Discovering Pillows and Donald Duck

 Sleepy squishy baby thighs!!!

 She discovered pillows....

 She loved them!!!

 Thumb sucker!!!

 Oh that smile... seriously she is the smiliest little child..

Sleepy angel baby...

 Oh be still my heart!!!

 Watching Donald Duck with Daddy!

Nebraska Trip

 I didn't pull out my camera nearly as much as I should have on my trip up to Nebraska for Katie Lou to meet my family!

She was a trooper in the car with the 12 hr car drive!

 Cousins...I hope with all my heart that they grow up to be as good of friends as their mommies!!!

 I just LOVE the sweet look on Lexi's face in this one!!




Going back to the family farm with my child where I was raised my entire life was very special and somewhat more emotional than I thought it would be.

 

Grandpop and his traditional baby hold...

 Getting a bath in the same place where mommy was bathed as a baby!



We got to attend the wedding of dear friends while we were in town.

 Caroline and Melanie are getting SO grown up...so pretty!

Grammy and all of her grandbabies!!   I love how Katie and Lexi are both stuffing their hands in their mouths... haha!!

Katie 3 Months

Over due 3 month photoshoot!

Katie's Infancy

A long overdue post highlighting the first few weeks of preciousness with our doll baby!

 Wrinkly little baby hands!!

 Oh the Squishy cheeks!!!!

Easily one of my favorite pictures of all time...

 First Milk Mustache ;-)

 Bath time!!

Sleepy sleepy smiles...

The 'boring needless details' aka "Katie's Birth Story"

Katie's Birth Story

Our story begins the day before Katie was born, Sunday; I was hugely pregnant, over due by just 2 days and not expecting to deliver any time soon.   We had church at Mark’s family’s house, My pregnant buddy Esther had had her baby girl the Friday before (on my due date!), and I was about to punch the next person who asked me if I had had that baby yet!   I was having Braxton hicks contractions about every hour into the afternoon when Mark got called away to go help his boss with an emergency flooding situation at the office!  By the time he got back it was late in the day and I did NOT feel good at all.   His boss jokingly told him that this would be a really good time for me to have the baby since they would be out of the office for a while anyhow!    I felt very off and told Mark to take me home because I did not really want to go into labor at my inlaws…  ;-)  

We went home and went to bed only to be awakened at 3AM with contractions, consistent, 10 minutes apart.   I got up and quickly cleaned the kitchen and picked up the house because just in case it was real labor I wanted to have a clean house for people to come over and see baby in!  I texted my midwife at about 4 because the contractions were growing closer and I had bloody show and felt like crap.     I tried going back to bed several times but the contractions were worse laying down and too strong to sleep through.   I ended up texting our doula Brittany at about  5 and she came over around 8 am to confirm that I was really in labor.   Things just progressed steadily all day long with contractions 5 minutes apart and growing stronger all day.   I puttered around, finished addressing all the birth announcements, got a shower, etc… 

Around 5PM everything changed.   We were wondering what point we should go to the birthing center, and I was scared to go because my midwife said if I was at a 2 she would send me home!  (the things you worry about in labor Haha!) So our midwife had Brittany (also a licensed midwife) check to see how dilated I was.  I was in between 5 and 6 cm and my contractions suddenly became super intense and about 3 minutes apart.  At this point I was worried about the ride to the birthing center (40 minutes away) without my people to push on my back! ;-)   We all determined it was time so we went off to the birthing center.   I was at a 7 when I arrived there and finally got to get in the tub. People call it natures epidural so I was expecting all my pain to go wafting away in the hot water… yah no.   That did not happen but it did give me something else to think about and I went from 7cm to 9 within the first 45 minutes.  

Now… all this time my sister in law has been in labor too so I remember her arriving at the birthing center at some point in here and asking about her because honestly I felt horrible for the poor dear!! I KNEW what she felt like and it sucked!!! ;-)  

At this point I was at 9cm and felt like we were almost done!   Little did I know that it would take over 2 hours to get from 9cm to 10… 

Really the rest is mostly a blur, I just remember that another midwife arrived to help with the double birth going on and that she was amazing and helped me to relax between contractions which helped SO much!  I don’t remember hitting transition but I remember someone mentioning it and being encouraged because I knew that meant I was close!   I think I pushed for about 45 minutes, but I really don’t know…  I was surprised that the “urge to push” was not a desire to push but rather my body pushing whether I wanted it to or not.  I really didn’t feel like I had much control over it and half the time I didn’t want to push but I just had to! ;-)   

Katie was born at 9:04 easy as pie with one exception; when her head delivered she didn’t turn like most babies do, so she turned AS her shoulders were crowning and that’s when I think I tore.  Daddy caught her and they put her right on my chest where she sat wide eyed just staring at me! She let out one picture perfect wail when she was born and then was very quiet which scared me at first until they told me she was just fine, just not unhappy.    The next few minutes is also a blur but I remember just being so overwhelmed with how amazing she was and alternating between crying and exclaiming about my baby and how we had won the cousins race to be born.   My placenta detached as she was being born so I didn’t have to deal with that and her cord was super long and thin compared to other cords I have seen. It was wrapped around her a few times so that is probably good since she was such an active baby!  

They got me out of the tub and into bed where we just snuggled as our little family for a little while until Katie’s cousin Will was born 28 minutes later.   The daddy’s took the babies and bathed them, Brittany left and finally over an hour later my midwife came in to check things out and see if I had torn.   I had and unfortunately this is the only part I would have changed about my experience.  Since she left me so long while dealing with the other birth and post partum there, I had swollen significantly and she ended up stitching me up with one side higher than the other which caused me all sorts of problems later on but we will get to that later.   I won’t even go into the detail of the stitching mainly because it was hell and I don’t want to ever think about it again.   Far and away the worst part of my birth experience. I would go through labor 100 times to never have to go through that again!  But I got stitched up and they sent us on home!  We were out of there by midnight with our little Saint Patty’s baby doll!   I was so cracked out on hormones and felt incredible!  Poor Mark looked like death warmed over…

I had a super easy recovery and never even took Tylenol or iced anything with the exception of my stitch job which ended with me making several trips back to the midwife, her digging around with no pain meds for what felt like forever and me trying to not think about our stitching experience and completely panic and eventually going to a fabulous OB and getting minor surgery done to remove the excess tissue from the uneven stitching and cauterize the area to keep it from growing back.  It was over 12 weeks PP before I was all the way healed from that and I was SO frustrated and ready to be done at that point. 

But, Katie bug has been a saint of a baby and I would do it again any day just to have her! Yes… even the stitches…;-)