An Unexpected Beginning-Meet Emsley

For anyone that follows me or any one of my family members on social media, this post will be old news. But I simply had to document on here what happened in our lives these past 2 weeks.

I will never forget this time in our lives, and how it was the most scary and hard time for us but there were also were little moments of joy and times when I could literally feel God's hand on our newest baby's life and our lives as well.

I'll just start from the beginning.

15 days ago, on Monday June 11th, I woke up around 5:30 in the morning. Before I even got out of bed, I felt my water break. I quickly woke Caleb and the two of us ran around the house trying to pack up and head out for the hospital.

On our way to the hospital, I sent out a text asking for prayers to friends and family. I knew I was a bit early to be having our 3rd child. I was only 36 weeks pregnant and while I knew this was a bit early, I assumed all would be fine.

Once at the hospital, we were informed that because I was 36 weeks pregnant and not yet considered full term, the baby automatically had to go to the NICU for the first 48 hours and would not be in the room with me and Caleb. While this made me sad, I thought to myself it would only be 48 hours. I would rest up some and then we would get to take the baby home with us.

Other than that sad news, this was the best birth experience I'd had. With Elliana and Ethan, my contractions started immediately after my water broke and I dilated to 10cm before getting any kind of pain relief at the hospital. However, this time around, the contractions came somewhat slowly and were not too intense. I actually had time to visit with family before going in for my repeat C-section.

After my c-section, the first day went just as smooth as any new mom would hope. Our baby came out screaming (a good sign of strong lungs), Caleb got to announce that the baby was a GIRL (this was our surprise baby) and she was given a clean bill of health! Then Elliana, was given the privilege of announcing the gender of the baby to family. My sister Courtney did a great job of documenting that first day.

Everyone got to see pics and we assumed we'd have our baby girl in our arms and our care after the mandatory 48 hours in the NICU.

We named our precious girl Emsley Jeannette. Emsley means "gift from God" and we chose Jeannette after Caleb's grandma and also one of my beloved late Aunts. Emsley was 5 lbs, 7 ozs, and 17.5 inches long.

 

After the first 24 hours, we quickly found out that 48 hours had turned into a minimum 5 day stay. Emsley was having some issues with apnea and oxygen desaturations. She had lost a significant amount of weight. She dropped to 4 lbs, 14 ozs, and she had jaundice.

I spent all 5 days going from my hospital room  to seeing and nursing or feeding Emsley in the NICU. I learned that because she was premature her brain and lungs were not fully developed, and mostly she hadn't yet learned to suck, swallow and breathe while feeding. I watched as she would often turn blue while Caleb or I fed her a bottle or burped her. Every time was just as scary as the one before, and the nurses would rush to our side and help us to "remind" Emsley to breathe again.

I was beginning to feel way in over my head, but I asked the nurses as many questions as possible. I tried to educate myself quickly about preemies, and all of Emsley's needs to prepare for her to come home with us on Saturday, 5 days after her birth.

Then, on Saturday we were told Em had to stay in the NICU at least until Tuesday, 1 week after her birth to further monitor her. The nurses still felt she needed 7 days from her first apnea event to make sure it wouldn't happen again.

I was discharged as a patient on Saturday and Caleb and I were offered a "sleep room" in the hospital to stay in until Tuesday. I wanted to stay close to Emsley and nurse and feed her as often as possible. Caleb stayed in the sleep room with me until Sunday, then he had to go home and take care of Ellie and Ethan since they had been with his parents the whole first week of Emsley's life.

I was going to stay in the sleep room until Tuesday, and then Emsley and I would come home and we would begin life as a family of five!

Then Monday morning came. I got a call from the nurses in the NICU to come and feed Emsley early in the morning. I was met at the door by the nurse that had cared for Emsley throughout the night. She had a sad look on her face and I my heart instantly sank. With tears in her eyes she said to me "Christine, I have bad news. Emsley can't come home with you tomorrow. She had another apnea episode last night in her sleep. It lasted a long time, and for the next 8 minutes her oxygen levels fluctuated up and down."

I knew what this meant. Just like that, Emsley would have another 7 day minimum stay in the NICU. The first TWO weeks of her life would be spent in NICU. Our family would be separated for another 7 days since I would want to be by my baby girl's side as much as possible.

I held back tears as long as I could, but it didn't last long. I walked over to Emsley's crib, I picked her up, began nursing her and the tears started to flow. As sad as I was over the fact that she was going to stay in the hospital for another week, I was more scared than anything. I was scared to lose her, I was scared as to what her future held.

After nursing Emsley and having many conversations with the NICU nurses and Dr's, I went back to the hospital room and sobbed. I called Caleb, my mom, and sisters and told them the news. Like I said on the phone to them, I would always worry about Emsley. They were quick to support me and try to find ways to bring comfort and peace.

We sent out prayer requests to our family and friends, both through emails and social media. The support we got was overwhelming. I knew that many, many people were praying for our newest baby girl.

Caleb and I had many conversations in the days that followed and as hard as it was to be living apart and going through all of this, he and I both said it had made us draw very close to God again. We both had spent lots of time in prayer and in the word, and it felt good to feel God so near.

The whole next week we saw Emsley improve every day. She was put on oxygen, but we were very much at peace with that decision. After being put on oxygen, she didn't have any more apnea episodes, and she was really beginning to master the suck, swallow, breathe thing. Mostly, we watched her thrive, in a huge way. The nurses in the NICU often told me how much they laughed about how someone so small could eat so much. They told me that Emsley was eating more than babies twice her size in the NICU, and they had named her "Miss Piggy". :) Once she started putting weight on, she never looked back and she was gaining 2 ounces a day! After losing a lot of weight in the beginning, she quickly passed her birth weight and by the end of the week, she was almost 6 pounds!

The best news was that after that week, on Monday June 24th, Emsley was finally discharged at almost 2 weeks of age and we were finally able to take her home and begin life as a family of five! I had tears in my eyes when I walked in that Monday morning to feed her as I knew it would be the last day we would have to visit our baby girl in the hospital.

 I was more than ready to kiss this scene goodbye.

Our first photo as a family of five! 

Taken by one of the NICU nurses the night before Emsley was discharged.

Emsley did come home on oxygen, but that's a small price to pay to have her with us. She's on a very small amount, and is only expected to stay on it for 1-2 weeks. I know the weeks and even months ahead will be challenging as I try to balance caring for our preemie baby girl AND chasing after my older 2, active young kids. We'll always have to be more careful with Emsley since her immune system won't be as strong as Ellie and Ethan's since they were both full term. Other than that, she is completely healthy and for that we are thankful!

Our family has been more than amazing as my mom and my parents-in-law have really stepped in and helped care for Elliana and Ethan over the past few weeks and are continuing to care for them these first weeks home so I can give Emsley my undivided attention. My family and Caleb's parents also pitched in and bought us a "Snuza" baby monitor. It's a monitor that you clip onto your baby's diaper and an alarm goes off if your baby does not take a breath after 15 seconds. It's just a little added security for now.

These last 5 days have not been perfect, in fact the first hour we came home was completely chaotic and stressful, but it's been wonderful to have Emsley home and to live life together as a family of five. Elliana and Ethan adore her and they are so sweet and gentle with her. I'm excited to watch their sibling relationships grow.

With each passing day I feel more confident that Emsley will be fine, and so will we. When I look back at where our journey began several years ago, when I thought we might never have kids, I see where we are today and my heart is so full! Our family is finally complete and I can say that God is indeed faithful. I can even look back at where we've been just the last 2 weeks and I can see God's hand in that situation as well.

Emsley Jeannette truly is our little gift from God!

Here's a bible verse that Caleb and I have grown to love over the years. We can't wait to frame it and hang it on our walls:

"When they see among them their children, the work of my hands, they will keep my name holy; they will acknowledge the holiness of the Holy One of Jacob, and will stand in awe of the God of Israel."  Isaiah 29:23

Seeing The Light

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the warmer weather, maybe it's the fact that June is here in just 6 days, but suddenly that heavy cloud that was over my head and robbing me of the joy of this pregnancy is gone. I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and my excitement to meet this new little person is back and in full bloom. Yay! :)

Here I am, 34 weeks pregnant. :)

My gestational diabetes is still as complicated as ever, and even though I'm still having to watch my diet and take insulin injections, it's suddenly become so much easier now that I can see the end in sight and I know I will be holding my baby in no longer than 4.5 weeks.

A lot happened this past week to remind me of why I'm doing all of this.

The first and biggest reminder was the ultrasound we had on Friday. I had forgotten how cool it is to have a visual picture of that life growing inside you. Our baby is definitely in on the keeping everything a secret/ mystery/surprise plan. Baby was head down and face down so we couldn't even see his or her face. Then the technician said it was a good thing we didn't want to know the gender because baby was doing a great job of hiding that from all of us too. :)

I just left the ultrasound thinking about how I can't wait to meet who God has chosen to be the perfect and last addition to our family.

Another thing that lifted my spirits this week was my most recent Dr's visit. On Wednesday, my Dr. informed me that they will likely schedule the c-section at 38 or 38.5 weeks (sooner than she had originally told me) so I know now I have no more than 4.5 weeks left!

Then, with all of this new excitement in me and knowing we don't have a ton of time left, I had fun creating a baby pool for friends and family to guess the arrival date, gender, weight, etc. for this baby. Please, feel free to make a guess if you'd like.

Here's the link:
http://babybookie.com/pools/1345-baby-howard-3/bets/new

We've really enjoyed reading over all of the guesses! :)

And last but certainly NOT least, I'm excited to announce that we FINALLY have names picked out (well, sort of-the girl name is down to 2 options).

For a long time we were trying to find names that started with E since we have an Elliana and an Ethan. Then as time went on we realized we weren't really in love with any E names and we felt like we were trying to force it too much, so we decided to just go with names that we really liked with special meaning to us.

If we have a boy we will name him Noah. If we have a girl, her name will be either Audrey or Emsley.

I would love to go into the meaning of each name and what they mean to us, but I'll save that post for another day.

In other news, we had a wonderful Memorial Day. We went with Caleb's parents to the mountains for a picnic and had SO much fun with the kids! After eating lunch we walked by the river, let the kids splash and throw rocks and watched the many white water rafters that came by.

I think it may have been one of our last outings as a family of 4. Here's a few favorite pictures from today:

I hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day too!

Day By Day

I just realized I last posted almost a month ago! I had no intention of being absent from my blog for nearly a month.

The truth is, just a little over a month ago this pregnancy (and life in general) became really, really difficult. :( For those of you that are involved in my every day "real" life, this will be old news to you. I just wanted to document this time in my life on the blog so I can look back at it some day and know how I was really doing.

Around 26 weeks pregnant, I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes. I know I'm not the first or the last woman to be diagnosed with GD, in fact a friend of mine just recently had her baby and shared about her life with GD too.

I knew it would be difficult to follow a very specific and rigid diet (very low carb), but I was unaware of how my life would be completely flipped upside down and consumed with needles.

Right from the start I had to prick my finger to check my blood sugar 4 times a day. Yeah, no fun. It was then that we discovered that diet was not enough to keep my blood sugar down. Even my fasting blood sugar was high every day.

 

 

I knew and still know that I am doing absolutely EVERYTHING I can to keep my blood sugar under control. I have never been this disciplined with diet in my life, and at the request of my Dr, I increased working out (at this point that mostly consists of walking and swimming) from 3 times a week to 5+ times a week.

Still, all of this was not enough so I was put on insulin injections about 2 weeks ago. I'm not going to lie, I was terrified of giving myself an injection every night, but after a while you get used to it. The injections helped to get my fasting numbers down, but I still consistently run a little high after lunch and dinner.

 

I'm eating even less carbs than I'm allowed at most meals, and the proof is in the fact that over the past month I haven't gained any weight. In fact, I've lost some. This is the lowest weight I've been this far in a pregnancy.

I've had multiple Dr's appointments every week, and I get confusing and contradicting information about how best to treat my GD.

The latest news is that I'm looking at the possibility of having to do mealtime insulin instead of just the once a day at bedtime insulin. :( I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, I really don't want to have to give myself injections all day long on top of checking my blood sugar 4 times a day, but on the other hand I feel at times that I'm starving myself and my baby in order to keep my blood sugar under control. :(

 

This past month has been HARD. Maybe one of the hardest in my life. I have so much fear that this diabetes won't go away after the baby is born (really, it should), and on top of all that I am very big and uncomfortable and chasing a 2 year old wild boy and a 4 year old active girl.

I feel as if the joy of expecting another little one has been completely overshadowed by the difficulties of this pregnancy. At this point, I am just surviving every day and looking forward to holding this baby and letting all of this be in the past.

The good news is that so far my GD has NOT caused my baby to grow too big or put on extra weight, which is one of the biggest concerns.

Needless to say, this has been confirmation that after this baby is born our family is complete. We already thought we'd be done having children after 3, but this experience has been the nail in the coffin. It's official, my body should NOT do this again!

I'm currently 32 weeks pregnant. I'm just hoping I can hang on for another 5+ weeks. I'm constantly praying for strength to make it. I know with God's help, I will.

Thanks for letting me be honest and vulnerable. I know this is not my most cheery post, but sometimes life is just hard.

It's A....

healthy baby!

We had our 20 week ultrasound this past Tuesday and we're happy to report that all went well and we succeeded in not finding out the gender, which is actually turning out to be a little harder on me than I expected.

Since we weren't finding out the gender this time around, all we really wanted to hear is that the baby looks healthy and all looks as it should. Thankfully, that is exactly what we got to hear. Praise God!

I'll have a follow up appointment next week with my Dr. and she'll read the official report, but sounds like from what the technician told us it should be a very normal report.

Even though we didn't have the fun of finding out if we're adding a boy or girl to the family, it was still a fun ultrasound and we still got to know a little bit about this child.

The technician kept commenting on how active this baby is and she begged it to hold still multiple times so she could get the measurements and photos that she needed to. She laughed and commented that at the beginning of the ultrasound the baby's head was down and feet were up and half way through, the baby had completely flipped and was feet down and head up. I was hoping that at least one of my children would be calm and not crazy active, but I guess God had other plans. Looks like I'll be spending the next few years chasing little ones and keeping them out of danger. ;)

The other comment that I remember was when the tech said "this child either loves to talk or eat because he/she is continually opening and shutting it's mouth". She even got a short video of the baby's mouth constantly opening and shutting. That was fun!

Other than  being very squirmy, baby was cooperative enough to let us get some great photos!

I left the ultrasound really excited and anxious to meet this little one and I really don't want to wait another 18-20 weeks. :( Oh well, a little patience is good for all of us I guess. 

I've been asked many times if I want a boy or a girl, and if I had to answer honestly I was saying that I wanted a girl, until recently.

I've been spending a lot of quality time with my kiddos and I've really, REALLY been enjoying them. :)

If we had a girl, I'm sure I would get more of dressing up, baking, cooking, painting toenails, talking and twirling. I would get even more girl time (which I love) and Elliana would be over the moon to get to "mother" a baby girl. I love my Ellie, and I know what I'm doing when it comes to hanging out with little girls. 

But I've been getting to have a lot more fun with Ethan lately too. Sure, boys are a whole new level of crazy and high energy, but they can also be sweet, affectionate, and a different kind of fun. One evening last week Ethan placed his hands on each side of my face and planted a big ol' kiss on me, and then he ran off to play. It melted my heart. Recently Ethan and I have been having fun making funny faces at each other and making each other laugh. Ethan's vocabulary is taking off and he can communicate really well now. 

I still feel sometimes that I'm in unfamiliar territory when it comes to raising a boy, but I'm enjoying learning.

So, all that's to say I really don't think I care if we bring home a boy or a girl this summer. Either way, it sounds like this baby is going to be just as active and just as much "trouble" as these two: ;-)

Camera Happy

First of all, I have to thank my oh so talented sister Jenn for another new, beautiful blog design. This ol' blog of mine needed a face lift and Jenn was kind enough to design a new one for me. Check out Munchkin Land Designs if you're ever in need of a new look. I'm not just saying this because Jenn is my sister, she is one talented lady and she never disappoints! She does more than blog designs too. :) Thanks again Jenn!

I LOVE this new design! The silhouette of  the family looks almost just like us. :) I can't wait to see what our family of 5 looks like after this last baby is born!

Caleb and I enjoyed a long awaited date last Saturday night. We decided while we were out to go shopping for a camera as we were in great need of one and we had some Best Buy gift cards burning a hole in our pockets.

We don't know too much about cameras and we only need a simple point and shoot to capture our every day lives. We looked around and played with a few mid-range point and shoot cameras and settled on this Sony camera:

As we checked out Caleb reminded me that we have 10x more photos and videos of Elliana than we do of Ethan. He asked me to promise him to make better use of this new camera and take more photos and videos  of the kids during the day. So, I've been doing my best to keep that promise and I've been a little camera happy this week. If only we could be outside more to get better shots when the lighting is better.

These are my favorite smiles of my 2 precious babes this week. 

I've commented before that Ellie is becoming more girly by the day. She loves to dress up (wearing several different dresses throughout the day), dance around the house and practice curtsying. 

Here she is dancing and curtsying. 

On Sunday my parents stopped by my house with my Grandma Rose to return Ethan's shoes that we had left at their house the night before. While they were visiting Dad insisted that we take a 4 generations picture with Grandma Rose, Dad, me and Ethan. I'm really glad he suggested it-ever since we lost Grandma Nancy I find myself wishing we had taken more pictures of/with her. 

I'm thinking I look awfully pale next to Dad and Grandma-I need to do something about that. ;-)

Since we finally have a camera again, I figured it was time to capture my first baby bump pic. Here's a collage of me with all 3 pregnancies. No, I did not mean to wear the EXACT same outfit from when I was pregnant with Ethan. If this wasn't my last pregnancy, I would be buying a whole new maternity wardrobe.

Sunday night a sweet friend handed me an unexpected and generous gift. They gave me a card with a voucher inside for a free latte and 2 free kids passes to Cool Beans Playhouse. I'd never heard of or been to Cool Beans before so as soon as I got home I checked out their website. 

Today we made a little visit to Cool Beans and we all loved the place! It's a big playroom full of all kinds of toys, a tree house with a big slide, an area for hanging from ropes and jumping into a soft pit, etc. One of the greatest features for moms is that there's a little cafe right next to the play area where you can enjoy a drink or a healthy snack while watching your little ones have a blast! I don't think we'll be visiting too often since it's not the cheapest place to take the kids, but we all had a great time!

Here's some of the best shots of the day:

 Ellie's favorite spot. As always, wearing a huge grin on her face.

Ethan nearly never stops moving so it's almost impossible to get good pictures of him. 

This is my favorite one from today. 

How about a toffee nut latte? Why yes, don't mind if I do. :)

I've decided that my long, lifeless, dull brown hair has to go. 

I don't know when, but I'm hoping to cut and color it in the very near future.

 I'll definitely post a picture after I have a new look. :)