Josie 1 month

Hard to believe that a month has gone by already! Josie looks so different to me. She is gaining weight at a rapid pace. At her 2 week checkup she had gained 1 1/2 pounds. She is getting little fat rolls on her thighs and her cheeks are chunking up. Nothing is better than a baby you can squeeze! She loves to be held, which means sleeping at night is hit or miss. Some babies are born good sleepers and some have to be trained. I have now had 2 of each. Overall, we are all doing well with the new little addition- especially Juliet. I have the worlds best neighbors and family, so I never have a day go by without someone calling to check on me, come over to help, or offer to take my kids for a couple hours. I am so blessed :)

Birth Pictures

If I had a dollar for everytime I said, "Blogger is being dumb..." I would be a rich woman! Here are the pictures that wouldn't upload from the previous post. Enjoy!

Josephine is here!

It's taken me 2 weeks, but I can finally blog that Jopsephine Elizabeth has arrived! She took her sweet time and made things much more difficult than they needed to be, but we always say that baby is worth it and it's totally true. I got checked on Thursday the 8th and not much was going on. I was disappointed to say the least. That night at 10:30 I was sleeping and my water broke- which shot me awake like a gun! I have never had my water break on my own so this was a crazy thing to experience. Good thing I just bought a watterproof mattress pad last month for our new mattress :) I jumped up expecting to deliver a baby within a couple of hours and made all my phone calls to my "people" but nothing else happened. I kept waiting for contractions to start and they just didn't. I walked the circle for awhile and packed my bag, but nothing. At midnight I called my midwife who told me to come to the hospital as soon as contractions were anything regular because this is baby #4 and they usually come fast. By 9:00 am we just decided to go to the hospital anyway. I prepare for unmedicated births and have had 2 of them that way. I thought this would be no different- I was wrong! We finally started me on pitocin at 11:00 which started 5 minute contractions immediately, but they were so much worse than natural labor pains. This means I had to have fluid put in me and keep an IV in. Then, Josie's heart rate dropped with every contraction so I had to stay hooked up to the monitors. Once you start with all these things the chances of going unmedicated fly out the window.

By 1:00 I was pretty depressed because I wasn't really dialating and the contractions had stopped. So this is me immitating what Josie must be doing on the inside- "I'm not coming out. Can't make me!" After this they jacked up the pitocin, which was awful, but contractions started every 3 minutes. It was at this time the nurse asked how we were going to spell Josie's name. I said j-o-s-i-e and Tim said, or we could spell it j-o-s-e. I had to remind him that spells Jose. (Think Spanish) :) There was lots of concern over her heart by this time, so they had me stay in the bed and try lying in all sorts of differnt positions. Nothing worked, and I was really starting to struggle with the pain of it all. By 2:30 I was still only a 6 and 70%. Then I went through the worst hour of my life where I quietly dealt with feeling like I was going to die. By 3:30 the new plan was to put more fluid inside to try and relieve stress from the baby. They checked me again and I was still a 6 and 70% and was staring to lose it. I asked for an epidural and everyone tried to tell me how close I was and I yelled to get me an epidural NOW! It was the best decision of the day. He came right in and gave me one dose and it didn't numb my legs and feet, just my middle. And it didn't take away all sensation, just the edge of pain was eased so I could handle it. 20 minutes later I felt like I needed to push, so I did. It took about 40 minutes of pushing. Also strange for me, I usually push a couple of times is all. Turns out the cord was around her neck, just like Emmary. When asked afterword how I felt I believe my response was, "It's been a really sucky day!" 18 hours after my water broke Josephine arrived at 4:07 pm.

My first look and snuggle with my baby girl. She was much smaller than I thought she'd be for 39 weeks, but I was just so glad it was all over.

I got to hold Josie skin to skin for a good hour. I was shaking so bad it was kind of hard to do, but she was happy as can be snuggled up on her mommy.

Josie weighed in at 7 lb 1 oz (a full pound smaller than Juliet) and 20 in.

I forgot to mention that we chose the name Josephine after Tim's dad's middle name- Mark Joseph Fowers. It is hard to believe that it has been almost a year since he died.

With our nurse- I can't remember her name- but she was with us all day and got to see Josie delivered. All in all, this was an experience I never want to relive, but like I said, it's worth whatever it took to have a healthy happy baby join our home.

Meeting baby Josie

I was concerned about how Juliet would react to seing me in a hospital bed holding a new baby, so I parked myself on the couch and made sure someone else was holding Josie. Turns out Juliet didn't care. She actually has been so interested in the baby and just loves her. She is so good at saying "baby" now and wants to give her her binkie and love on her all the time. She goes looking for Josie as soon as she wakes up. This is much better than how I thought she'd respond. It has made the transition so much easier for me, but I am still overwealmed most of the time.

Our new family of 6! Emmary reminds me all the time that we have a big family with a lot of people. Yes we do....

This is the best we're gonna get trying to convince 4 kids to sit quietly and say "cheese."

Josie with her eyes sort of open. She has big blue eyes with long eyelashes like the other kids, but I think she looks like Tim's side of the family.

This was actually taken a couple hours after she was born. I am so exhausted and sort of forcing a smile.

What a proud big sister. Emmary so sweetly told me that she thinks she loves Josie more than Juliet :) I told her that's not allowed :>

An Update

I finally got some updated pictures taken of Juliet and Davis. It had been waaaay too long since I had done this. So now I will be ready to get pictures taken of the new baby when she decides to show up! I am now 37 weeks, which is when I had Emmary. This is sort of a curse for a first time mom, because once I hit 37 I think I am done, when really I am not:( I went to the dr today and I'm at 2 cm- yeah!- and my fluid levels are normal, so I think this baby will hold out for another week or so. Anyway, Davis did really well for the photo shoot, and Juliet started out okay and then it went downhill from there.

I need to remember when I download pictures to do it backwards so that they download in the order I want. Oh well, this would be funnier, but it is still funny. Juliet was okay in the first outfit, but when we put these pink bummies on her she was MAD! This is when she had finally lost it:)

Even when she cries she is kind of cute....



Did I mention she has the world's longest tongue?

Just my handsome boy.

Such a cute little smile on his face. I wish his had wasn't up or this would have gone on my wall.

I think she was crying, but this is still an adorable shot of those thighs!

I blew up this picture to hang on my wall. When she is sweet she is so sweet. It's just when she's a stinker we wonder where she came from...

Such an innocent face:)

This is the picture of Davis for my wall. He looks so grown up, I wonder how it happened so fast.

Juliet's Favorite Things

Juliet is a whole different child now that she is walking! She still follows me around and cries to be held sometimes, but not as often- which my back and eardrums are thankful for! With all of the walking comes the falling and she has taken some good spills. But all in all, she has taken off and is doing everything in her power to keep up with the big kids...

On the 4th of July Jules went face first onto the cement in my parents backyard. It was one of those really sad falls where she didn't even try to get up- she just laid there crying until we ran and picked her up. That made it sound like we left her there for awhile- we did not! We were just on the other side of the yard is all, and I don't run very fast anymore:) She was supposed to get her pictures taken the following morning, so we had to reschedule that one,but she recovered faster than I thought she would.

Juliet's favorite place to be is outside. Specifically, if she is outside she loves the dirt! She just has a radar for dirt and will find it no matter what. This works well when Tim is weeding the garden, which is almost a daily chore. She loves to "help" and Tim loves the company. It is really cute to watch.

She has also learned to say "cheese" when you pull out the camera. Saying new words is another of her favorite things. She says "hello" like Scooby Do "ra-rooooh" and it is one of the cuter things I have ever seen!

Gunnison was heaven on earth for Juliet! She could be outside, there was lots of dirt to play in, and she had the undivided attention from Brinley. What more could you need?

Finishing Disneyland

By our last day at Disney we were pretty exhausted. As I mentioned, the premier for the new Pirates movie was taking place, so a lot of that side of the park was closed and/or super crowded. We just rushed through lots, but the one thing the kids spent a lot of time at was Tarzans Treehouse. They walked through a couple of times and just loved it every time. We also did the Pirates ride first thing and they thought that was so cool. We rode the train and did the haunted mansion and the Big Thunder Railroad. Splash Mountain was closed, which was a bummer, but I guess we'll do it next time; which will be in 3 or 4 years when I have the energy again:)

The boat ride was so fun becuase of our tour guide. She was so funny and Emmary was just eating up every word she said. I think she really thought the animals were real until the very end. Juliet is wearing a cute princess dress we got for Emmary when she was 9 months old and Tim and I did Disney without her. Jules looked so cute in it and it was fun to connect the 2 memories.

One of the last things we did was see Assimo the Robot in Tomorrowland. I actually stayed out with Juliet because you couldn't have strollers in and she was asleep, but the kids and Tim said it was so cool and they have been continuing to ask if we can have an Assimo in our house. I say if it will help me clean, I don't care what sort of robot comes to live with us!

And of course the strange name of the road in the middle of nowhere Nevada. We left Disneyland feeling like we were ready to leave, which is a good sign. We didn't leave feeling like we had missed something. We left with no regrets and exhaustion from a good time. The kids have fun memories and they loved most minutes of it, and I couldn't ask for more. It was a learning experience, and now we know things we want to do again, and a couple of things to do different. All in all, I am so happy we went when we did and got to have some good memories with our family of 5 before we become a family of 6!