So you remember that one time I had a baby? … Yeah… I do. I
guess I feel like I need to give a quick synopsys of how the whole “I had a
baby” thing went down and then I can dive into the details of the here and now:
I was checked into the hospital Monday, January 21. We went
to my “last supper” with my family that evening and then at 8 pm Drew and I
checked in to the hospital. I was so scared because I had no idea what to
expect. Don’t get me wrong, I was really excited but it felt like these were
the last few moments of my life as I had known it and within a few hours life
would be COMPLETELY different.
I was right, having
Joel has changed everything about life but that’s definitely not a bad thing.
So yeah, there I am laying in my hospital bed terrified of what’s coming. They
started me on the meds that would induce me and then said they’d check on me
throughout the night. Yeah, they did. Somehow I was magically able to sleep and
when the nurse came in at 6:30 the next morning I was oddly rested. She checked
me and said I was about 3 centimeters dilated. The doctor came in soon after
that and said I was close to 4 cm and he’d keep an eye on me throughout the
day.
Now I’d been warned that induced births can take a while so
I didn’t know what to expect. It seemed like things were progressing pretty
quickly but I knew it would probably end up lasting longer than I thought. Then
the contractions set in. Oh. My. Gosh. It was ridiculous; I tried to be all
grownup about it and act like it didn’t hurt and this was all child’s play but
inside I was screaming “mommy!!!!”
I only lasted through about an hour of intense contraction
when the nurse urged me to get my epidural. She said to get it before there was
a waiting line. Apparently getting an epidural is like getting ice cream on a
hot day: the longer you wait to go get ice cream the longer the line becomes as
the day progresses. Anywho, I decided to just get the thing done.
All I can say about the epidural was that I was seriously
terrified (sticking a needle in my spine, I mean seriously??) but that was
possibly the best money I have ever spent. Within about 30 minutes all of the
pain with the contractions went away and I was happy as a clam. The next 6
hours were passed in naps and watching TV and talking to my parents (Drew slept
most of the day). I was in and out and happy and didn’t care that a baby as
about to bust out of me cause I felt good. :)
4 pm came and the nurse decided it was time for me to start
pushing. That was a fun little experience. I pushed for about an hour and a
half until the doctor came in and up until that point I was not making much
progress. I was getting so tired that I just wanted to quit. Finally (about 2
hours into pushing) when I told Drew that I couldn’t do it any more I started
to make some real progress. Seriously in a matter of 10 minutes I went from no
progress to almost having the baby out.
At 6:50, Joel was pulled into the world. All 8 pounds, 1 oz
and 19 inches of him. My first thought when I saw him was “I just had a black
baby!” His skin looked super dark and his features made him look black.
That was the most amazing moment of my life: when they
handed Joel to me so I could do some skin-to-skin time. I couldn’t believe what
had just happened and I dind’t care that I had torn so they were sewing me back
up. This baby was mine and he was perfect.
Drew and I looked at him and when the nurse asked what we were
going to call him we both just looked at each other and knew: “Joel Andrew”. He
is totally a Joel too so it’s perfect!
But yeah, we brought him home 3 days later and had to have a
lot of follow up visits because his bilirubin was high. A week after we got his
bilirubin back to a normal level, he was then admitted to the hospital for RSV.
That was the most terrifying night of my life considering the nurse actually
told us “things aren’t looking good for him.”
But yeah, 8 days in the hospital got him on the mend and he doesn’t seem
to be any worse for wear now.
He is now 5 months old and is seriously the cutest baby I
have ever seen. Look at this: how could you not love it?
In other news: we bought a house! I know, out of nowhere
right? Well, we started talking and decided that we wanted to get our own
place. After a couple months of knowing that come April we were going to start
looking to find an apartment or something Drew’s dad suggested that we look at
buying a place. At first it seemed like a stupid idea since Drew was still in
school and we didn’t know where we would be in the coming years but then as we
started to talk about it it just made sense. We know we’re going to be here for
at least another 3 years with Drew finishing school and then either with a job
or figuring out life. I make good money and we could get approved just off of
my job. We’ve been able to save up a bit. The housing market is on the mend now
and we would be able to get an amazing APR and a house for a great price.
So, we started looking just for fun. We set up an appointment with a realtor to
see a townhouse in American Fork and ended up signing with her. The townhouse
in AF was not at all what we wanted and so I was from the start rather doubtful
we’d be able to find something. Well, after signing all of the paperwork with
the realtor we decided we’d go to this open house for a townhouse in Lehi and
just look around. We wanted room to just look at not have someone leaning over
our shoulder and we just wanted to see as many places as we could.
After looking at the place, something just told us “this is
the place.” It was ridiculous and made no sense. We’d only been seriously
looking for a couple of days and already we found a place we wanted to put an
offer on. Even now we’re not sure what it was that spoke to us so much but it
just felt right and the price was perfect and the amount of space was great and
it just all felt right. We put in an offer and found out there were 3 other
offers on the table so we made our’s a little higher. Luckily our offer was
accepted so then we just had to get the whole process over.
Let me tell you, buying a house is not fun. Like, at all. I
don’t know that I ever want to do that again it was such a headache and I was
stressed through the whole thing and it never felt like we could count on it
working because we had so many hoops to jump through and hurdles to jump.
Finally on May 23 we closed and we got our keys on May 24.
We own a place now! It was amazing having free rent and being in Orem so close
to work but I have to say I am so, so stinkin’ happy to have our own place with
our own furniture and our own area where I can wander around in my garments and
not have to worry about someone jumping out of nowhere and seeing me. I love
the place
It’s a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom townhouse in Lehi. 2000 sq ft
with a theater room in the basement that’s wired for a projector and surround
sound. It has a fenced backyard with a little garden (we want to do a ton of
work to the backyard). The main level has a nice sitting room/front room and
then the dining room and kitchen. We have a really good sized pantry and I LOVE
it so much. It’s nice to have that kind of storage area. Downstairs is an
unfinished area where the washer/dryer hookups are and we’re using that room as
storage as well as the laundry room. There’s also the entertainment room just
off of that. Upstairs are 3 bedrooms, the master bathroom, the master closet,
and a full guest bathroom.
I’m still working on getting things settled (it’s hard to do
when you work full time and have a 4 month old) but things are starting to feel
like home. We painted one wall that’s in the master bedroom just because it
really needed it and I wanted to make the place feel like our’s. I'll post pictures of it when things are a little more settled (just a couple days more I think!).
I love having
my furniture there too. We bought a couch off of KSL.com for $300 and it’s a
HUGE sectional that’s only 2 years old and originally sold for $2,100. We also
got some wingback chairs for $16 total. One of them needs a slipcover but
that’s not too bad.
Also, I finished redoing the kitchen table and chairs and they look
AWESOME! I love how they turned out so THANK YOU GEOFF!!!
So that's it for now. I’m going to try to write in here more often just to keep
people up to date with what’s going on for us. Plus, I need to share more pictures of the adorableness that is my child. :)