can sing herself (I only sing and pray once for her) she started to sing and kept singing the words mommy daddy baby my baby.  It was the cutest thing.

Earlier this week we were over at Grandma and papa's house and were expecting Daddy to be home when we got back.  So we walk in and I tell Evi to go find Daddy.  So we go look all over the house and it's obvious he isn't home yet.  So Evi keeps looking and then comes up to me and puts her hands up and says "go?" "Go?" Like where did he go.   :)



Hyrum 10 weeks
Size 1 diapers, probably over 10 lbs now.

Hyrum has definitely reached the cooing stage.  Joshua and I love talking to him when he's in the "talking" mood.  He will coo in response to us and we love it!

Hyrum's Birth Story

Hyrum Adam Wells Birth Story

I was scheduled to be induced Wednesday August 28, 2013 at 3 pm exactly one week before my due date but the hospital (Banner Gateway) was very busy and so they were running very behind on inductions.  They called me early Wednesday morning and told me that they would call me when they were ready for me to come in but it wouldn’t be today or maybe not even tomorrow.  Dr. Layton warned me beforehand that they were behind, so I was expecting as much but it didn’t make the news much easier.  I was so ready to meet our little boy and I was so uncomfortable and ready to not be pregnant anymore so this phone call put me in a pretty cranky/ down mood.  I got up and started getting ready for the day, feeding Evelyn breakfast and getting dressed and whatnot and then Dr. Layton’s nurse Kim called and asked if I would like to come in later so that Dr. Layton could strip my membranes and see if that could get things rolling.  I of course said yes and this completely changed my mood, it was such a relief that at least I could do something that might help get this labor going.

When 12:30 rolled around, I headed to my appointment and when I get there I see my old college roommate Chelsea Beckstrand, who I haven’t seen since her wedding reception 5 years earlier.  She tells me that Dr. Layton is running behind and that she has been waiting for quite a while.  This makes me more nervous and I worry that he will cancel my appointment because it wasn’t even really a scheduled one. Luckily after a while they bring me back and Dr. Layton strips my membranes and tells me I’m about 2 cm dilated and 70% effaced.  He wishes me luck and says he hopes to see me soon.

I get home and am cramping and having a lot of bloody discharge which is really normal after a sweep and go about my day. I took Evelyn to the Superstition Springs mall and walk around in circles for about 2 hours and then head home. Joshua and I had planned earlier to go to the temple Wednesday night and so we drop off Evelyn at the Rudd’s house around 5 and head to the temple.  It was a great session and was really nice since it had been a while since Joshua and I had gone to the temple together, and I wont lie I totally prayed that we would have this baby that night.  After we are done we go pick up Evelyn and head home.  On the ride home around 8:00-8:30 or so I start to have contractions.  I start timing them and they are 5 minutes apart.  When we get home we heat up some food since neither of us had eaten dinner yet and then put Evelyn to bed and I continue to have contractions 5 minutes apart and they are starting to get more intense, I tell Joshua that this might be it and I text Bethany to let her know we might be heading into the hospital.  We start packing our bags and I tell Bethany to head over, she gets to our house around 10:30 pm and we head to the hospital. 

 I was so nervous they were going to send us home so I tell Joshua to leave our bags in the car.  They check us in and hook me up to the monitors in triage and the nurse checks my cervix to get a starting point which is a 3 and about 80% effaced.  I ask the nurse if it’s ok if I stand up because it’s easier to handle the contractions that way.  She says that’s fine and we start the hour wait.  During our wait, I start to get much more confident that they are going to keep me because the contractions were getting much stronger and painful, I started to need Joshua to lean on and help me through the contractions and soon have no doubt in my mind that they will keep me.  After the hour the nurse comes back in to check me and tells me im still a 3!  I was in shock!  She tells us she will phone my doctor and see if he is ok with me walking around for another hour to see if that will help me progress and Dr. Layton said that was fine.  So we start walking the halls of the post-partum unit and start another wait.  My contractions were pretty intense by this time about 2-3 minutes apart and lasting about 45-60 seconds each and I keep telling Joshua how I don’t know how they could send us home if I don’t progress anymore because I wouldn’t know when to come back.  I convinced myself that the walking wasn’t going to do anything because I was standing and swaying the whole hour last time and that didn’t seem to help.  So I started to try and relax my body during each contraction, which was really hard because they really hurt.  When our hour is up (around 1 AM) we head back to the room and the nurse checks me again and says I am a 4 and I could stay!  I was so excited!  She said we would have to wait a bit while they got a room ready for us and if I wanted an epidural right away I said no and that I could wait a while longer.  About 15 minutes later my contractions really pick up and start to become unbearable.  I started crying during each one and tell Joshua to go tell the nurse that I want the epidural.  She tells him that we need to get me in my room first and that it will be a couple minutes but they will move me as soon as they can.  They finally get me a room and it took a while to walk there because I had to stop at each contraction.  When the anesthesiologist finally came I was so relieved.  When I got the epidural with Evelyn I don’t remember it hurting hardly at all.  This one however was pretty uncomfortable, there was a lot of pressure and I didn’t like the feeling on my spine.  It also didn’t help that I had to stay perfectly still even during my contractions which were completely unbearable.  I just sat there bawling curled in a ball, I’m sure it was pretty pitiful to watch.  It was not a fun experience but I did feel much better when the Epidural finally kicked in.   Once the epidural kicked in the nurse came in and checked me again (around 3 AM) and I was a 5, hooray.  I felt like I was moving along pretty well.  After this things got boring, I of course could not sleep because of shivering and the constant interruptions and obviously because im in labor but Joshua was able to get some rest which was good.  Around 6AM the nurse came to check me again and I was a 6.  I was kinda bummed because it seemed like I was slowing down.  I texted Kristen Pear, the girl that was going to take our birth photos and she wanted to come in just in case I jumped to a 10 fast. 

Around 7 AM we got a new nurse, I wish so badly I could remember her name.  She was wonderful, very talkative and upbeat very proactive about my pain management and just overall a sweetheart.  She asked how my pain was and I told her I was having a window (an area that the epidural wasn’t numbing)  She tried so hard to get that area numb, she kept having me change positions and gave me a boost of the epidural and finally gave me a bolus of lidocain.  The lidocain completely made me dead from the chest down.  I couldn’t feel a thing.  It was nice to have the window gone because it was painful especially when I was getting close to delivering but I didn’t like being so numb.  During all of this I was also getting very anxious, I just wanted to be done laboring, I did not expect to have to labor so long with my second and so I think it caught me off guard.  I kept asking my nurse if we could break my water to make it go faster and she said we had to wait for my doctor.  Dr. Layton was able to come around 12pm.  He broke my water and said that there was Meconium in the fluid.  I was ready to push right away and only had to push during 3 contractions before Hyrum was born.  It was tiring but very fast.  Dr. Layton was so great, once Hyrum was almost out he told me to stop pushing and just let Hyrum’s head slowly come out that way it would slowly stretch me out and hopefully prevent tearing.  Because he did this I only had to get 2 tiny stitches and had almost zero pain (as far as recovering from a tear, which was a completely different experience from Evelyn birth)  I was so grateful he did it this way.  We also found out right after Hyrum was born that he had a tight knot in his cord and it was wrapped around his neck, he had an extremely long cord.  While he was getting cleaned up the nurses commented on how long his cord was and then my doctor said that they only have half the cord and the other half was over by him.  The knot is what most likely caused him stress and to have a bowel movement.  The nurses were in shock that he was perfectly healthy and that he handled labor so well.  They told me it was a miracle that he was just fine and that my labor didn’t turn into an emergency c-section or worse.  After they told me this I was so worried about him, I just wanted to make sure Hyrum was ok.  Once we were able to hold him I felt a huge wave of gratitude to my Heavenly Father.  I know without a doubt that Hyrum was being watched over and protected there is no other explanation why everything went as well as it did. 

Hyrum was born at 12:21 PM on August 29, 2013.  He was 5 lbs 9 oz and 19” long and with RED hair (we were not expecting that at all).  Hyrum has been such a blessing to our family.  He has such a sweet spirit.  I absolutely love his sweet cry, it’s very pitiful and adorable.  I will always remember what a miracle and sweet experience his birth was.  I know he will do wonderful things with his life.  I hope he always remembers that he has had the hand of God supporting and protecting him since before he was born.

11/5/13

I've been thinking of doing this for a long time since I have some friends that do and it's fun to read their posts and I really don't know where else to record these things.  I think I am going to write down the funny things my kids say or do here.  And maybe not just funny but just the little things about them that they will eventually grow out of and they will be forgotten unless they are written down. So here goes...

Evelyn 20 months old.
Today Evi played outside for a long time by herself (wahoo!) while I was making dinner.  She suddenly came running up to me with very blue hands and feet from chalk (obviously she discovered they worked on her skin too) and she was very very excited! She ran up to me gibbering but I could tell exactly what she saying, it was something along the lines of  " Mom! Look at my hands! They are blue!!!!"  It was the cutest thing! She was sooo excited.

On Sunday during family dinner, we were at Grandma and papas house all the kids were done eating and playing upstairs ( except Macy) and all the adults were sitting at the table downstairs chatting.  Suddenly Evi runs up to the railing by the stairs looks down and yells "Macy, Macy!"  Bethany and I look at each other and both say at the same time, " did she just say Macy?!" It was the first time she said Macy's name. So cute.

In June Evi and I went to home for a visit before Hyrum came.  One day we went to Pirates cove by my mom's work with Josh, Ashley and the kids.  Evi and I were playing in the little kids pool area and Evi saw this little boy who was probably around her age, Evi ran up to him with her arms outstretched to give him a hug, which was normal she did this with most kids she saw, this made the boy a little uneasy but he allowed it and then all of a sudden Evi tries to go in for a kiss!  You should have seen this little boys face he was shocked and had no idea what to do!  It was so so funny!  At 15 months evi had her first kiss. ;)

Hyrum 9 weeks old
 Hyrum loves loves loves to be naked.  He can be screaming his lungs out and nothing will calm him down and then I'll go change his diaper and he'll stop suddenly and start smiling and cooing and then I'll put another diaper back on and he will resume his screaming. Anytime you change his diaper or strip him for shower time he will smile and coo. It's definitely his favorite thing.  He also loves the shower, if I want to shower all I have to do it lay him down on our memory foam mat right outside the tub and he will just lay there happy as can be listening to the water for however long I need to shower, it's wonderful!

Hyrum's very first smile, that I saw, was the day he turned 6 weeks.  I was going to get him for one of  the middle of the night feedings and he saw me and the biggest smile stretches onto his face, it was the cutest thing.  He hasn't done it since and it took a week or two before I saw another smile but I definitely could not have picked a better first smile :)