Growing Up

I took Braden to the doctor yesterday to get circumcised. They weighed him again, and he is up to 9 lbs. 11 ozs. Woo hoo! Still growing!

We plan on having William and Braden share a room as soon as Braden sleeps through the night, so after Christmas we bought this bed for William to sleep in.

Two days ago after I changed his diaper to get him ready for his nap, I decided on a whim to let him try out his new bed. I laid him down, gave him a kiss, and walked out of the room shutting the door behind me. It was totally quiet for the next two hours, and I was excited that this new transition was going easier than I thought it would.

After his nap he started whining for me to let him out of his room. I opened the door to this:

He pulled out the drawer underneath his crib and scattered most of his brother's blankets onto the floor. I'm not sure what he did to this drawer, but we got it to shut, and it won't open anymore.

He also pulled this box out from underneath his bed and took all of his brother's future clothes out of it. Rebecca can't open these boxes, but somehow he figured out how to get the lid off.

Luckily he can't open his door yet, so the subsequent messes he's made after waking up in the morning and from naps have been confined to his bedroom. I'm excited for William to be ready for his brother to move into his room, so if I have to clean up a mess every time I get him up, that is a small price I am willing to pay.

Two Weeks Old

I took Braden in for his first doctor's appointment on Monday. At two weeks old here are his stats:

Weight: 8 pounds, 13 ounces (50 percentile)
Height: 21 inches (~60 percentile)

Basically he's pretty average, but he has gained weight and grown longer since he was born. I love to see this growth when I go to the doctor with new babies because then I know that my milk is doing something for them, and I also know that feeding them every three hours, even through the night when I would rather be sleeping, is helping them grow.

And a special perk that his doctor informed me of is that I get to bring him back at two months old instead of one month old. He said that since Braden is my third baby, I should know what to look for, so I don't need to come in for well checks as often. Wow! I feel like such a seasoned mother with my three kids.

Fast

I know it has been over two weeks since I had Braden, but I still want to post his birth story, and fast is the best word I can think of to describe how things went down the day he was born.

Some of you are probably unaware that I had a c-section with Rebecca. While I was pregnant with her I got pretty severe preeclampsia, which is a disease caused by the placenta that can be fatal to mother and baby. The only way to get rid of preeclampsia is to get the placenta out of the body. At 32 weeks with Rebecca, my doctor and perinatologist were so worried about my health that they decided it was time to remove the placenta from my body, which meant that it was time for Rebecca to be born, ready or not. I never went into labor, and if I had any early contractions while pregnant with her, I had no idea they were contractions. To be honest I felt a little cheated out of the whole birth experience. I actually felt more like I was going in for liposuction when she was born.

Because of the circumstances with Rebecca's birth, I decided that I wanted to try a VBAC (vaginal birth after c-section) with William. VBACs are actually pretty controversial here in Las Vegas - many hospitals won't even let women deliver that way, and there are only a handful of doctors who will consent to do them. And the hospitals that do allow VBACs have pretty strict rules for the doctors performing them: the doctor must be on the hospital campus the entire time the VBAC patient labors just in case her uterus ruptures at the c-section incision, and she has to be rushed to the OR for an emergency c-section. The hospitals also make VBAC patients sign a waiver saying that they won't sue the hospital if something goes wrong with the VBAC.

Luckily, my ob/gyn happens to be one of the few here who will let his patients have a VBAC, and he agreed to let me try with William. But because of the hospital rules, he asked that I be induced to make sure that he was around when I went into labor (because most other on-call doctors would immediately take me down for another c-section). Everything went well, and I had a successful VBAC with William. His birth was everything I expected having a baby to be, so I decided to try another VBAC with Braden.

My doctor set my induction for a week before my due date. I was scheduled to be at Valley Hospital at 5:30 am on Monday, March 2. I actually went in that morning having regular contractions. After my nurse got all of my information in the computer, she checked me, and I was dilated to a four. Because I was progressed so far along, my doctor came in at 7 am and broke my water and started the pitocin. My nurse asked if I wanted an epidural, and I told her yes.

By about 9 am, my contractions were starting to get a little painful, but I waited patiently for the anesthesiologist to come since I had already informed my nurse that I wanted an epidural. By 10 am I was hurting pretty badly, so when my nurse came in, I politely asked when I was getting my epidural. She said, "Are you ready for it?" And I said, "I'm hurting pretty good." She informed me that the anesthesiologist had a little problem and was stuck in the OR and that after he left the OR he had to do a spinal block for another patient, and then I would be next. By 10:20 am I was screaming and crawling up my bed and thinking, "Wow, I am such a wuss. I've only been in labor for a few hours, and already I can't handle the pain."

The anesthesiologist came in right after that, and I was so excited to see him. And while he gave me my epidural the contractions kept on coming even harder and more often. And then he was done, and the contractions continued to come, and I felt NO relief. At that point my nurse said, "Are your contractions feeling any less intense?" And I said, "Maybe a little bit." And then I had another contraction that made me scream and crawl up my bed. So she decided to check me. And she said, "Oh! You're complete! It's time for you to push. When you have another contraction give me a small push." And I did. And she said, "Oh! There's his head! I better call Dr. Groom."

Dr. Groom came in a few minutes later, and it took everything I had not to push. My body just wanted to push in reaction to the contractions. Luckily my epidural kicked in just enough when my doctor got there that I didn't feel a whole lot while I pushed except for the urge to push. I'm so glad that my nurse did not check me before I was given my epidural. I don't think she would have let me have it because of how far I was progressed. And the episiotomy I got would have been no fun without some kind of pain duller.

And so Braden was born at 11 am on March 2. He came fast and with a lot of pain, but he's so worth it.

One Little, Happy Hat Trick

Hat Trick: When a player scores three goals in a hockey game.

Braden Alexander Bowman

Born: Monday, March 2 at 11:00 am

Weight: 8 pounds, 3 ounces

Height: 20 inches

Proud Parents: Kevin and Emily

Proud Sister and Brother: Rebecca and William

I'm So Excited About This

Last week, five gorgeous ladies and I got together to do freezer meals. We put together 14 meals for each of us to keep in our freezers, which is a total of 84 FREEZER MEALS. And those 14 meals cost us each $108, which turns out to be about $7.71 per meal. Awesome huh!


These are the five other ladies that are part of my group. I told you they were gorgeous. And yes, that is Kindra Stevens for all of my Chaparralians out there. In the picture I'm holding the antibacterial cleaner. We had to use a ton of that stuff. There was raw meat juice all over the place. As hostess, I got to store all of the raw meat and other refrigerated items in my fridge for a day. I wish I got a picture - the only things in my fridge that were not for the freezer group were some condiments on the door and a gallon of milk.

We each got assigned a different job as part of the group. We're supposed to rotate jobs after every get-together, but I think we decided that we each liked what we did so much that we are sticking with our original jobs:

Leslie - The Shopper (She's in charge of buying ALL of the food we need for the meals, which is a ton of food. And I'm glad she likes that job first of all because she is a great bargain finder and secondly because I cannot imagine trying to buy 64 pounds of chicken, 15 pounds of hamburger, tons of canned veggies and soups, and the list goes on and on, with three little kids.)

Krista - Food Preparer (Some of the meat needs to be cooked and cut or shredded beforehand to save time when we get together. Krista was in charge of cooking and preparing 30 POUNDS of chicken. Phew. That's a lot of chicken.)

Alli - The Shopper (Alli is Leslie's sister, so she gets to help Leslie do all of the shopping. Alli - I don't think you realize how much I appreciate you are your sister doing this job.)

Kindra - Food Preparer (Kindra got to brown 15 pounds of hamburger meat. Can you imagine all of the grease that would need to be thrown out from that?)

Rachel - The Organizer (Rachel was the pro who had done this with another group twice before, so she sent out the emails containing the shopping list, the recipes, and our responsibilities in our specific jobs. Rachel loves being in charge, which is awesome because I don't.)

Emily - The Hostess (I'm in charge of getting my house cleaned for everyone to come over and prepare the meals. I also call the prep girls to let them know when Leslie and Alli have dropped off all of the food so that the prep girls can pick up their stuff to prepare. Then I organize the remaining ingredients by what meals they are going into. I love this job.)

We had a few minor mistakes being that this was our first time doing this together. I think we will get better as we go along. Here are some of the fun things that happened that we just had to laugh at:

• Rachel didn't put sliced Swiss cheese on the shopping list, so I had to run to Smith's to get some. We needed some chocolate to snack on anyway, so I was glad that I had to go.



• Cooked chicken was used to put together the Chicken Parmesian meals when raw chicken should have been used. No big deal - we just had to cook a few more pounds of chicken at my house. We did that while we continued putting other non-chicken meals together.



• All of the hamburger was used up before we put together the 6 lasagne meals. We thought only two recipes called for hamburger when it was actually three. So we made meatless lasagne instead.

Here's a picture of all of my finished freezer meals (and my frozen chicken):

All of these meals just need to be thawed and put in the crock pot or the oven. I've had other things to make for dinner in my pantry, so I've been making dinner instead of using my freezer meals. I want to have all of my frozen meals when the baby comes. It will be so nice to not worry about what to do for dinner when I'm trying to get used to having three kids. And the six of us marked our calendars to get together on March 12 to do this all again. I can't wait.

Thanks for getting this together, Rachel, and for getting me to be a part of it. Life should be a little easier while I'm a part of this group.

Valentine's Weekend

I had a great Valentine's weekend, and although I didn't get any pictures (like always), I wanted to share a few of my favorite parts of the weekend.

• I had a doctor's appointment on Friday, and I picked Kevin up from work to go with me since he is on the way. As we drove, I started to tell him how Leslie from my Freezer Meal group did not like the movie He's Just Not That Into You. I had previously mentioned that that was one I wanted to see. He said, "Well that's too bad. I was going to take you to see that movie tonight." I was completely surprised. That night we dropped the kids off with his parents and went to Outback (my favorite) and still went to see He's Just Not That Into You. I really liked it, and surprisingly, so did Kevin. I still want to ask Leslie what she didn't like about it.



• Saturday we had an fun Valentine's Day ward party planned by the Shumways. They did an awesome job putting the party together. All of the couples were split up to go play three different games, and in each game we ended up with a different group so that all of the couples got a chance to interact. We played The Newlywed Game where Kevin and I got four out of ten questions right. We did worse than the couple in our group who had only been married for three weeks. We also played a game about remembering our first date and a telephone charades game invented by my friend Rachel. The women were asked to bring their husbands' favorite appetizer or dessert, which we enjoyed after the games. Then the husbands were invited to share a poem about their wives which they had been asked to prepare beforehand. Kevin's poem to me went something like this:

You are hot,

like the fire of a really big blow torch,

spaghetti.

(I later found out that this poem was written by our Elder's Quorum President and emailed to all of the Elder's Quorum as an example of what they could say in their poems.)

The party ended with a slow dance, which Kevin and I don't ever get to have together. Thanks for the great party, Shumways. I wouldn't have wanted to spend Valentine's Day any other way.

• Sunday night we went to my parents' house in New Harmony so that Kevin could go snowboarding at Brian Head on Monday for President's Day. The weather wasn't great, so a few of the lifts were closed, but Kevin had a good time with his brother Brandon and sister Melissa who came with us. While they were on the mountain, my kids got into their snow suits and had some fun in the snow in the front yard.

Here's a picture of the house minus the snow.

We really had a long, fun-filled weekend. Kevin - thanks for making this Valentine's weekend one to remember.

I Can't Believe I Missed This

Justin Timberlake is my favorite entertainer right now. I love his music, but I have to say that his work on SNL is what really made me a huge fan. This is just clips from a skit he did with Beyonce. I posted the whole skit on my Facebook profile. If you're my friend on Facebook you can go there to watch the whole thing.

Enjoy!

I have to say that I like this song a lot more since I discovered this video.