This is our crazy life..

I’ve been wanting to get some things written down before life gets too busy and I forget! I used to do blog updates on Madigyn’s milestones and then think I did one on Jayma… Life gets busier the more kids you have that’s for sure. Just when I think it’s going to slow down in the fall, we have birthday parties and the holidays.

One major hindrance that I’ve been struggling with is this overwhelming feeling that everyone is so offended by what people say or post and I have made the decision that it’s not that I don’t care how others feel, it’s that if you don’t like it move on, scroll on, don’t read what I have to say.. that being said, I am going to try harder to make time to jot down short blogs of things that are going on in our lives or funny things the girls are doing lately or even how I feel about stuff in general in an effort to try to not forget them. So this more for me than anyone else but, I do feel like I find security and better about my current struggles when I know I am not alone so, maybe someone will get a bit of that out of it too who knows.

I guess the best place to start is with Irelynd since I haven’t ever written any of her milestones. I will never be able to stop saying how quickly life flies by, I don’t know what it would be like without kids or how quickly it would go but, I do know that the more kids I have the faster it seems to fly by! I get so wrapped up in the day to day schedule and hour to hour schedule that the days begin to blend and the weeks wiz by!

Irelynd will turn EIGHT months old on Friday.. She is pulling herself up on everything, waving and saying hi on q, she knows her name and looks at you when called and can find those calling out to her, she is just starting to get a bit shy with others and she sure loves her mama! She is so determined all the time and she is very good at communicating what she wants, she has started her own version of sign language for more puffs where she takes both hands and swipes them across her tray as if they were on it and wants more as soon as she sits down. She is smart, and she is not easily distracted. We have to give her a toy or a clean diaper to play with in order to be able to change her diaper, she can roll so fast. She loves digging in the dirt of my Christmas cactus and pulling the tray off the coffee table too, so curious. She had a bout of waking at 1am every night for a good 2-3 weeks but, we have broken her habit for the time being and she has since slept past her 4am wake up too! Thank you for the sleep!! So, I wake her as early as 5:30am to start our day. Thankfully my mom comes to the house and watches her and gets M & J off to school two days a week and it’s a life saver. Sally was able to watch M & J for quite a while when they were young and not having her this time around has been sad but, I am thrilled that my mom is able to watch them for us as often as she does. This is our first time having an infant in any type of childcare facility and so far it is going really well.

I was able to take 13 weeks of leave for maternity, 9 of those were spent pacing the floor for 5-9 hours per day with a crying colic baby. Brad was amazing during this time and I also had a lot of help from my Mom, she still came to the house for a few weeks two times a week and would help me with M&J and with typical household duties and to allow me to sleep during the day since I wasn’t sleeping at night. Brad took shifts into the late hours or the super early shift before work and one day the colic was over… just as suddenly as it began it ended. To this day I am thankful it didn’t last 12 weeks and that I got that three weeks to try to enjoy my time with Irelynd and pretending to be a stay at home mom. Our daycare didn’t have an infant opening on June 1^st when I returned to work and thank goodness that my second mom Joan was willing and able to come and watch Irelynd three days a week until the opening was available and then the Friday’s until I was able to get Friday’s off at work on July 1^st. I wouldn’t have been able to return to work otherwise and I most likely would have quit my job (not that that would have been a bad thing) I am so very thankful for her ability to do so and for the lack of concern with whom I was leaving our baby in the care of.  

So life is crazy, I don’t see that it will ever not be crazy at this point. I think this is the normal, this is our life..it’s fast and exhausting but, we make the best of it and I would never pick a better partner in life than Brad.

Welcoming Irelynd Rose Price

Irelynd Rose Price February 28^th 12:01pm 7lbs 13oz, 20.5 inches

Just like you hear, every pregnancy is different and that was of course the case my third time around. Prior to 20 weeks along, they assumed that I had early onset preeclampsia due to protein in my urine and elevated blood pressure. By 20 weeks both had subsided however, I then tested positive for gestational diabetes. I went on a low carb diet and began checking my blood sugar four times a day. I was able to regulate my readings with diet alone. I was very happy to be able to maintain my workout schedule of group fitness and yoga my entire pregnancy and did not experience any of the sciatica pain that I had with Jayma (one minor episode that subsided shortly after). I started having contractions on a regular basis right around 35 weeks, often while sitting at work on an hourly basis. Once I was up and moving around or sat in the hot tub or went to bed they would go away. I had two very large contractions on Tuesday February 23^rd and of course assumed that was THE day, after having Jayma in 2 hours via ambulance in a hospital other than my desired one. I stayed home that day and my Mom came to help with Madigyn and Jayma. I was able to finish up all my last minute to do items. For the first time in weeks I experienced ZERO contractions from Wed.- Friday evening. We had the Ramos’ over for dinner and they picked up again and were 10 minutes apart for about 3 hours, only to subside again once laying down that night. Saturday Feb. 27^th I had a prenatal massage early in the morning, we then took a little hike to Granite Falls, and I really felt the need to not sit and get outside and move. I had a dinner date with Kendall and Sheena in Everett at 6pm that evening. My contractions kicked in at dinner and this was one of the first times that they were pretty strong and I lost a bit of focus while the contraction lasted a very short 30 seconds or so. We visited and wrapped things up around 9pm. I rushed home to say goodnight to the girls and let Brad know that my contractions had not stopped while driving and that they were pretty strong. By 11pm I was in bed questioning if they were going to stop as usual. They did not. At 12am, I asked Brad to run me a bath, he was out of it and thought I said “rub my back” to which is reply was “I might fall asleep”! I laughed and said a BATH. I then got out my phone and began tracking my contractions with an app I had downloaded. For an hour they were an average of 6 minutes apart. I let Brad know I was no longer comfortable staying at home in order to avoid the whole delivering a baby on the side of the road that everyone teased me about and the undesired ambulance ride as well. We packed up the girls and let my Mom and sister know that we were headed to triage and I would keep them posted. Upon arrival we were told that kids were not allowed in triage, I was upset that I didn’t know that prior to now. I went in to triage (Jayma was BORN in triage); they hooked me up and began tracking my contractions and checked my cervix. I was still at a two. I was at a two on the prior Tuesday; they began discussing sending me home to labor there. I explained that I gave birth in triage via ambulance and that my last labor was 2 hours, that information didn’t seem to faze the nurse however, I had been told by my midwife, if they try to send me home to demand to see a midwife, so I was not completely concerned. They shut my curtain and I was left to listen to not only my own heartbeat but, that of our little girl as well. After a short 5-8 minutes, I began feeling her frantically moving around, I could feel and hear on the monitor her struggling it was very scratchy and the sensation was very concerning, not so much as the fact that I could no longer hear her heart beat. I heard the nurses conversation about baby going crazy and then one said “that’s not baby, that’s mom”, I was thinking that IS baby. Then they heard what I heard, the lack of babies heart. They ripped back my curtain and flipped me on my left side, adjusting monitors, checking dials, still no heartbeat, I was then flipped on my right side, tears were streaming down my face at this point and all I was thinking is “I’m all alone.  I’m being rushed for a C-section and I will be all alone. My baby has no heartbeat”! Then there it was, baby’s very fast heartbeat again! At that point a nurse finally looked at my face and of course saw the fear and said “don’t worry, that is very normal, baby rolled on her cord, it happens all the time, you just don’t hear it”, then the nurse that had told me I was most likely going home said “Well, that solved that, you are not going anywhere”! She checked me and I had dilated a centimeter in 10 minutes and was now at a 3. I was then sent to a labor room and joined by Brad and the girls. We set them up with their busy bags and gave the speech that they needed to stay on that couch and not move if I started to give birth and that they had to remain there no matter what happened and that the Doctors and nurses were for me and the baby.  Sadie and my mom arrived, Christina arrived, then Ryan and April and a bit later Chilly. I labored in my bed using the Bradley Birthing Method of husband coached child birth for hours up until the urge to push. I would let Brad know when a contraction was coming and he would apply pressure to my lower back for the duration and then let up. I walked around a bit and did get up to use the bathroom a few times as well. I began feeling nauseous and did take some meds for that, which I almost immediately regretted, I think I would rather get sick but, who knows. A noticeable time of great annoyance set in and I asked that Jayma and Madigyn leave the room. I smelled their peanut butter Ritz and it was awful, even the crinkling of the bag was more than I could take. Ryan took the girls and the busy bags to the waiting room.  I felt the urge to push and they got the nurse and midwife, I was still only an 8, she asked if I wanted her to break my water that it would speed things along and I quickly answer yes! Sure enough, the contractions hit full force at that point. I remember looking at the clock and my progress up until this point was pretty typical with one centimeter per hour, so thinking ok, two hours and I’ll be at a 10. It was 10am, I was still at an 8 but pushing. I tried every suggested position with exception of the toilet. We came back to some others that seemed to work better and instead of using the arm bar to hold I put my feet up on it. My midwife was sitting down below me and I couldn’t read her, I wasn’t getting any feedback, I wasn’t getting a play by play. I began to doubt myself, it was 11:45 and after a contraction I asked her “Am I progressing?!” she was very shocked and said “Yes, Yes!” and then I think she realized what I needed and began to talk a bit more. At that point, I was thinking I can’t do this. I feel like I have been hit by a truck, I have been up since 8am on Saturday and it’s now almost noon the next day.. I started to push hard at the first tinge of a contraction and I held those pushes until after the contraction was over. I needed to get this baby out; I couldn’t do this any longer. They knew I was doing that and did mention it but, I didn’t care. With the head charge nurse in audience, baby was born 15 minutes later FACE UP! I heard the head nurse say “did you know that?!” and my midwife said “No, I had no idea”.  Baby was skin to skin, cord still attached and pulsing and she was a mirror image to Madigyn and Jayma. We waited for the cord to quit pulsing and shortly after Brad cut the cord, she began to crawl up my body. I had never heard of this and it was amazing, she immediately began nursing and we were skin to skin for close to an hour. Our journey in drug free child births have been very exciting and eventful. I am very happy to have made it to the hospital this third time and that all of our babies have been healthy and strong. I am beyond 
thankful that Brad is the coach he is for me while in labor and that we have been able to find comfortable happy medium between my wants/needs and his.