So Elder Ballard came to stake conference last Sunday, and told us that we need to be more active in blogging. Yep, for reals, so here I am. However it is getting late, so this will only be a brief catch-up post and better posts will (hopefully) come a little later. So the last time I posted was.... October. Wow.

So after October here is what happened, school got really busy and really hard and the blog dropped on the priority list. In November there was Thanksgiving, which we spent with my family. In December JP got swine flu, which was all sorts of nasty and took forever to get better from. He also decided to time this to be during finals week, so I had to do all of the parenting with zero help, during one of the most stressful weeks of school by myself, darn him. I also had to sleep on the floor of the baby's room, since JP was under quarantine, this resulted in Baby Girl and I waking each other up as we talk in our sleep. Well, our quarantine was apparently pointless anyways because the next week, thankfully after finals and after JP had been fever free for three days, I got swine flu (yes, that means the apparent latency period of 48 hrs according to Pres Obama is wrong). By the way swine flu sucks really bad, it's like the flu but worse, and even after you're "better" you still feel like crap for weeks.

Somewhere in the midst of this JP also graduated from school (however we are still waiting for that diploma, which is probably at his parent's house). Yeah, go JP, he's all growed up. All joking aside I am proud of  my husband. Then came Christmas, which we spent as his family's house. After that we went to Disney World. It was a lot of fun, but I don't think I slept the whole trip. Apparently the jet lag really screwed the poor baby up, so she slept at all the wrong times (read: the entire day, no matter how hard you tried to wake her up) and therefore was awake when she shouldn't be (the whole stinkin' night, every night).

Then the next semester of school started. JP started his new job as Event Coordinator for Campus Rec, and I think he is ridiculously lucky. First off, he loves his job, second, his office goes skiing every other week or so, and  it's called working, and he gets paid to do it. Seriously, who gets paid to go ski, unless you're an Olympian? Gabrielle had to start to go to a babysitter. Well, there's another baby there who is 2 months older than her, and this baby crawls. After a couple days of being babysat Gabrielle started getting up in crawl position. She sits there and stares at the other baby and then tries to imitate her. And the other day when I went to pick Gabrielle up, this other baby was cruising. Darn it! I don't want Gabrielle to learn that, I have no idea how to baby proof our house. And well after all these changes for the rest of the family, what did I do? I went to school, like I always have and will for the rest of my life. I am taking Organic Chemistry (which I hate with a passion), Biochemistry, and Medical Anthropology. Yes that adds up to a full time student, 12 credits right there. There you go 5 months in 15 minutes. I'll try to update again, but when the last half off the semester is here, all bets are off.

358,560 minutes

You know what I just noticed, every post has the same font except one, the one about labor and delivery. Weird, don't know how I did that, but I really don't care. It's actually kind of cool. I mean, if any post deserves to be special and a little bit different, it gets to be that one.

So today, my Baby Girl laughed for the first time, or so I'm told. I wasn't there. I was in class. It really hurt that I wasn't there for that milestone. It just like, I'm here mother and I wasn't there and I should've been. It was a little bit of a kick in the gut. It made me wonder if I was being selfish for going to school, and wanting to work. Am I going to be there enough for her? Is she going to someday resent me for never being home? How many other things in her life am I going to miss out on by not being a stay at home mom.

But the thought of just staying home makes me want to cry. I don't think I have the patience or sanity to do that everyday. And I don't know what I would do without school or work, or some form of getting away and having other responsibilities. It's what's keeping me sane right now. It's what makes me happy, but so does Gabrielle.

I changed the blog background. Everyone else was changing them due to Halloween, and I'd been getting bored of my old one so I decided to change it. But it was a hassle. I've changed many backgrounds many times, comes from being fickle and having 3 blogs, but none of the other times that I've changed blogs has it been any trouble. I don't know what blogger's problem was this time around, but somehow, eventually I fixed it. Oh the cleverness of me!

I know it's not really Halloween-y, seeing as there isn't any bats or pumpkins, and there is no color orange anywhere (I hate the color orange, by the way). But it is black, and dark, and therefore more Halloween-y than blue with silver swirls. And this way I don't have to change it right after the 31st, it'll still look okay if I get lazy. Hey, and it has red, does that mean I can claim that it is Christmas-y too?

Also I am so proud of myself, I used Photoshop. Normally I use Digital Image Pro because I'm more familiar with it, and in my opinion it's more user friendly. And I know it doesn't do as many cool things as Photoshop, but I've never needed to do the cool, extra things, all I do is fairly basic stuff. But we leant Digital Image Pro to my sis-in-law, and meanwhile our poor computer crashed. (Ah, that was a very panicked day in this household, with a certain male's life under threat. But said male managed to fix the computer and live to see another day. Oh, and he will want me to mention that he is amazing for reviving the dead computer.) And we haven't gotten Digital Image Pro back from sis-in-law yet, so I don't have it on my computer, and have been learning how to use Photoshop.

For this post's picture it is the background, so you just get to enjoy the beauty of my background and my cleverness.

295,200 minutes

So today was my first day of school with Baby. I was so excited to get back to school. I love school, yes I know that makes me crazy and weird. But it works, since I want to be a professional student. I'm taking a smaller course load, and I think it's a good amount. Enough that I get out of the house enough to preserve my sanity and I get to feel like I'm doing something I love. Yes, I love Gabrielle, but I'm just not the type to do that day in and day out. And yes, in a few weeks I will be complaining about school and the time and hard work and frustrating professors, but in the midst of my complaining I always know that it's what I want.

Anyways, I was on the bus riding up to campus, and I was just so happy. You get to see some familiar faces, like the alibino girl. I don't know her name, the newspaper did an article on her and her brother, apparently albino twins are really rare, so I should know her name but I don't. She has the coolest pale white hair that goes all the way down her back. Also on the bus is all the freshman, they're easy to pick out, looking nervous, lost and asking directions from anyone who looks like they know what their doing. The A-team was out on Blue Bikes today with little flags so answer question and give directions. Their flags said they would give you candy if you asked a question. It's a good idea, poor A-team that it was raining all day, I hope they didn't get too cold. I was thinking, well I know I've been here three years but I'm sure I could think up some question to get candy. I didn't ask a question.

Baby got to come with me to O Chem today. When JP switches over the Head Guard duties next week, the scheduling is supposed to work out better, but we'll just have to deal with it for this week. Unfortunately she was fussy the whole class, so I had to stand in the back and rock her so she would be quiet. I missed about fifteen minutes while she was busy screaming, where I tried to shush her outside (not outside the building but outside the class). I don't think it mattered so much since the teacher just went over the syllabus. Yeah, he took a whole 50 minutes to go over the syllabus. I don't understand teachers going over syllabi, they handed it to us, and we're college students, we should be able to read the syllabus on our own. But apparently there is some mandate that teachers need to go over the syllabus. This is probably due to the fact that most students aren't responsible to read the thing on their own, though they should be, and then they will go whining to the teacher about how they didn't know. These students will still whine about how they didn't know, but I guess teachers feel better about saying, "Sucks to be you, it was in the syllabus and I went over it at the start of the class." So teachers read the syllabus to us on the first day of class. I just wish more teachers went over it in ten minutes, answered questions and then went on to lecturing.

After class I had to go pick up some last minute supplies at the Bookstore, I know on the first day of classes, I'm a fool. I thought I'd gotten most of them before, but new supplies kept popping up. My most exciting purchase was a lab coat (I got to pick inbetween a size 6, 16 or 49, go figure), a dissecting knife, and a scalpel.

I wanted to take a picture of Baby by the A, but it was cold and she was not happy so I decided that probably wasn't a good idea. But look what else I got from the bookstore instead!

Yes, I'm pretty sure I just violated something by putting my baby in a bag.

So that was my first day of school, I survived, and I did it on 4 hours of sleep.

246,240 minutes

I had a baby!! I'm pretty cool, and she is so cute! On Wednesday the 15th JP noticed that my belly was tight and hard. We'd been told to look out for that since at the last doctor's appointment I'd dilated to a 4 and was 75% effaced without having felt much. Well we monitored (or JP monitored since I wasn't feeling hardly anything) my belly for the next hour or so and my belly stayed hard and tight. So we went to the hospital and got there at about midnight. Well sure enough that tight hardness was contractions and I was having them 2-3 minutes apart, or so says the machine, and they looked pretty big too, even though the machine isn't an accurate measure of intensity. I had also dilated to a 6 and was 90% effaced.

Waiting at the hospital

My motivation in the Labor & Delivery room. Little things like epidurals, spaces between contractions. Someday hospital gowns that are decent...

Go contractions! They're the blue lines, the red one is Baby's hearbeat.

So this was the real deal. But they told me that is was my doctor's day off! I was so upset; I absolutely loved my doctor and wanted her to deliver. However she got back on at 7:00 in the morning, so I hoped that I could still get her to deliver. So we waited and we walked around the hospital some, at about 2:00 am I feel asleep, and then I woke up at 5:00 am (It's a little hard to sleep 'cause you're still pregnant, uncomfortable and needing to pee, and they keep coming in to take your vitals). I looked at the machine and noticed that when I'd fallen asleep I'd relaxed enough that the contraction monitors had flat lined. Eek! I'd stopped having contractions; also I hadn't dilated or effaced anymore so what now? Well, at this point I'd gotten excited and I didn't want to go home. I was a little bit nervous too, if I'd dilated so far without feeling anything, what if I went home and accidentally dilated the rest of the way later without feeling anything and didn't make it to the hospital? So we took a few more laps around the Labor & Delivery section and my contractions started back up! But when I rested too long then they would go away. The nurses didn't think I should go home though either since I was already dilated so far, and simply walking started them back up, I'd probably just be back later that day. So it was decided that the doctor would break my water. I'd said before I went to the hospital that I would be okay with that if I was a 6 or more, and I was, since water breaking at a 6 is not unusual or unnatural.

At 7:30-8:00ish Dr. Kirkman came in, not my doctor yet (and so sad he was the only guy that got to do any vaginal stuff throughout the whole pregnancy, I'd been trying so hard to avoid that. Not to mention he was the only doctor I hadn't met yet, go figure). I hadn't dilated or effaced any more, and he broke my water. That was weird, I had no idea he was going to do it right then, and it was warm, which wasn't what I expected, though it makes sense. Well after that I started having contractions again, and I could feel them! It wasn't a lot of feeling, rather mild and not super painful, but I was pretty excited that I could actually feel something. How naive am I!

Sometime later at about 9:30 I started to really feel them. And they hurt. Bad! I had never felt anything remotely close to that, and I was completely blown away by how intense it felt. Well I wanted some pain med pretty soon after that. I couldn't handle it. I'd had no idea what to expect, but it certainly wasn't anything in that spectrum. JP encouraged me to try a little bit, no he's not a complete jerk, he'd been instructed to do so, but at the time I was pretty upset with him. Didn't he have any idea how bad this felt? So we walked a little while, some hugs and massages and trying different positions. But I still wanted that epidural and soon. It hurt and I didn't care about much else, and I was getting really frustrated at JP and his encouragement. So I got my epidural.

Actually the contractions got better in between the time I called for the epidural and when I got it. Partly because of the mental reasons, I could look forward to relief sometime soon, and partly the really did get a little less intense, but the still hurt. My guess it that's when I was about that 8 cm range and going through transition. But it still hurt. And I was so exhausted and nauseous. Ah, wonderful, sweet, blessed epidural! I was so lucky I got such a good epidural. It took away the pain evenly and it didn't completely numb me. I could still feel pressure, just not pain associated with it. And I could move just fine, nobody believed me but I could. It was easy to move my legs, they felt heavy but it was no difficulty to move them at all.

Well it didn't take long from then until I was dilated and effaced all the way. So they declared that I was to rest, try to sleep and get some energy, and let the baby descend for an hour and I would start pushing at 1:00 pm. They said pushing for with an epidural could take anywhere from 1 to 3 hours and I would need my energy. Well at 1:00 I started pushing, with a nurse and JP coaching. JP slipped back into coach mode, which worked really well for me. The nurse was amazed at how well I could push and also how well JP coached. She said I was a champion and they wanted to hire JP. So at 1:30ish the baby was sufficiently crowning and the called my doctor in. Yes I actually got my doctor. I was so ecstatic over that. I watched the baby crown, that was pretty cool, and it was good motivation to keep going. The first thing I saw on her head is that it had dark hair and I was so happy that she had hair. I'd been hoping for that. I would've liked to have gone a little slower since I felt like I was stretching beyond my capacity and ripping. (What do you know, I was, I just wasn't hurting then so I wasn't really concerned.)

Once the delivery process got underway I didn't get to watch anymore, there were too many people in the way for me to see the mirror. Well once they told me to push to delivery it only took like 2 contractions (I think, I don't remember too much, I was too tired) and a few pushes and she was out. They handed her to me, she was so cute. I wish I could've gotten a little more time and a better look, but they whisked her away pretty soon. I think it was because I tore (albeit minorly, a 1st degree, I have no idea what that means other than it's the smallest degree of a tear) and they needed to stitch me up. So I delivered the world's longest umbilical cord, (the doctor and nurse kept being amazed at how long it was) and the placenta and got stitched up they cleaned up baby and did all that stuff. I can't say much about that since I wasn't able to see any of that. So I officially delivered her at 1349 on July 17, 2009, she weighed 5lbs 6oz (truthfully 5.8oz but they called it 6) and was 18in long.

Not happy with the first moments of life. Don't worry Baby it's not fun on either end.

Getting weighed. 5lbs 5.8oz

Look at that sad little face, still not happy with life. Her eyes are all squinty from the antibiotics they put in them.

Cute precious little baby!

Our little family.

Eventually they handed her back to me, I tried to feed her some, and then they took me up to my recovery room. They didn't get to bath her in my room, so I didn't get to watch, because they had too many other babies being born that day. I was going to cry about that one. JP bathed her in the nursery, and then they took her blood and gave her the Hep B vaccination. Well they finally came back and she is the cutest thing ever!

Dad giving her the first bath. Poor baby, just one unhappy thing after another.

All clean, with fuzzy hair.

The little saying in my Recovary room, I though it was funny that they kind of matched.

Daddy's girl, has to sleep with her hands up by her face and her eyes covered. See even the nurses had issues keeping those Houdini arms swaddled up.

Well that was the big day, than we just stayed and tried to recover. She did have some trouble staying warm so they had to take her to the nursery for a while to sit under the heating lamps; it was hard to leave her. I cried. And when she came back they double wrapped her in blankets. She also got a lot of test done, they had to test the car seat to make sure that tiny her could still get enough oxygen sitting in it, and they tested her bilirubin and her hearing. She apparently failed the hearing test, so we have to go back. I'm not too worried though since she does respond to sound, and the nurse said that 3 babies right before her failed too so they think the machine might be broken. We left the next day at like 8:00pm and came home where my mom and little sis helped us out for the next couple of days, especially since JP had to leave on Saturday.

My Mom and little sis came up to help me out.

We went to the doctor for her follow up 5 day appointment on Monday, the 20th. She'd dropped weight and was down to 5lbs 1oz (and I didn't think she could get any tinier) however the doctor said it was okay, and normal, especially for a first time mom, and that she was healthy and fine, but to just follow up in a few days (Thursday) with a weight check to make sure that she didn't lose any more and that by then she should be starting to gain the weight back.

So now we are just home, sleeping, eating, changing diapers, and slowly recovering. I can't get over how absolutely adorable and precious she is, or how tiny. She is so sweet, and I feel so blessed to have her. I am also very grateful for the ease of my pregnancy and delivery. Like the doctor said, I was built to have babies, lucky me. Yeah, I am so amazing. (Note: Both still suck, but I had it way better than most.) Maybe if I don’t get into med school, I’ll just hire myself out as a surrogate mother for a living. Just kidding, I’d like to not be pregnant or so tubby for a little while. It’s actually hard for me to not exercise right now to try and get rid of the leftover weight and tummy. Though when I do try to sit up or anything like that it’s so hard and my abs just give out on me and tell me that they just can’t do that. And I’m still sorer than I thought possible. So that’s the story of how my beautiful baby came to be. She is the sweetest thing ever.

41,760 minutes

Strawberry Pie that JP and I made. As you can see, it goes really fast. 

40,320 minutes

JP spoiled me and bought me an exercise ball. On the weekends the campus closes way early so we can't go workout up there, so I was just working out at home, following some work out plan in the magazine, Pregnancy. (Magazine curtosy of the doctor's office.) Supposedly, it's a workout designed by the trainer of Halle Berry and Jessica Alba, similar to what they used when they were pregnant to workout, and right after to go back to looking so skinny again. We'll see, don't expect me to have a celebrity body. But JP noticed that there was a section I was skipping because I didn't have an exercise ball, so he surprised me and bought me one. Isn't he so sweet, just got to love him.