Introducing...

Lexus Violet Dow

born June 6, 2013

@ 8:46 pm

Weighing 7lbs 15 oz

20.5 inches long

Her birth story was kind of surprising to me.  (Feel free to skip to the pictures if you don't want to hear details.) All along since I had Mercedes I knew that for the next child I did not want to know the gender of the baby and that I really wanted to go into labor on my own.  Possibly no epidural, but I wasn't opposed. Let me just preface that with the fact that I did not have a bad experience with Mercedes.  My labor with her was induced and I had and epidural and it was a lovely experience.  I just wanted to see if I could do things a little differently.  Anyway back to Lexie's story.  I had Gestational Diabetes with her and was diagnosed in my first trimester.  My doctor let me know that as long as I kept my blood sugar levels under control with diet and exercise he would not induce me early.  If I had to go on meds he wouldn't let me go past 39 weeks.  At 35 weeks I had some higher levels and after some persuasion from me he said I had 1 week to show him that I could keep the levels under control.  Well, I was pretty motivated because I wanted to go into labor on my own, so I did.  At 38 weeks I was not dilated or effaced at all.  Since my GD was pretty under control, my doctor would let me go on my own as long as it wasn't too much past 40 weeks.  So we set an induction date for June 10th. This was disappointing to me, but I tried to tell myself that it would happen when it did whether I went into labor on my own or had to be induced.  On Wednesday, June 5th, I had two really long/strong Braxton Hicks and thought that maybe something might be happening.  Lo and behold nothing really after that.  However, at about 4:00 am I started having some mild contractions and started to time them.  As soon as I started having them however, I knew I was going to have the baby that day.  As I laid there for the next 20 minutes all I could think about were the things I wanted to get done before the baby got here and knew I would not be able to go back to sleep at that point.  So I got out of bed and started them.  I got some laundry from my room and tried to keep everything quiet for everyone else.  The last thing I needed was two kids up at 4:30 am.  I did wake up Todd though, when he heard me say that this was the day he decided he wouldn't be able to sleep either.  He wanted to get some things accomplished first as well.  Well during all of my cleaning and laundry, etc. I had contractions about 10-15 mins apart until about 10 am, then they slowed down to about every 30 mins.  By this time the house was clean and I was tired so I took a 45 min nap.  The contractions didn't pick up again and I wasn't ready to do any walking or anything to help them along, so we just hung out for a few hours.  I took another nap around 1:00.  Then about 3:00 they got more frequent and I decided it was time to get things going.  So at 3:45 I walked to my Mom's house.  It is about 1 mile away.  I didn't walk the whole way though, because my contractions were now coming every 3-5 mins apart with increased strength.  I decided to time my contractions until 5:00 pm to see if they lessened when I sat down.  They did not and I decided it was time to get to the hospital.  It is about 20 minutes from our house to the hospital.  We got there around 5:45 after getting my suitcase and to get Todd a few things.  We got checked in and up to the delivery room about 6:00.  This is a small hospital with only two birthing rooms.  Lexus was the only baby in the hospital the whole time we were there.  At this time my contractions were still manageable and I wasn't sure about the epidural.  At this point, 6:00ish, the nurse checked me and I was at a 6-7 (I was fully expecting a 2 or something so I was surprised.)  The nurse called my doctor to let him know what was going on and found out he was in Omaha (about 45 minutes away) but should have time to get to the hospital.  At about 7:15 I got a new nurse, the other one was deathly slow so that was nice.  About this time I decided that an epidural was going to happen.  I was in some good pain and it seemed like my contractions were on top of one another with no breaks.  Then the nurse told us that she had some bad news and the doctor was still in Omaha getting his kids from the babysitter.  We were a little distraught at this because I was now between 8 and 9 cm dilated and we knew he wasn't going to make it.  The nurse called the on-call doctor and realized her mistake.  My doctor was in town when she called him, he was just taking his kids to a new babysitter because his wife was having her once a month Bunco night out.  I was very relieved.  I really like my doctor and did not want to have to deal with someone I did not know.  My doctor got there about 8:00 right as there were putting in my epidural and I know that I looked like I was in pain.  After a few minutes I felt sweet relief.  Not too long after that the doctor broke my water to help the baby descend all the way into the birth canal.  Then I really started to feel a lot of pressure.  I could still feel each contraction and kept telling everyone that the baby was coming.  They got my legs up in the stirrups and the doctor decided I could try pushing.  On the next contraction I did and she slid right out.  The doctor was pretty surprised and asked me if I had even pushed at all.  I told Todd after that Heavenly Father knew that if he wanted me to have any more kids after Lincoln he had to make the births relatively easy.

 During one of my periods between contractions.

 Skin to skin right after birth.  I forget how much birth stinks, but she was beautiful and I loved it.

 She looks SO much like Mercedes I just laughed about it.

 Lexus would not cry for a little while after she was born so they had to do a little work to get her to clear her lungs out.

 My doctor.

 She even weighed the exact same as Mercedes.

 When I told Lincoln on the phone that it was not a boy it was a girl, he said "Aaawwww, man". But I will tell you he was not disappointed for long.  This kid LOVES his baby sister.  He always wants to hug and kiss her.

 This was the only time Mercedes would hold Lexus in the hospital.

 Kind of difficult to get our first picture as a family of 5.  Most of the pics had at least one person (Linc or Cedes) doing something funny.

 Going home outfit

We are in love with this little girl!

A Catch All

As I was unloading pictures off of the cameras I realized there were quite a few things I have never gotten on this blog.  And since I do not want to do 20 individual posts, I put one or two pictures on here of each thing and will comment briefly about them.  Sorry for the random. (Pregnancy has definitely made me lazy right now.)

We love to listen to Justin Bieber or the Chipmunks in our house and have lots of requests for them every day.  I will put them on every few days and we like to have dance parties sometimes.  My kids can even find the Justin Bieber songs on my iPad.

Lincoln was on the wrestling team this year.  We thought it would be a good outlet for his energy.  You could definitely tell that most of the other kids had grown up wrestling with their fathers who had done this growing up as well.  Lincoln was usually the underdog, but he always tried his hardest and we were so proud of him.  Also at this age apparently wrestling is worthy of a good cry while you are in the match.  This kid that Lincoln is wrestling cried the entire 10 minutes prior to the match and during the match even though he beat Lincoln soundly.  I told Todd that if Lincoln had acted like that he would be showing us that he obviously wasn't ready to do the sport.  With all the crying kids, I told Lincoln that I was proud of him for never crying.

We got a bit more snow this year than last, but not quite as much as I remember getting as a kid.  Anyway because of the lack of snow last year, we made sure we played in it each time we got some this year.  Lincoln was pretty distraught that he had to wear purple gloves, but he had left all of his snow playing gloves at other places.  So it was either that or no snow.  I told him no one would know, so don't tell him I let out the secret.

In March the kids and I drove to Utah with my Dad to spend some time with the family.  We headed out to Eagle Mountain on Monday and had dinner and play time with Justin and Eric's family.  These three girls are all about the same age and had so much fun together once Mercedes got over her shyness.  She takes a long time to get used to new situations and it took her awhile to realize that Mom was not leaving before she went to play.

Alyvia is also about the same age as Mercedes and these two little sweeties along with Bella made a lot of mischief during our quick stay in Megan's house.  Megan and Jim had just gotten their basement almost finished and it looks wonderful.  We had so much fun staying there and I hope we weren't too much of a bother:)

The bad thing about living in Utah and then coming back for a visit is that there is just never enough time to visit everyone as much as we would like.  One night we headed to Cafe Rio to join up with our good friends the Wyatt's, the Baggs', and the Gosselin's.  We have so many great memories of our time here in Utah with them and wish we all lived close again.  This is a picture of all our kids.

On Easter this year we headed to the town egg hunt and got a few things.  They didn't do it as well this year as they usually do so it was a bit disappointing.  Good thing we had an Easter egg hunt at Mimi and Papa's on Sunday.

As the Primary President I was in charge of a Ward activity doing the Pinewood Derby.  Our kids made their own cars and we had a lot of fun racing them.  

I think this was sometime at the end of April.  The good thing is that I really didn't grow a ton in the last 8 weeks or so.  I was measuring about three weeks ahead, but have gone down to about a week behind.  So if I don't get another picture on here before baby, I am a bit bigger than that now and I have definitely dropped.

Todd and I coached Lincoln's soccer team this year.  It was an adventure with very strange weather.  We had one game that was 35 degrees and one practice that was 102.  All in the same month.  He had fun though and I guess that is what matters.

Fun on the trampoline.

Lincoln and Todd went to Father and Son's camp out two weekends ago and had a lot of fun.  Todd says the weather was perfect and Lincoln had a great time.  So glad. 

Speaking of the trampoline, the kids got it for Christmas and we put it up about the end of April.  One night we had a terrible wind storm.  I woke up to go to the bathroom (not unusual) and noticed how bad the wind was.  I thought maybe we would have a tornado.  I went to look out our front door and noticed something different.  Todd was awake and I said, "Uh, our trampoline is gone."  Todd didn't believe me at first (I didn't have my glasses on) but he looked and noticed it about half a block away. 

In the morning we realized that it hadn't gone any further because it was impaled on a stop sign.  Well the damage was too great and it was not savable.  So we had to trash it.  Lincoln cried when he found out.  Mercedes asks about it still once or twice a day and wants us to buy a new one.  We keep telling her we can't right now.  Not in the cards.  Hopefully soon though.

Lincoln had a Spring Music Concert at his school and they sang  a lot of Disney songs.  I asked him to take some pictures beforehand and got some pretty funny ones.  Love that kid.

Todd has been wanting to shave Lincoln's hair, but I have not really been wanting that.  So I said he could do it after school was out for the summer and only if he could have a Mohawk first.  Todd would only let him have the Mohawk for one week so I enjoyed it while I could.  Here is the before and after.

Mercedes turned three last month and asked for a Doc McStuffins birthday.  She loves the show and pretending she is a doctor.  She was so cute on her birthday and kept telling us she is thwee.  She got some good presents and loves the bike she got.

The baby and I are Mercedes' favorite patients.  She loves to check the baby.  Usually she has to push up my shirt, but I told here we couldn't for the picture.

My sweet kids.

Lincoln turned 5 in May and wanted a Sonic birthday.  He also got some fun presents along with a new bike.  We have spent a lot of time on our new bikes, despite all of the thunderstorms we have had in the last few weeks.

All in all I have some pretty great kids and I can't believe how fast they are growing.  We have been having some good times here, and everyone is getting pretty excited for our new baby.