Baby Kaylee Joy Routsong is here! She was born January 6, 2011 at 9:09am. She was 6 lbs 8 oz, and 19 inches long. She is absolutely beautiful! Here is her story:
On Tuesday Jan 4, I had a doctor's appointment and was dilated 1 cm. I was pretty discouraged. On Wednesday Jan 5, my Braxton Hicks contractions began to get stronger and a tiny bit painful. I actually had to stop moving till they passed. Throughout the day I had these, sporadically, random, and not consistent. As night came, they were becoming more and more consistent and we started to time them. About 10pm they were about 10 minutes apart. We called Stephanie, my midwife, to give her a heads up. We went to bed, but I couldn't sleep because the contractions were getting more and more painful. This is the first time that I have experienced labor on my own. The last 2 times, my water broke in the middle of the night without any painful contractions. So I went into the hospital both times without having any pain. So this was all very new! Finally, about 2:30 I told Nate that we may want to head in to the hospital. The contractions were about 4-5 minutes apart and we had a 20 minute drive to DeKalb Hospital ahead of us. We headed out and called Stephanie on our way.
Once we got to the hospital, I was still dilated to a one and a half! I couldn't believe all that pain had made no progress for me! Also, once we were there, my contractions slowed way down and were not as consistent aymore!! They were getting stronger and more painful, but were spread out like every 10 minutes or so. The nurse thought we would get sent home. So discouraging!!! So we walked the halls and I even hopped up and down and ran in the hallways hoping to induce contractions. By 6:30 or so, Stephanie ordered a pill for me, cytotec, a pill to ripen the cervix and induce contractions, similar to pitocin. She decided NOT to send us home! Yay! What a relief! We would have our baby today! So I took the pill, a tiny 1/4 of a pill, and almost immediately it took effect. I began having contractions closer and closer together and they progressively got stronger and more and mroe painful. I was in full blown labor then. The contractions would not hardly finish when another would start, and my pain worked its way up to a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10! I have never ever felt pain like I did then. I thought my body would explode! I told Nate that I felt like I might die! It was terrible, terrible pain. I didn't feel that much pain with my boys because I think I had an epidural sooner. About 8:00 Stephanie consented to have the epidural done. The anesthesiologist was very skilled and did a great job. And that took effect about 8:30 or so. Stephanie and her student, Brittany, came in then and checked my cervix. I was a 7! I couldn't believe I had gone frome 1 to 7 in 2 hours on that pill! No wonder I was in so much pain! With the epidural, all I could feel now was pressure. What a relief!
Just 20 relaxing minutes or so later, I began to feel tons of pressure. They checked my cervix and I was 10 cm already!! Stephanie and Brittany gathered all their supplies around. They even invited Nate to catch her when she came out of me! So he got some gloves and was told where to stand and was nervous but excited to be a part of the experience! I pushed maybe 5 times and Baby Kaylee was out! Nate caught her and they all helped put her on my chest all naked and fresh from the womb! What a sweet moment. My baby was here. She did not cry when she came out. Instead, she looked around at her surroundings, content, and just took it all in. How sweet! With her little body against my warm skin she was just cozy as ever and happy to be in Mommy's arms. It was precious to see how peaceful she was. I held her for a good 10 minutes before they had Nate cut the cord. Stephanie was very kind to let her just be with us right after delivery. After her cord was cut, they helped get her swaddled and then Nate and I just held her and got to know her. They didn't whisk her away to clean her, weigh her, measure her, etc, etc, like they did with the boys. They just let us be a family the very moment she was born and for the next couple hours. It was heaven.
About 10 minutes or so after she was born, I tried nursing her. She was rooting already and latched on to me with absolutely no problem! It was amazing to me that she already knew how to eat, how to survive! What a miracle! It strengthened our testimonies that there no doubt is a God. Heavenly Father and the plan of salvation is so real! Kaylee is a little miracle that grew inside me, and when she came out, she already knew how to survive by sucking. That to me is miraculous!. Even though we have science to explain every bit of it, the birth of a newborn baby is a miracle!
6 pounds 8 ounces
Kaylee is so lucky to have 2 big brothers to look out for her. And they absolutely love her! They have been waiting and waiting for her to come out of my tummy, so they were pretty excited when she finally did! Jaxton especially fell in love with her immediately. Cooper thought it was pretty neat too. It was precious to see them be so gentle and soft with their new sister.
Here is her first little bath in the hospital. She didn't like being cold of course, but didn't mind the warm water running on her head.
Baby Kaylee Joy Routsong is here! She was born January 6, 2011 at 9:09am. She was 6 lbs 8 oz, and 19 inches long. She is absolutely beautiful! Here is her story:
6 pounds 8 ounces
Getting her footprints
Her little feet
Grandma Hutchinson came in to town for the arrival of our new baby. Since baby wasn't here yet, and no sign of her arrival in sight...we just spent 2 weeks of fun with Grandma like a mini vacation! We went to the Mad Ants game with her and with the Gregory family, which was a lot of fun. The kids loved the Mad Ant. He is apparently a new person inside the costume than last year, and he is much more animated and fun with the kiddos. So they loved it. Once again, they all got to give high fives to the basketball players as they ran in from half time, which is always a highlight! Fun times!
The Mad Ant with Evan & Audrey Gregory,
Well Santa honored the boys' wishes. Jaxton made out good with a new Star Wars spaceship and 4 Star Wars easy reader books! And Cooper made out just as well with his very own M&M candy machine, a chocolate Santa, tons of M&M's for his machine and some quarters to put in as well! Their stockings were stuffed with all sorts of goodies from Santa, like new gloves, more candy, race cars and monster trucks, and much more! Yay for Christmas!!
Next we began our present-opening marathon!!!
Dad & Mom got a new popcorn machine from Becky!! How fun!! Thanks Beck!
Jaxton got a Leap Pad Learning system with several different books and games included. That will keep him occupied for hours on end!
Jaxton got Cooper a Mad Ants Shirt, his favorite basketball team. Oh was Cooper excited or what!! And Cooper got Jaxton a Star Wars T shirt. He was equally overjoyed!!
Jaxton opened a zip track for all his race cars
And Cooper opened up a box full of dinosaurs!
Jax also opened up a box of legos!
The boys got superhero costumes from the Giraldi family and their cousins in Utah. What fun! Jaxton opened up Iron Man & Cooper opened up Wolverine Man!
Just like my old family tradition, we burned much of our wrapping paper in our wood burning fireplace. It made me reminisce about my own childhood Christmases. Cooper was fascinated with the fire and thrilled to help daddy burn wrapping paper. He kept trying to throw balls of paper in the fire. Later when no one was looking he would go to the fire and add more paper. So we had to watch him super close! Silly boy! And yes, his Wolverine Man costume was a bit big, but he didn't care. He just rolled it all the way up to his underpants to keep it from dragging under his feet!
Here is one of Jaxton's favorite toys he got for Christmas: Mini legos. He plays with these for hours at Grandma & Grandpa Routsong's house and was dying to have a set of his own. He was so excited to open them up. In fact, he shook the wrapped box of legos that was under the tree with his name on it and said, "Mom, I think this one is legos!" I said, "Well, we will see," but indeed he was right!!
Merry Merry Christmas 2010
We played our new games as a family, which is harder than you think to play a game with a 4 year old and a 2 year old! To follow directions and give everyone a turn is quite the task. Needless to say it took a lot of energy! So after that, we pulled up the nativity story on Nate's laptop and watched a couple different versions of the nativity story. We read the story of Jesus' birth also and talked about the real meaning of Christmas. After that, Nate found "The Night Before Christmas" movie clip on his laptop that followed the poem the boys have memorized. So we watched that and they were so excited because it followed the same words as the book we read. We spent a little more time just being together, and then we sent the boys off to bed to await Santa's arrival.....