More Pictures of Jack

Well we came home yesterday, because even though it was ultra quiet in the hospital, I was quite lonely. I just wanted to climb into my own bed and relax.

The whole labor was quite uneventful. It pales in comparison to the others. We went in at 7:30 am and basically just had to wait until the baby was ready to come. Everything was ready by 9:30 and he was here at 1:20 PM. I was afraid to get another epidural, but I endured the queasy uncomfortable procedure – it’s always worth it.

He did try to push a fist through first but we were glad that he decided not too. Nobody believes me when I say it takes one push, but you can ask Dr. Tayler – One push and we had a baby.

After the last month of extreme discomfort, it was instant relief. This has also been one of the easiest recoveries so far. We are so grateful to have Jack finally here. We think he looks like all the rest of the kids.

“Live long and prosper!”

I took this one this morning – Henry loves to be close to Jack.

A little too close sometimes.

We were worried that Henry might not love to share his Mom with a new baby, but Libby seems to be the one that is having trouble. She’ll be ok though.

Jack Elwood - February 23, 2009

Jack Elwood was born on February 23, 2009 at 1:20 PM. He was 8 lbs. and 8 oz. and 21 3/4 inches long. Mom and Jack are doing great.

There is no family connection to the name Jack... we just liked it. Elwood is my (Steve's) Grandfather's name. It's also my dad's and my brother's middle name.

Libby and Jack

Mom and Jack

More pictures later... Hopefully Neisha will update this and make it better...

Monday! Monday! Monday!

As much as I would love to go into labor right now or any other time before Monday, I have resigned myself to the fact that it's not going to happen.

So we have made an appointment to be induced on Monday morning. Now I know that last time we had an appointment, it didn't work out - so I am aware that it is not guaranteed.

Just in case I start to feel that insatiable need to have another baby someday, I would like to jot down some reasons why it might not be such a good idea. I am not seeking sympathy comments, this is for when I start to get baby hungry in a couple of years.

The whole 3rd trimester stinks!

• Heartburn - never ending heartburn impervious to medication
• Even maternity clothes get uncomfortable
• I have to pee every 10 minutes
• Gastrointestinal Distress
• My back always hurts no matter how I sit or lay
• I have shooting pains down both of my legs
• If I sleep on my back, I can't breathe
• If I sleep on my side, rolling over may cause my back to break
• I try to sleep propped up on about 20 pillows.
• I can't sleep because I have to pee every 10 minutes
• I snore so loudly, I wake myself up, & Steve has to use earplugs
• The ligaments in my body won't hold things together anymore
• My feet won't fit into my shoes
• My nose is twice the size that it used to be
• I walk like a penguin
• I have been having real contraction on and off for two weeks - THEY DO NOTHING!
• I have been dilated to a 4 for three weeks, but still no baby

Please remember that things become worse with each additional pregnancy.

Henry James – June 30th, 2007

Henry

We thought we were done after 4 kids, but then I wondered what I was going to do with myself when they were all in school. I thought that life might be kind of boring just sitting home all day long by myself.

One might think that it would be nice to be able to get the housework done and stuff like that, but if you know me, you know that I will do anything to avoid housework – so we decided to have another baby.

The decision to have another baby meant that we would have to have 2 more, because I have some sort of obsessive compulsive tendency to keep things even. There was a slight bump in the road when we had a miscarriage in August, but we quickly started over and soon a another baby was on the way.

Two days before my first appointment, the OBGYN office called to tell me that my doctor – the one who delivered all of my other kids - had decided to take a leave of absence. She would probably never come back. This was quite distressing, because I was anxious for my first visit so that we could make sure all was well with the baby.

How was I supposed to find another doctor that would be able to see me in just a few days. It’s never fun to try and find a new doctor, especially a new OBGYN. A friend of ours who’s daughter was also expecting referred us to the doctor that she was seeing. I gave it a shot, and they had just had a cancellation and could see me in a few days. That was good enough for me.

According to the calculator on the internet – the baby was due on June 26th but when we went to our first doctors appointment they did an ultrasound, and the baby measured small. The new doctor decided to push the due date out to July 6th. I was not happy about this at all. This new doctor turned out to bug me more than I thought was possible. We just didn’t mesh, but I really didn’t want to try and find another one.

The final straw was when she said that I could be induced on June 29th, but then decided that it didn’t work for her, and asked another doctor to induce me on the 30th. To top it all off, I tested positive for Group B Strep, which meant that they wanted to pump me full of antibiotics for 4 hours before they would actually start the labor.

So on Saturday the 30th we headed down to the hospital. This time we had to go to LDS – all of the others were at Cottonwood – I missed Cottonwood. I let my sister come along – this would be the first time that anyone else besides Steve was with me during delivery.

After 4 hours of medicine (we watched Robin Hood Prince of Thieves with Kevin Costner) they broke my water and the baby was on the way. Pretty easy – two pushes and we had a new baby boy.

We named him Henry James
He was 7lbs 14oz - 21 Inches long
I forget more and more info with each child. I don’t even remember when he was born, but I think it was around 4pm.

Happy Valentine's Day Neisha!

I am not a poet, a writer, or a great orator. As a matter of fact, I have very little to offer in terms of emotions. Some have likened me to a robot. That being said, I'd like to share a few thoughts on a very special subject....

On October 17th, 1991, I met a blonde haired girl that would change my life. Although I didn't know what it was, I knew there was something special about her. I don't know why I remember the date... it could be because it was one week before my 18th birthday, or it could be because it was the day I met Neisha.

This year we will have been married 15 years. Sometimes I just look at her and can't believe I captured the heart of that beautiful 17 year old girl so many years ago.

I am eternally grateful to have her forever.

Happy Valentine's Day Sweetheart!

I didn't mean to preempt her posting about Libby, so please continue to read below...

Elizabeth Anne – July 18th, 2005

Libby

I have to say that my pregnancy with Libby was the worst of the bunch. Only really at the end though. This story is slightly longer than the others, but I feel that the reader must also experience the events leading up to Libby's birth.

We decided that it was time for us to move out of our first house. Steve was offered a transfer, and so we took the opportunity to move out of the city. We sold our house and had to be out by the end of April. We found an apartment to live in until our new house was built in August.

The summer seemed to be quite hot, and life in the apartment was not so great. We were wrought with all sorts of sickness and distress.

Even though Jonathon only attended Kindergarten for 1 month in the new place, he did manage to bring home pink eye for everyone to share. Even Steve and I had to go through the annoyance of waking up with our eyes glued shut. It was the worst case I’ve ever had, and it seemed to last forever.

Once we got over that, we seemed to have contracted some sort of hanta virus stomach flu – again it went through all of us. However, Jonathon and I could not get rid of it – maybe we just kept giving it to each other. I don’t know, but it was bad. I have never spent so much time in the bathroom. The whole ordeal was made worse by the fact that I was 8 months pregnant. At one point in time, I made Steve take me to the hospital, because I could not stop wreching.

Sometime during the summer the sprinkler system in the complex flooded our apartment, so we had to live with that smell of damp sour carpet that just wont dry. I worried about mold growing in the walls, but tried not to think about it.

Needless to say, we could not wait until our house was done. One day the builder’s realtor called and asked if we might like to have our house done sooner. As soon as I verified that we could get out of the apartment lease and round up the necessary funds, I called them back and said YES!

Unfortunately, the message did not get passed on to the builder, and so for a month, our house just sat there not getting worked on. It was very frustrating. We finally got the mess figured out, but they were not sure if the house would be done by the time the baby came. We were not sure what to do - I just knew that I could not bring a baby back to that apartment.

I was scheduled to be induced on the 18th of July. The builder let us move in on the 17th – even though the final inspection had not been done.

So on the morning of the 18th, we headed down to Salt Lake to be induced. My doctor was running late, and so the nurses just went ahead and got things started. I got my Happy Epidural, and things seemed to be progressing smoothly.

My doctor finally got to her office, but was running behind and needed to see some patients before she came to check on me. So the nurses just kept things moving along, but never checked me. After about 3 hours, the nurse gave up on the doctor and decided to see how things were going. Not well, because sometime during the morning the baby turned and was now breech.

Uh oh – stop everything! They had to actually give me medicine to stop the labor. My doctor finally showed up and gave us our options.

C-Section or turn the baby? You would think that it would be a simple choice to just turn the baby, but there were several reasons that tuning the baby might turn into an emergency C-Section.

So Steve made a few calls, and got one of his friends from work to come and they gave me a blessing. We decided that we should do what the doctor thought was best and put our trust in the Lord.

The doctor said that she felt confident that she could turn the baby without any problems. It was definitely quite an experience. She had to have another doctor come and help. One doctor pushed the baby’s head down, and the other doctor pushed her bottom up. They were both pretty much on top of me pressing down.

Thank goodness for the Happy Epidural! There was so much pressure, I was sure that they were going to hurt her somehow.

I’m not sure if there was actually a sound, or if I just imagined it, but when she was turned the right way, her head just sort of suctioned right down into the birth canal and I was ready to go.

They got everything started up again and a couple of hours later we had a new baby girl.

For some reason I have also had a hard time finding pictures of Libby – maybe it’s an every other child thing.

She was born at 5:54pm
She was 7lbs 1oz
19-1/2 inches long.

We named her Elizabeth Anne

We started calling her Libby because it was difficult for Hannah
to say Elizabeth – she would always call her Libbybif.

So Libby stuck and it’s the perfect name for her.

Hannah Janiece - Sept 2nd 2001

Hannah

After we had the boys, we decided that 4 kids would be a nice size family. The two year plan was working nicely for us, and so soon after Thomas was a year old we thought we would try for another one. I laugh at the word try, because we really never had to try before - I never had to wait more than a month to find out.

This time however we really had to work at it. It took six months for me to get pregnant again. I know this does not seem long to some, but for me who never had to wait before, it was frustrating. Also, having to wait that long, threw a wrench into my plans of having another spring baby. Now my due date was September - which meant that I would have to suffer through the summer.

As with Thomas, this pregnancy too has become a blur. Steve and I were sealed in the Temple at the end of May. We had a nice little BBQ at the church. We had the tables set up in the gym, and the power went out. By the time that we got to the church, my friends had moved the tables into the RS room where there was more light.

I'm not sure, but I think this was the hottest summer in the history of the world. We did not have an air conditioner in our house, just a swamp cooler. So I would pile up my bean bag chairs under the cooler and read in order to pass the time. At least once a week, the power would go out because there were too many houses in the area that were running the air all at the same time. So it would take the power company a couple of hours to get everything back on track. This was not a fun time.

I do remember that I was a hormonal mess. I didn't want to go anywhere or do anything. My poor kids just had to stay home and try to keep each other company. We even went to a playgroup each week, and I didn't even talk with the grown-ups. I would just sit downstairs with the kids and make sure that no one was mean to my boys. (Talk about over protective!)

I don't know how it is with others, but it's probably not much different. My body wasn't always happy to be carrying another baby. The muscles were not working as well, and the ligaments were way too stretchy. By the last month, again I was way ready to have a baby. We had the name all picked out, and we had even told the boys. We were going to name her Annabelle. I loved it. I couldn't wait.

One Friday night, we were watching TV and I started having contractions. This was nothing new - I'd been having them for weeks. Then they started to hurt. They were coming every 8 minutes, and then every 6 minutes. We waited for about an hour, and then called my mom. It took her a little over an hour to get there, and the contractions were still pretty consistent. When my parents showed up I got up to go and talk to them and I decided to have a Rice Krispy treat - 'cause they are so good you can't not eat them! Well that was the end of my labor for the night.

I went to bed feeling sad and depressed - I was so sure we would have a baby that night. The same thing happened the next night too. Only this time I didn't eat anything. We headed to the hospital. I was on my third baby and dilated to a 5. I knew they would not send me home. They put me in a holding room to monitor me and the contractions were nice and steady around 6 min apart. So they admitted me. We sat there all night with no progress whatsoever. Somewhere in the night I got an epidural, because even though the contractions were not super painful, I was afraid of them getting worse. So we just sat there waiting. Both of us dozed on and off throughout the night.

The next morning, they were trying to get a hold of my doctor. We could read the notes that they posted on the monitor in our room. My doctor couldn't come in. They needed the on-call doctor from my OBG group to come in instead. Except that she was called to another hospital for an emergency. They were worried that I had been laboring all night without any progress. Was there a doctor that could break my water to get things moving?

Finally some doctor came in and broke the water. I was sure that this would work - it did with the other two - still nothing. My doctor finally showed up - disheveled with tangles in her hair - did she not have time to run a brush through it? We were happy to see her - she was obviously in a hurry, because she started the pitocin and then soon after doubled it. Things went quickly and soon we had a new little baby girl.

We tried calling her Annabelle, but it just didn't fit. We were thinking about the name Elizabeth, which was also my doctors name. When we told the doctor this, she told us about how growing up she was called Lizzy, and then when she was in High School she got the nickname Lizard, and then somehow it got shortened to just Erd. I thought that was weird, and I decided that I was not too sure about the name Elizabeth. So it took a little bit to finally decide on a name.

We named her Hannah Janiece

She was born at 10:55 AM

She was 8lbs 3oz and 21 inches long

When we got home, Thomas was so upset that we had named her Hannah. He just kept calling her Annabelle for a couple of weeks. Also, we were so excited to have a little girl with dark hair and hopefully brown eyes, but as you can see, they didn't stay that way.

Found One!

When Steve got home, he found this picture of Thomas with me in the hospital. I'm glad that he did, because I was beginning to think that we forgot the camera that day!

Thomas Farrell - May 19th, 1999

Ahhh the days before digital photographs!

Before I could start writing the story of Thomas, I needed to find some pictures to scan for the post. I am pretty sure that we did not keep the pics from "First Photo" - the ones they take as soon as the baby is born. I think that they were so awful that I sent them back. So I hauled up two boxes of photos from the basement and started searching. It took about 10 seconds for me to start bawling! (Hormones?) - How could my kids be so grown up already?

I soon found out that for some reason, we did not take many pictures of Thomas. I couldn't find any pictures that were taken while we were at the hospital. Who doesn't take a camera to the hospital? I am sure they are somewhere - I know we took some. Every envelope that I opened would produce an overexposed picture of Thomas, and 23 pictures of Jonathon. I found pictures of Jonathon holding Thomas, but very few of just Thomas. Talk about guilt - I could fill 10 albums with all the pics I have of Jonathon. I hope somehow we can make up for the lack of Thomas baby pics.

Thomas

We had just moved into our first house. Jonathon was just over year old, and he was such a good kid - he went everywhere with us! Soon though, I noticed that he was not so cuddly, he loved Steve more than me, and he wanted to be more independent. He was not my baby anymore!

So we decided to add another member to the family. It sure didn't take very long, and before I knew it, I was doing the pregnant thing again. Except I don't really even remember it. Not like I remember my first pregnancy. I can only really remember the last month. By the time I hit 8 months, I was so ready to have him - I was extremely baby hungry. I used to make fun of people who talked about being baby hungry, but I am sure that I will always be baby hungry.

The last month was one of the longest months ever. For the second time, I was pretty much ready to go at my 36 week appointment. Again, the doctor said to be ready. This time I was absolutely sure that he was coming early. I could tell he was a big baby, even though the doctor said he was just regular size (she predicted he would be about 7-1/2lbs). I could barely walk - I was sure he was going to fall out any moment.

All month long, he just kept getting bigger and bigger. At each appointment I was dilated even more. The week before he was due, the doctor even did something called "Stripping the membranes." We left with the hope of a baby within the next 24 hours. NOPE!
I was due on May 18th - my next appointment was scheduled for May 19th. I was just 100% positive that I would not have to go to that appointment. My last baby was a week early - this one will be early too, right? NOPE!

I was in tears at my next appointment. The doctor took pity on me. She called the hospital to see if they had room for me to come in and be induced. It was 9am - they said that they would probably be able to do it later in the afternoon, and that I should go home - they would call me. They also said that I should not eat or drink anything. I didn't want the doctor to say that I couldn't be induced because I had eaten breakfast, so I skipped breakfast - I hadn't had anything since midnight. I was starving!

The call came at noon and we headed right out. It still took another hour before they actually got a room ready for me. Still another hour to get the IV and everything going. So finally by 2 in the afternoon, it was time to break my water. I was already having mild contractions by this time, but when my water broke, they came full on. It went so quickly - I remember trying to decide if we wanted to watch a movie, and then before we could pick one, it was time to push.

Thomas was by far my easiest delivery of all the kids so far. Things were calm and relaxed and I remember being able see to mostly everything as it was happening. I think I pushed twice, and he was out. Before the doctor could even think about getting his little shoulders out, he punched his fist right out and put a tear down there sideways - not like I felt it - Good Ol' Epidural! It did take a few extra stitches to get everything sewed up, but still, didn't notice.

He sure wasn't 7-1/2lbs!

I was just so glad that he was finally here.

This is the earliest picture that I could find.
He is 10 days old

We named him Thomas Farrell
(After Grampy - Farrell Eastman)

He was born at 5:08 pm

He was 8lbs 14oz and 21 inches long

(If I'd have eaten breakfast he would have been 9lbs!)

Back in 1993...

Back in 1993, the Phoenix Suns went to the NBA Finals, only to lose to Michael Jordan and the Bulls in 6 games. After that loss, I felt awful, and it took a week to get over.

So what does the '93 Suns have to do with anything today?

Since then I decided I wouldn't let a sporting contest let me feel so bad again. So through the years, the Yankees World Series loss in 2001, the Jazz losses in '97 and '98 NBA Finals, Yankees 2004 ALCS loss to the Red Sox (I was there), and the numerous regular season and playoff disappointments of various other teams, I haven't let them depress me.

This year is no different, so keep your condolences. Even a Cardinal Super Bowl loss only took about 15 minutes to get over. I think the episode of the "The Office" right after the game might've helped (I wonder if that is why they put it on right after the Super Bowl).

My brief commentary on the games is this... The Cardinal's lost it themselves... 100+ yards in penalties - c'mon! Then... after the go-ahead score, they played like they already won it - they're D contained Pittsburg the whole game (except the last 60 sec).

Anyway... My next blogging will probably start in October with the Yankees win over the Red Sox in the ALCS. See ya.