Finn Gunnar

Finn joined our world on February 13th!!

 He was faking me out the whole week leading up to this with lots of regular contractions. Several times they were about 5 minutes apart or less for several hours but I never progressed past 3 cm so I got to be induced once again.

We went in just after midnight and it always takes a little while to get set up. They did one more ultrasound before getting everything started and the obgyn on call said that after measuring 2 times, this little guy was probably going to be 9 lbs 15 oz (no... not bigger than Ellie please...) When they started pitocin at 2 AM I was 4 cm and they turned up the dose about every 30 minutes. Around 4 AM I decided to go ahead and get my epidural.

*I had a few misgivings about my epidural. Ellie's worked perfectly but Adelaide's wore off slowly and by the time I was ready to push I had full use of my legs, the button you can push did nothing, and I could feel everything. hah, I'm not cut out for unmedicated child birth so I was really hoping everything would go smoothly this time.*

After about 1/2 an hour my epidural had only numbed everything below my hips, not my intensely contracting belly. They leaned me way back to help gravity move it and the anesthesiologist came and adjusted some levels of some things. Whatever they did worked within about 10 minutes :) :) :)

At 6 AM I was still at 4 cm just like when I came in. They broke my water around this time and I started to progress a little more, though still slowly. They had me shifting from side to side to loosen my hips for him to come down. At one point I switched sides and I guess he really didn't like that because within about a minute I had 4-5 new people (doctors and nurses) in my room and my original nurse had switched me back to the other side. It happened so quickly that I didn't realize it at the time, but baby's heart rate must have dropped and I think they were all ready for an emergency C-section at a moments notice. After a few minutes of them all standing in my room watching the monitor closely, everybody cleared out. I think after having 2 kids, I just expected everything to go without a hitch. This little moment kind of brought me back to fact that things can always go wrong and you have to be mentally prepared for all outcomes.

After that, things just went slow and steady. I pushed through 2 contractions and Finn was here at 10:45 AM. They didn't weigh him for several hours but when the time came he clocked in at 9 pounds even. 

During my prenatal ultrasounds they found a couple of concerns with Finn. 1st was that one of the ventricles in his brain was slightly enlarged. Soon after he was born they did an ultrasound on his head and found everything to be normal. YAY!!! 2nd was that one of his ureters was dilated. It seems like this is fairly common, and he's already projectile peed on my dry-clean only winter coat but we have an appointment for an ultrasound and urology consult in a couple weeks. Also, Finn failed his original hearing test. They retested him and 1 passed/ 1 failed so we have another appointment to retest again. Lots of doctor appointment. At least he wasn't jaundiced!

We are SO excited that Finn is here and in our family. I'm so grateful he's on the outside of me and that we managed to finalize his name!

Family Pictures

It would really be fall without family pictures; thanks Miriam!!!

...and this one because hahaha (I asked Ellie to hold onto Adelaide so that she stayed in the picture; this isn't what I had in mind)

Baby #3 - It's a ....

We are very excited to announce baby #3 joining us this winter! The due date is Brett's birthday February 19th :)

This pregnancy has been going by more quickly which is great. A little less nausea this time though I'm oddly more sensitive to bad smells than in the past. I definitely "popped" much sooner than in the past but I guess that just comes with having more kids.

At my last appointment I was 17 weeks and surprised by the opportunity to find out the gender!! The NP could not find the baby's heart beat with the doppler so right around the time I start actually getting nervous she says, "let me just go grab the ultrasound". She found the heartbeat right away, and quickly found an 'obvious' gender reveal. It's a BOY!! It wasn't the picture perfect moment of finding out considering Brett wasn't even there and I had both girls climbing over me but we are thrilled! We told Brett and dinner after and he was VERY surprised and excited. I went through the 0-12 months clothes and found about 8 onesies that can pass for gender neutral so I think it's time to go shopping! ;) Can't to meet this little guy!

Life in Little Rock

We are still spending a lot of time exploring our new city of Little Rock and we've tried some new things. We visited the Museum of Discovery where the girls got to lay on a bed of nails and play pretend and explore all kinds of science.

We visit the zoo almost every other week it seems, but it's a big enough zoo that you can't see it all in one day. And we have been playing with lots of new friends!

Ellie & Adelaide participated in our library's summer reading program and received free mini golf passes. **I promise Adelaide doesn't wear this same dress every day hah!

Ellie started Pre K and loves it! At first she started out at an all day everyday Pre K that made sense financially for us, but.... I missed her way too much and she didn't like the 2 hour mandatory nap time they had since she doesn't nap. We switched her to a Pre K that meets 2 times a week and it's perfect for both of us!!

My Parents came out to visit us and see the house on their way East. The girls played with Grandma nonstop for 24 hours and had a great time trying out playtown.

Our New Home

I wanted to remember what our house was like when we first started out here so I took some pictures. I'm sure we'll tweak things here and there over the years. We live in the cutest little cul de sac that is just a few blocks away from the elementary school. We have sidewalks and gutters and a covered porch that we use every day. We're so happy we found this house!

On the flip side, our garage door stopped responding the wall button and remote so we're trying to figure that out right now... bring on the home ownership!

We're still trying to add some more color outside, one day...

Our grass has already greened up quick a bit since this picture. (which makes sense because Ellie & Adelaide play in the sprinkler almost every day hah)

The one big project we took on right away was Ellie's room. We had told her that she could have a pink room when we moved, and since she was moving up from a toddler to twin sized bed I decided to just redo the whole style at once. It was a lot of fun to see it come together and when we've have the time/money again, I would love to do the same for some of the other rooms. ;)

We had lots of fun before residency started for Brett where we explored the Zoo, Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center, Hot Springs National Park, and Lake Catherine. We're sweaty in pretty much all pictures because it's summer, it's hot, and that's life. It's no worse than Texas though :D

Also, I got this new cooperative, deck building Harry Potter game for my birthday and I've been making Brett play it with me almost every night because it's so fun hahaha (He's so good to me)