40 Week Belly Shots

And here are the LONG awaited 40 week belly shots! (he he)

Visit with Grandmom and Nana

Hello everyone! Well, Grandmom Susan and Nana came for a visit yesterday so that Nana could meet little Olivia. We had a nice time and even took her to Cracker Barrel for her first restaurant experience. She slept right on through the whole thing. Here are some cute pictures of their visit:

We also got some cute little family pictures of us and some other cute pics for your viewing pleasure:

Here's Daddy readying to Olivia for the first time!

Here's little Olivia in her favorite bib from Uncle Chad! :)

Today we have another doctor's appointment just to make sure she is still gaining weight well AND we have her first "real" photo session. (that's with a real photographer, not just mommy and daddy being picture crazy!). So, hopefully that will go well and she'll be in a good mood. I mean, there's no way she won't be cute, we just want her to be happy, too! :)

First Doctor's Appt.

Well, Olivia had her first doctor's appointment this afternoon and she is doing great! She had dropped from 7 lbs 8 oz to 7 lbs even when we left the hospital (2 days ago) and today, she is back up to 7 lbs 4 oz. WOW! The doctor said that babies usually gain about 1/2 oz a day and she is gaining 2 ounces a day!


We "were" worried about her weight with the whole breastfeeding thing - since you can't tell how much food they are getting. But after today, not so worried anymore. I thought that she seemed pretty demanding when it came to eating, but now I have confirmation. After describing her eating habits, the doc said that she is a very "voracious" eater and pretty impatient! So, now I've been calling her my little miss piggy! But she's adorable and I wouldn't trade her for anything!


Not much else going on around here for the moment. Susan and Nana are coming for a visit tomorrow so that Nana can meet her. So, other than that, here are the obligatory baby pics for your viewing pleasure!

Here's Olivia this morning in her jammies! Isn't she cute??

Here's Olivia's outfit for the day. Got to look cute for the doctor's appointment!

4 Days Old

Hello again! Ok, so we survived our first couple nights home without incident. Olivia is doing really well and sleeps very well at night. No complaints so far. In fact, she really doesn't even cry that much - just occasionally gets a bit fussy when she is hungry!

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One of my wonderful neighbors, Amy, had volunteered to organize some of our friends and neighbors to bring us dinner every other night for the first couple weeks to help us out. What a wonderful gesture, we feel very fortunate to have her and all the wonderful friends that have already volunteered to help us out.

Randy and Sara volunteered to bring us dinner Monday night for our first night home. They also brought over Gracie to meet Olivia, her best friend, for the first time. (they couldn't meet in the hospital because Gracie is under 1 and they have strict rules about that). Anyway, here are some cute pics of the two of them on their first meeting:

Who are you???

We have also become quite addicted to taking pictures of our little one. We just think she is the most beautiful baby girl on the planet and can't help ourselves. So, here are some of our most recent favorites for your enjoyment.

Here's her first night home. She looks so little in her pack-n-play. She did so well!

Good morning, sunshine!

On a complete (but hilarious) side note, Grant has been changing her diaper while I am doing this blog entry and just as he got her all cleaned up with a new diaper on - she let out a rather loud "man-ish" toot with a lovely surprise. Yup, guess he'll be changing that diaper again! She looked so proud of herself, too! Grant said that it wasn't necessary for her to do that, but it was pretty hilarious! :)


Olivia also has her first doctor's appt. this afternoon. She had already lost 1/2 lb (down to 7 lbs even) when we checked out of the hospital - but otherwise, her pediatrician told us that she was perfect and had normal weight loss. We'll get to see how she's doing now that she's left the hospital. I'll keep you posted on that one.

Home at last!

Hello again! Well, we got to come home today. It was nice being waited on in the hospital and having a chance to get lots of advice from all of the wonderful nurses and docs at Rex hospital, but we were ready to come home and start enjoying our new family!

Thanks to everyone that came to visit us while we were there. We had lots of our closest friends and family come and see us. We were even surprised to see that my brother, Sean, got to come from the Charlotte area for a little while with Kayla and Shane (his first son from California). Sean even came in quite handy as Olivia was having one of her few moments when she was quite fussy - Sean calmed her right down.

Oh, and by the way, I have a lovely case of laryngitis, that developed while I was in the hospital. So I can hardly even talk! All I want to do is brag about our little angel and tell everyone how wonderful she is, and I can't! She slept all the way through the night - both nights! I know it may not last, but so far, she has been an excellent baby.

Anyway, my parents helped us to get home and settled. They brought me some beautiful daisies and when we got home, we saw that Alan and Susan had decorated our door and mailbox with bows and a balloon to announce our sweet new arrival.

Here are some pictures of us from our first little moments with our new little one at home. (Right now Grant is taking a little nap on the couch with Olivia on his chest - some sweet daddy-daughter time).

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Isn't she an angel!

Here she is passed out with a clean diaper and a full belly!

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Daddy and Olivia are getting some good bonding time together, too!

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We are so in love with this little girl! I never could have imagined how wonderful this could be - she is amazing and we are enamored by her. She is so adorable and has been so good for us that we are just tickled to death. Grant will be home all week and maybe some next week - so we will be spending some quality time as our new family!

Happy Father's Day!

Here are a couple more pictures of Olivia.

Happy Father's Day - Olivia got here just in time!

Welcome Olivia!

Olivia has arrived and she is BEAUTIFUL! She arrived yesterday and here's the stats:

Date: June 14, 2008

Time: 12:21 pm

Weight: 7 lbs 8 oz

Length: 19"

Ok, so here is the run-down of the big day. Grant and I were playing Yahtzee late Friday night and I was feeling a little crampy. I went to the bathroom around 12:25 and noticed that I was "leaking" . . . oh-my-god "I think my water broke!" It wasn't one of the "whoosh" type breaks, but it definitely broke and was a trickle - pretty constant. Then, right away I started having pretty bad contractions. So we called the doctor's office and they paged the doc on-call and when she called us back - she said to head to the hospital.

So we finished packing pretty quickly and headed to the hospital. In the car we timed the contractions and they were only about 3 1/2 minutes - and they were strong! Wow, this is moving fast!

We got to the hospital around 1:30. We got into our room and checked in pretty quick. They first checked me at around 1:45 and I was 3 cm. I had my IV by 2:15 and my *1st* epidural by 2:30. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me. It only numbed my left leg, not my abdomen or my right side AT ALL. It felt like my right hip was going to explode! So, they tried injecting extra medicine into my epidural twice to try to boost the pain meds - but again, it didn't touch my right side at all. By 3:45 am I was 5 cm along and in much pain!

And by the way, my contractions were coming one right after the other! No breaks! Grant said the monitor looked like a heartbeat! The doctor even put an internal monitor on me and an internal head monitor on Olivia to make sure she was tolerating the rapid contractions and that nothing was wrong since they were coming so fast and so furious! So this was appearing to be an even rougher experience than I had anticipated!

So, they called the anesthesiologist back and he took out my epidural and re-did it for me to try to get it to work better. This would be epidural #2. Shortly after this, at around 5:00 am I was 6 cm. That's when we decided it was time to call the parents and tell them to hit the road! (we didn't want to wake them up in the middle of the night and have them frantically driving through the night!). So, everyone was on their way.

Unfortunately, my *2nd* epidural also didn't work. Same as the first - it didn't touch my right side and I was in a ton of pain! I think it was worse than not having one because all the pain became focused on just my right side. They tried to give me extra medicine again and it didn't work - again! Only to make me very nauseous (like the others did).

At 7:45 am I was 8 1/2 cm. By this time, I was hanging in there without any pain relief and about to climb the walls. This time, a new anesthesiologist had started his shift and he came to try a *3rd* epidural. He tried inserting it a bit differently and we all had our fingers crossed that this would work! They also had me lay on my right side so that gravity would help it get to my right side. It worked! Thank heavens!

I was happy and smiling by 8:10 or so and felt like a new woman! This was heaven!

Then all the parents showed up and we were able to enjoy their company for a little bit. At just before 10:00 they thought I might be ready to start pushing soon so we had them all go down to the waiting room. So They checked me again and I was just about 10 cm, but had one little piece of cervix that was in the way (on the right side). So they had me roll over onto my left side to try to get Olivia to help push up under it to get it to open up right.

The only problem with this was that once I rolled onto my left side to get my cervix to dilate fully, my epidural stopped working on my right side! Ugh, not this again! So, I was back to square one again! They tried once more to boost my pain meds - to no avail! So I had to just deal with the pain the rest of the way!

At around 11:20 they told me I could start pushing! Yeah, let's get this show on the road! So, fortunately, the epidural did at least help with this part! It was much better to push then to deal with the contractions. I pushed for a little bit, then once I figured out how to push correctly, I had her crowning in no time. Time to go get the doctor. He showed up and Olivia was born at 12:21 pm.

Wow, what a long 12 hours! But it was all worth it. She is here and she is perfect! Here are some of her pictures from shortly after she arrived:

Happy Father's day, Daddy!