Friday, December 11, 2015

She's Here!

Grace Eliza Kate came! She really really did!

Tuesday night we took the boys over to my mom's for a sleepover so we could go in to the hospital at 6:30 am for induction. It feels weird to have the hospital on the schedule and not be going because I can't survive a second more if we don't.



Packing their bags to last a few days while they shuffle from Grandma to Kate and Sarah before we are ready to come home is a lot of working around and shuffling. But we got it all worked out.

After dropping off the kids, we came home and packed and tried to sleep the best we could knowing it would be our last chance for a while.

Wednesday morning we got ready and headed to the hospital with all our stuff (SO much stuff!)





We got checked in and met Jen the world's nicest nurse who would be with us during labor and delivery. She was so so nice. We sat around and talked and watched tv. I wasn't dilated very far when we first got there and I told her that the Dr. had rounded up to 3 last week, but he noted that he was being generous. I told her so she wouldn't say I was only 2 or 2.5. She laughed and told me that she was willing to be as generous as the Dr. because we don't go backward in L&D but that it was generous. Then we sat and waited and waited and waited. And took a bunch of drugs.

I was planning for an epidural, so when the anesthesiologist arrived for the morning he came straight for me. I really love having babies in quiet hospitals. Mountain Point is still new enough that there isn't a ton of traffic so we had all the attention we needed. I was more aware during the epidural than I was with either of the boys. I could feel everything he was doing, and he kept asking me which side I could feel it on. I leaned on Josh while Anesthesiologist was doing his thing and started to slump a couple of times, but he was able to get it in and I gladly stopped feeling the contractions that matched what had been happening for me for months.

They checked me regularly, upped my pitocin and did all the normal stuff and I got to know Jen. She and her family moved here from Tennesse (or somewhere like that) for a business opportunity for her husband, and it all fell apart as they were driving here. The landlord of the home they were planning to rent called to tell them he had rented it to someone else, the business deal dissolved and there they were in a moving truck with the life and kids. Remarkably they continued on knowing that they felt it was right and figuring that they'd work it out when they got here. They arranged a place to stay for the first few days while they looked for a place to live. An incredible story. Everybody has one.

I made almost no progress all morning in spite of the drugs and broken water, and when Jen checked me (still stuck at like a 4 or 5) she said "Oh she has a lot of hair!" and Josh and I looked at each other and laughed, because we have bald babies, not hairy ones. We just don't. So we laughed about how we knew better than Jen and surely Grace would be bald like her brothers, but it was cute that Jen thought she felt hair. She set up all the stuff, the sterile table and everything just because she had the time not because it was anywhere near time.

Then when she checked me again, there was another big gush of water, and we realized that the first time they broke my water, it didn't really go all the way and when she checked me she accidentally broke it the rest of the way. So yay for that. Jen guessed that thing would go quickly now that baby wasn't resting on a water pillow. So she left and said to call her if anything changed.

Serious contractions started almost as soon as she left. I couldn't breath and within 15 minutes I felt like I wanted to push. But when Jen left I was only at a 6, and it had only been 15 minutes so it seemed stupid to ask her to come right back. But between contractions I gasped at Josh to 'call the nurse' which he gladly did, though he had no idea what to say. So he just said "she's not doing very well...." and they came in to check everything. Done. It was time, I was ready. They got Dr. Ollerton (who I'd never met before) and by the time he was in the room I was already laid back and ready to go. I couldn't hear very well, my ears were ringing and I thought I was going to pass out, but I could tell Jen and Dr. were talking, I just didn't know it was to me. Josh was standing by my side and when I told him I couldn't hear anything he told me to push. One push and Grace was here! It was all so fast, I could hardly believe it and I was still thinking maybe it wasn't really time and I was just exaggerating the pain and making stuff up. But whattya know! There she was. In all her slimy squirmy glory.

They immediately put her on my check wrapped in a towel and my arms were far too weak to hold her up. I was laying flat on my back and when they laid her on me I knew for sure she was going to fall off me. But I couldn't imagine them taking her away. Josh held up my arms while I held her and shook and cried. When Tom was born he wasn't well and they had to take him away immediately to get him unpurple and full of oxygen. When John was born I wasn't well and had just passed out and they took him to get him cleaned up before I held him.

So that moment was new and especially beautiful for me. I cried and cried as I held her filthy little self for what couldn't have been more than a minute while she cried. They took her off to warm her and clean her and gave her right back to me. (bless them)

She had so much hair! Lots of dark dark hair! I could hardly believe it.



We took turns holding her and marveling at all that hair!



She made the classic Egbert pouty face within that first hour and had all of the Dr.s and Nurses convinced that Dad didn't stand a chance against that lower lip. Which is, of course, absolute truth.

 

Friday, December 4, 2015

Chocolate Bars

Early in November my Sister in Law Wendy sent me (and  other people who they love the most) this email:

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Taege says:

We're selling chocolate for the PTA so they can make it more fun for our school. How much it is is $1(per bar). There are five different kinds. They are: Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate, Caramel, Crisp, and also Almond. Two weeks is how long we are selling them. If you don't want to, you don't have to. My goal is to sell sixty and get an animal hat for a prize. Also my favorite kind is caramel, so you know.

from, Taege


Wendy says:

If you are interested in "The World's Finest Chocolate" bars let us know how many you want and we will set them aside for you. We can bring them down to Utah county around Thanksgiving. Love you all!

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Lessons learned from this message: 
a) I am a sucker for a cute kid
b) Wendy is a marketing genius
c) I have 2 of my own boys who make me biased and I still think that Taege about the cutest kid in the whole freakin' world. 
d) Taege will grow up to sell all the things to all the people and all the people will love anything they ever sold him, because DID YOU SEE THAT TOOTHLESS GRIN? 

So that's why I bought a bunch of chocolate bars. Besides he's the kind of kid who you hope will meet ALL of his goals and succeed in every way, so you do anything you want to support him. Plus chocolate! Win-win.  

Anyway, that month-old email is why I'm eating a subpar "world's finest chocolate" bar with my lunch today. And every bite is delicious, but really it's just chocolate. (Except the carmel ones, which really were the best. Why didn't I just buy a million of those? I knew I'd like them best...but felt obligated to try the others just in case.) Also it's broken into 4 sections and when I stuff a whole section in my mouth I think that about that missionary who told me once that a dove chocolate was 4 bites. (That lady is nuts. but also probably happy with her life choices and able to walk more than 10 steps at a time...so...there's that. Anyway, these sections are definitely more than one bite big, but that won't stop me! I'm an overachiever when it comes to chocolate consumption.)

The boys and I are reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Sometimes it's lost on John who has the attention span of a gnat (but can run up and down ALL the stairs 9 times in a row without getting tired), and sometimes Tommy has too much energy for reading too. But mostly it's magic to watch Tommy get lost in the story and act out what's happening "Charlie held his nose high in the air and sniffed the magical smell of melting chocolate as he walked past the factory" and get totally wrapped up in the story asking for one more chapter as we snuggle in my bed at night. It's been more than a week since we started, and for the last few days in a row, it's been one disappointment after another. (Spoiler alert!) Charlie's birthday chocolate bar didn't have a golden ticket. And he was never ever ever going to get another one because all they could ever have around there was lousy cabbage soup. But then Grandpa Joe wasted his money on another bar, and they didn't get a golden ticket, and clearly that was the last shot. And then 2 more golden tickets were found and there was only one left in the whole wide world anyway. So Tom kinda lost interest. Because Charlie wasn't going in there anyway. So what was the point of reading the rest of the story about 4 old people in bed eating cabbage soup? 

Last night I convinced them to snuggle up and read another chapter with me. (but only after an Elephant and Piggie book and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and the singing Silent Night book) and when Charlie found the 50 pence buried in the snow and used it to buy chocolate and scarfed down a ticketless chocolate bar Tommy didn't even care that there was no golden ticket, in fact I don't think he noticed because he was busy imagining wolfing down a chocolate bar. (It's SO fun to watch him imagine things!) But then Charlie used one more of his leftover two-pence to buy another and saw the golden ticket and Tom gasped and jumped up and down on my bed and all the people in the chocolate shop freaked out and the store keeper was nice, and people offered Charlie money for his ticket, and Tommy's eyes were as big as dinner plates and HE COULD HARDLY BELIEVE IT!!!!!! Charlie got a golden ticket!!!!! (I think he'll ask for some "chapters of Chaw-lee" tonight with no encouragement from me at all.)

Today while I'm opening my subpar "world's finest chocolate bar" I half expect to find a golden ticket. And I'm thinking about what a shame it is that Tom has probably never ever opened a full sized chocolate bar in his whole life. And that's why even though he has a cold and shouldn't be eating sugar, I think today I'll find him a chocolate bar, and let him open it carefully from the top corner and wolf it down Charlie-style just so he knows what it's like to peel back the wrapper from a chocolate bar for real and see the glorious deliciousness inside and maybe care or maybe not care about the golden ticket that isn't inside.
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