Emberly's newborn portraits

Here's a peek at Emberly's newborn portraits that I took! You can see more on my photo blog :)

The birth of Emberly

I've had many of you ask about Emberly's birth... it's taken me a week to recoup, but I think I'm officially ready to share my story.... if I haven't forgotten most of it!
It all started late Friday night, or I guess I should say early Saturday morning. Contractions came on and they came on strong! To be honest, I can't even remember what they felt like. I think my mind is trying to push the pain out of my memory. But I woke up to the contractions being 2.5 min apart around 1 am. So we waited it out a little bit until I couldn't stand the pain anymore. Then we headed to the hospital. They strapped a ton of wires and monitors to me and my belly and after an hour of monitoring my contractions, they sent me home dilated at a 3. I was so upset because of how much pain I was in. It was my back that hurt the most. So they gave me a shot and told me to come back once it wears off and the pain is back. Around 7 am I couldn't sleep anymore and started pacing the hallway. This is when my mom came up stairs and said, it's time to go! We were off once again to the hospital and were admitted right away. Once again I was strapped in to a bunch of machines and was told I was now dilated to a 6.5 and they broke my water. I had plans on delivering naturally, but my back was hurting me SO bad. This is when I found out that our little girl was posterior, which causes horrific back labor. The anesthesiologist came in to give me my epidural, except he said my back seemed to be a little different and he wasn't too happy with how it all turned out. We gave it a chance though. Random parts of my body went numb, but not the important areas. With an epidural you're legs should feel like jello. He asked if I could move my leg and in response I lifted up my legs and shook them around (not the answer he was hoping for).  After a while I started feeling horrible pains again, this is when the anesthesiologist decided he was going to give me the epidural AGAIN. The first time wasn't too bad, but I cried and cried while he put the second one it. After that my legs did start going numb and the pain subsided. This is where the fun began. It was time for active labor! By the time I was supposed to start pushing, the epidural wore off AGAIN. I could feel everything. Usually the nurses and Dr have to tell you when you have a contraction coming on so you can push. I was the one that said when one was coming and when I was ready to push. Although pushing was my least favorite part. I was exhausted and yelled random things like "I want grape juice" which you're not allowed to have. All you get is ice chips. So they gave me ice chips with grape flavoring, and I spit that out and told them to take it away. At one point I even yelled at the nurse to get out. My sister thought I was talking to her, but the nurse kept checking to see if the baby was crowning and I got so sick of her fingers being inside of me. I think I scared her a little bit.. she was hesitant to touch me again for a while.  To be quite frank, giving birth was the most painful experience I've ever dealt with. Obviously had my epidural worked, or if I didn't have back labor it would have been as lovely and beautiful as I hear it can be. After an hour of pushing, screaming and almost hyperventilating little Emberly entered into the world on March 26th at 1:36 pm weighing in at 7 lbs 15 oz and 20 in long. Her poor face was so swollen from being in posterior position, but she was beautiful. Perfect in every way.
After delivery they headed me to the recovery room where I was to stay for 2 nights. The first night wasn't bad at all. I had a wonderful nurse to help me out and show me the ropes. She would even take Emberly out of the room so I could sleep and bring her back when it was time to nurse. Ian was fabulous and stayed at the hospital with me. He changed all of her diapers since I was practically stuck in bed. No one told me how horrible your body is after labor. I wont go into details, but it's not pretty and it's very painful. Which I guess I should have known since I just delivered a child through my lovely lady parts. Anyway, moving on. The next night wasn't so fabulous. My nurse wasn't as amazing, Emberly decided she didn't want to breast feed anymore and the realization of everything that just happened hit me. I was so emotional and begged the nurse to take Emberly out of the room so we could sleep, but she insisted on me feeding her first, which was the issue to begin with. This is when we tried formula. BIG mistake. It just gave her an upset tummy and made my night even worse. By the time morning came we found out that she had jaundice and needed to be put under bili rubin lights. That was my braking point. I started crying hysterically, just in time for my Dr to come in and check up on us. He talked us through everything then child services came in. They had to talk with me about baby blues and postpartum depression. He was an awesome man and made me feel so much better. Finally after everyone in the world came in to check on us we were able to go home. It's been SO wonderful being home! Even if Emberly has needed to be on a bili pad for the past 5 days. Her levels have finally gone down so now we can start to feel somewhat normal not having to worry about her laying on this pad day and night. Now that my milk has finally come in, Emberly is nursing fabulously. The first few nights she's had screaming fits between 10 pm to 2 am, but last night she did wonderfully!
I'm sure at one point I had a lot more to say about the whole delivery process, but I think my mind has started to push it all out of my memory. Having a daughter is amazing.. I love her with all my heart! Plus she is absolutely beautiful :) I've had a friend ask me if I'd do it again... and my reply to that is YES. I would go through all the pain today so I could keep my little girl. I swore to myself that Emberly might just be an only child after everything I went through, but once you hold your very own child in your arms it's the most amazing feeling! I wouldn't change anything!
So that's that. That's the day our little girl was born. I hope I didn't leave out too many details. But for my friends reading this who are pregnant, I hope it doesn't terrify you. If you're getting an epidural, I pray that it actually works. If you do decide to go natural, I know how it feels and have empathy for you! hah

I took Emberly's newborn portraits and plan on posting those on here within the next couple of days. If you're friends with me on Facebook, then I'm sure you've already seen them. Emberly changes more and more each day and is getting more and more beautiful!! I love our little girl xoxo

39 weeks!

So tomorrow I'll be 39 weeks pregnant! It's crazy to think that sometime within the next couple of weeks we'll be holding our baby girl in our arms. Honestly, I'm terrified out of my mind. Our lives will change drastically and will never be the same again. . . although I welcome the change. Terrified, yet excited :)
Monday I took my maternity portraits. For some of the photos I just used my tripod and timer and then Ian helped out with the rest after I set up the camera and lighting. I think they turned out beautiful. Obviously if you're a friend of mine on facebook you've already seen these and then some, but here they are...

I'll keep you posting if anything exciting happens within this next week!

In Loving Memory Of Maggie May

Last night we headed to my sisters for a dessert night. We typically bring our puppy Maggie with us. She's usually VERY good about going out in their yard, playing around a little bit and coming right back to the door. They don't have a fenced in yard, so I've honestly been surprised that she actually comes back. I let her out a couple times, then she stood by the door once again so I let her out. 20 or so minutes later I noticed she wasn't back there anymore, but thought she'd eventually come back. The times she has run off for a few minutes, she's always come back to their front door. After an hour or so I started to worry, so Ian and I walked around the neighborhood. Eventually we got in the car and started to drive around. At this point it was dark out and raining. I knew with how old and tiny she was that she most likely wouldn't make it through the night in this cold weather. By the time everyone decided to head home, some of my family also drove around for a little while with no luck. So Ian and I headed home as well with plans of calling Animal Control in the morning and driving around some more. When we got home Ian said a little prayer asking for her safe arrival back at my sisters so we could hold her in our arms again. To my surprise Ian started crying... then we both started bawling. A few minutes later I got a call and this man asked if I had a dog named Maggie. I instantly got excited and asked if he had her! He then got quite and in a sad voice told me he found her in the middle of the road. He stopped, picked her up and put her in some shrubs on the side of the road. My heart broke. He gave me the address and we headed over to pick her up. There she was, my poor baby. I felt so horrible. Lately I had been thinking about how I didn't know if I could handle taking care of a cat, dog and a baby. Even though I felt this way, I wasn't expecting to lose either of my animals. So we wrapped Maggie up in a sheet and put her in a bag... she's laying on her favorite blanket in our backyard until Ian gets home from school and we can take her to the animal shelter. I've been so emotional about this and woke up with a pounding head ache after a horrible nights sleep. I look like a wreck. I'm still surprised at how emotional Ian is. His eyes were bloodshot this morning and was most likely crying in the bathroom while getting ready for school.
I love you Maggie May! You were the best birthday gift I've ever received! I made this little scrap book page back when I first got her. She sure was a cute puppy...

In loving memory of my baby Maggie xoxo You will be missed!!!
March 1996 - March 2011

35 weeks!

It's hard to believe I only have 5 weeks left in my pregnancy! Here are some photos to commemorate the moment :)

At this point in time it feels like the baby's foot is living in my right rib! Other than that I'm feeling pretty well, besides the acid reflux that I guess I'm getting used to and the multiple trips to the potty at night. I still get comments that I'm SOOO tiny. Guess that's a good thing ;) We'll see how things progress within the next 5 weeks!

Valentines Day

It's been a while since I've updated my blog, so now I'm back posting as if I've never missed a day! ;) Just so you know, it's actually March 7th!
Valentines Day actually turned out to be quite nuts this year. Ian was supposed to go into work from 2 - 11, so I ordered him an Edible Arrangement to be sent to his work! So yummy :)
As Ian leaves for work, I open Skype and wait for him to log in and tell me all about this beautiful fruit bouquet that he had on his desk. An hour later he never signs on. Then all of a sudden I hear the door open and he surprises me saying he asked for the day off back in November! I instantly freak out about HIS Valentine gift that he wont get. Then a few minutes later there's a knock on the door, it was a flower company delivering my flowers from him. He always orders me flowers on Valentines Day and I get so excited to open the box and read his sweet note. Ian misjudged the timing, thinking the flowers would be delivered before he came back home. Then we waited around until we got confirmation from Edible Arrangements saying his fruit bouquet had been delivered. I had tried calling them ALL day to cancel the delivery, but I could never get through. By the time it was delivered THEY called me to tell me that Ian wasn't at work so they just told his work to keep the arrangement because it wont last overnight without being in a fridge or freezer. So we freaked out! We couldn't get a hold of the front desk, so we raced to his work in hopes of the security guards not eating his Vday gift. We got to his work and they were just about to put it in a fridge. So glad we got there in time! Then Ian surprised me with dinner at our favorite special occasion restaurant.. Braza Grill. I ordered myself a strawberry limeade... oh so yummy!

For some reason we didn't take any pictures together... I've been horrible about that lately. But at Braza Grill I also got a beautiful long stem rose. Here are our gifts to each other... Ian got me a cute mini rose bush in hopes of it staying alive until spring so we could plant it outside. As of right now........ it may not last much longer :(

So needless to say, we were a little off for Valentines Day this year, but I'm glad it all worked out :) Love you hottie pants!

Home updates and decorating tips!

Sorry for bombarding my blog with posts the past couple of days. We've had so many projects and they all seemed to be finished around the same time! One thing that's been driving me nuts since we moved in was our GIANT living room wall. I never knew what to do with it. At one point it looked like this...

A tiny picture on a hugggge wall! Very sad and pathetic.Well now it looks like this!!..

I was freaking out about the lack of stuff on the wall and wanted it decorated before my baby shower. My sister Richelle is amazing with home decor, so she gave me a few pointers on where I should hang things. Here's a close up of some of the photos..

(Our adorable Trash The Dress photos! I'm so glad I finally have a place to hang them. And below, why yes, of course I took that picture of the Salt Lake Temple!)

Now for the tips! Ian and I are pretty horrible at hanging things on the wall. We tend to put a billion holes in the wall before we decide everything is straight and looks nice. So, I saw another photographer post on her blog about tracing what you want to hang up on news paper. Lucky for me I have huge backdrop paper and used some scraps to trace everything.

(Notice the different color of the shelf. Ian was so sweet to stain it a different color. I thought I'd never have a need for that ugly shelf!) After I traced everything, I cut out the shapes and hung them up where I thought they'd look good.  

Then we hammed in the nails right over the paper and pulled the paper out once we hung everything up. The only thing that needed to be nailed in a couple times was the temple picture since it hangs on a wire. Other than that, this paper trick was a life saver!

Ta da! LOVE IT!

Tie-Dye Cupcakes

Saturday was my baby shower! I got so many cute gifts and baby cloths. Sadly, we didn't take a SINGLE picture. For some reason it just didn't cross anyone's mind. Pretty bummed about that.
But, for my shower I decided I'd pitch in and do some of the work. One thing I decided I was going to do was make some Tie-Dye Cupcakes! This is what you need to make them..

1 White Cake Mix
Food Coloring
Cupcake Liners
Your favorite frosting

You make the cake batter as directed on on the box. Next, divide the batter into as many bowls as you'd like. I did three. Next, use your food coloring to dye each bowl of batter.

 Scoop a spoonful of each colored batter and put it in the cupcake liner. Don't stir the batters together, otherwise you wont achieve the tie-dye effect.

Bake cupcakes as directed on box. Once they have cooled, frost them with your favorite frosting. I did a Vanilla butter cream frosting and dyed it pink!

I didn't pick out the best cupcake to cut, there were some that looked super awesome inside. Too bad you can't tell until you bite into it!

But super cute eh?! I tired to make them baby colors.. pink yellow and green. I've seen some crazy colored ones! Go nuts! I have heard that purple ends up looking pretty ugly.. so I might keep that from you choice of colors.

Vanilla Butter Cream Frosting
about 24 servings
1/2 c butter
4 1/2 c powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
6 tablespoons 2 % milk

At first I thought the frosting was SUPER thick, so I added more milk. Then when I attempted to do the swirl with the frosting (I had a frosting bag with a tip, you can also use a zip lock bag and cut the tip off) the frosting looked like it melted all over the cup cake. so I had to scrape it off and start over!

The other thing I made for my shower was my invite! I got teased a little for this, but when invites are something you do for a living, you just can't help but design your own!

 

Thanks to all of you who attended my shower and made it so fabulous!! xoxo

Baby room projects!

For the past few weeks Ian and I have been working on some baby projects for her room. After putting the crib and other furniture together I wanted some cute wall art to go with her baby bedding. I browsed the internet for some cute vinyl trees. This is what we found and both agreed on. (I loved the tree.. Ian loved the kitties! hah). For the most part it was pretty easy to put on. They're just like stickers. We unpeeled and then pressed them on the wall. I thought the flowers would be the easiest... until I realized EACH flower came in 5 separate pieces! I got it all done in a few hours though :)

My other project was some wall hanging pieces. I found a cute little set of owls and trees online, but it came in 5x7 prints. I decided I wanted some 10x10 canvas prints instead. So what did I do? I opened up photoshop and designed it myself! Here's the actual photoshop design...

Then I put a 2 inch border around each art piece and got it printed on canvas...

 We went to some art stores and bought out all of their 10 inch stretcher bars. This took about 2 weeks and 4 different stores to get 24 stretcher bars! Ian then put the pieces together and stapled the canvas to the stretcher bars. I'm so grateful for all of his work the past couple weeks. He's been so great to help me out with all of my projects despite how busy and tired he is after school and work xoxo

 Here's the final product on the wall! So cute!!

30 weeks!

Okay, so 30 weeks and 5 days to be exact. :)
Here's some pictures I took to commemorate this moment. Plus I chopped my hair up a little bit and got rid of the highlights. It takes a lot of money to upkeep bleached hair, and with a baby coming along I figured it'd be best to ditch the blonde and try to go back to my natural color. So alas, here I am ...

My mommy dear is flying into town next week for my baby shower :) I'm super excited! I just hope people show up. haha 

Things are going really well at this point in the pregnancy. I've been feeling these really annoying, repetitive "kicks" the past few weeks. I finally realized the other day that they're hiccups! She gets these crazy hiccups at least 3 times a day. Poor baby, she probably hates them as much as I hate feeling them! haha

Acid reflux also is a killer right now. I thought it was bad before, but man, it's HORRIBLE now. I probably extend the amount of tums I should have in a day, but I can't help it. It's nasty! I almost thought I was going to die in my water aerobics class yesterday. I couldn't do any movement without acid coming up. Gag! I'm excited to be done with that!! 

Anywho, 9 weeks and 2 days to go... IF she comes on her due date :)

3D Ultra Sound

I went in today, at 28 weeks and 1 day, hoping to get a 3D ultra sound done while my parents were in town for Christmas. We sort of made a big to do about it and scheduled everything around us. The family spent New Years Eve at our house so my parents would stay the night and be with us the next morning to go to the ultra sound. We even invited Ian's mom. I was soooo excited to see these 3D pictures. Then low and behold, my placenta was in the way! I guess it was laying right over the baby's face so he couldn't get any good photos. The tech tried his best to at least give us one photo... so here's our baby.. chubby cheeks and all!

This is a photo that shows her profile. The arrow is near her mouth. He said she has super chubby cheeks and I guess it's a little obvious in this photo :) Her head measures to be 29 weeks and her femur measures to be 30 weeks! I just laughed when the tech said "wow, that's a big femur!"
So, we've come to the conclusion that I'll either have her early, or she'll be one massive chunk! Or who knows, maybe she'll be as tiny as can be and they were wrong on all the measurements.
They told me to come back and try again when I'm around 32 weeks... or later. Here's to waiting a few more weeks!

Meatballs with Rice

This morning I woke up craving my mom's meatballs on rice. Over the years I had totally forgotten about this delicious dish of hers. So I went online and started looking up recipes. There are SO many ways to make meatballs and gravy it's ridiculous! That's when I contacted my mom via text message. All she told me was "I use Swedish meatball seasoning" and that was it. I responded back with... "but I don't even know how to make gravy!!" and I didn't hear back from her. Come to find out this little Swedish packet has it all! It comes with seasoning for the meatballs and a mix for the gravy.. and it even told me how to make it. I feel like I cheated since I didn't make it from scratch, but now that I think about it, if I were my mom and had 7 kids there's no way  I'd make things from scratch either! haha

Here's the meatballs hanging out in the gravy. I must admit, it's a  heck of a lot harder to make meatballs than I thought. They kept falling apart!! Stupid meatballs. 

It didn't taste as good as I remembered too. Or it could be the fact that working with raw meat makes me want to vomit while pregnant. hah

But anyway, if you were ever wondering how to make meatballs with gravy and rice.. that's how it's done!

26 weeks and Happy Holidays!

Yesterday Ian and I took a few pictures to send out for our Xmas card. Here's how they turned out!

 Ian also took a couple shots of me to show how I look. So here I am...26 weeks. Nearing the end of my 6th month and 2nd trimester :) 95 more days to go!

I like this studio one. This dress makes my belly look smaller than it really is... or so I think.

Right now the pregnancy is going really well... as far as I know. Every once in a while I'll get an uncomfortable pressure or the baby will kick me really hard and startle me. Water aerobics is great, except getting out of the pool. Gravity can be a very very cruel thing. Today while I was leaving water aerobics (in my two piece swimsuit btw) a lady told me how I have the cutest little figure. I completely shocked her when I told her I am pregnant! For already gaining 30 lbs some people don't even notice I'm pregnant. Plus my instructor asked me if I've even gained any weight at all. She was totally thrown off when I said I've already gained 30 lbs. Here I thought I looked like a boat and others think I'm tiny. Guess I have nothing to freak out about anymore.. as long as I maintain the weight that I'm at right now! ha!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a fabulous Christmas!! Best wishes to you all :)

Our Thanksgiving

Mine and Ian's Thanksgiving was spent at home, alone. His parents went off on a cruise and my parents decided to not come up this year. Most of my family drove down to CA to surprise them, but since Ian and I JUST drove down there Ian couldn't get time off work to do it again.
It started off with Ian making a mini Thanksgiving lunch which consisted of Turkey, candied yams, crescents and sparkling cider. I was horrible and didn't take pictures.
THEN Ian surprised me (okay so I knew a couple weeks in advance) to a 2 night stay at the Zermatt Resort in Midway! Our last little getaway before the bebe comes :)
This is what we saw when we walked into the room..

We started off our evening to a movie.. Harry Potter. I didn't read the books, so I thought it was okay. Ian  on the other hand loved it! On our way to the resort on the freeway a deer decided to run right in front of our car!! I screamed DEER! Then closed my eyes and braced myself. According to Ian, he turned the wheel one way, then realizing he was about to drive off the road he turned the wheel another way, then somehow we spun around and the car died in the middle of one of the lanes. Ian thought we were going to roll the car. I was just waiting for a loud crash. Luckily we were okay and that stupid deer made it across the road safely! Poor Ian was totally shaken up.
When we finally made it back to the resort we had a pretty little tray waiting for us. So we hopped into our robes (mostly because we forgot to pack pjs to lounge in) and devoured our strawberries and sparkling cider.

We had a HORRIBLE nights sleep that first evening. Ian kept seeing us swerving around the freeway and I couldn't sleep due to LOUD banging and clinking noises around us. It seriously sounded as if we were sleeping next to a kitchen. 

The next morning Ian had a couples massage planned for us. This would be our 2nd couples massage together. We LOVE massages :) it felt so amazing and they even had a little maternity pillow for me to lay on so I wouldn't squish the baby!! After our massage we headed out to the Tanger Outlets to do some Black Friday shopping.. even though we obviously missed the morning rush. We ended up getting some more cute cloths for the baby.. and a swimsuit for me since we forgot to pack those as well! ha

When we got back from shopping we got into our suits (Ian had to buy one at the resort since there weren't any on the clearance racks of ANY of the stores) and put our robs on to head out to the pool! But we got stopped by the manager who asked if he could switch us to another room due to a leak on the floor above us!! Totally nuts. So we moved our things and headed to the pool.

They had an awesome indoor/outdoor pool and hot tub. I actually preferred going in the hot tub outside. There's just something about being surrounded by snow and enjoying a nice hot soak!

After some hot tubbing (which only lasted about 20-30 minutes, can't stand the head for too long, plus I didn't want to roast the baby! hah) we headed to the wellness center where they have an awesome Eucalyptus steam room.. which is medicated. Totally amazing! There were also these crazy 10 headed showers! I want one. There was one HUGE shower head straight above, then rows of 3 shower heads on three sides of your body. I absolutely LOVED it!
When we got back to our room we had another surprise for us with a little note. The note said something along the lines of.. sorry for the inconvenience of moving you lets us know if there's anything else we can do for you. They also gave us free dinner that evening to a Sea Food buffet that was $40 a person. Sea food made me want to puke at the moment, so we down graded to their more basic restaurant! ha! Which also wasn't appetizing to me either. Oh well.. here's our cute tray that they brought us!

This fruit dessert was pretty yummy. The chocolate one was disgusting! So we only had two bites and left it. ha!

We slept SO much better that night. No loud, crazy noises and no more bad dreams for Ian! Besides the close call to DEATH due to a stupid deer, the getaway was really nice! I love my hubby so much. He can be so thoughtful and creative when he wants to be ;)

Thanks for the awesome Thanksgiving babe! xoxo