Kate's First Christmas

Kate is doing great! She's sleeping much better now. We've discovered she prefers to sleep on her side, so that was the trick. I'm getting up about 2 times each night to feed her which is not too bad. Two nights ago we had a catastrophe. I got up to change and feed her and while I was feeding her she pooped so I got up to change her and she wasn't quite finised! So she continued to poop while I was trying to change her diaper. In a matter of seconds I had poop all over the place-her back/front/on the changing table-it was a mess! I woke Leland up asking for help. It was hilarious! Lesson learned-wait a few minutes until the pooping is done!

Here's a really good picture of her awake (which is not often) in her Christmas outfit.

Kate Emma Wells

Meet our beautiful baby girl, Kate Emma Wells. Kate is a name that we liked and Emma was Leland's grandmother's middle name. We are home and adjusting to our new life! It has been an exhausting and exhilirating last 4 days. But I wouldn't change any of it for the world! She is just precious!

Tuesday night I was having really strong contractions and back labor. They starting getting closer and closer together about midnight. I went to bed and was miserable. I couldn't sleep-they were so bad they kept waking me up (we had just been to the doctor earlier that day and she said I wasn't quite ready yet so it was our 2nd false alarm) so I wanted to make sure this was the real deal before we drove to the hospital in the middle of the night. Well, it got to the point where they were every 4minutes and I couldn't take it anymore-it was the worse pain I have every experienced. So, we packed up and headed to the hospital. When they got us all checked in they checked me and I was 3 cm so it was the real deal and they weren't going to send us home-thank goodness because I was in pain! So 13 hours of labor and about 5 pushes and she was here! The nurses were so surprised at how fast she was coming that they told me to stop pushing because the doctor wasn't there yet and they were waiting on her. So not long after she arrived, little miss Kate arrived too. It was a suprisingly easy labor and delivery once I had the epidural-which was great by the way!

Now we are home and Leland's mom is staying with us this week which has been great! We had trouble with the breastfeeding at first, but I think she's getting the hang of things now. We go to the pediatrician tomorrow for a weight check. It's amazing how you get concerned about little things like, why hasn't she had a bowel movement in the last 24 hours?! etc......Our biggest challenge is getting her to sleep in her bed at night. She does not like laying on her back and the minute you put her down she starts crying......not sure how we're going to get past this. It was quite an exhausting night our first night home-I think Leland and I only got about 2 hours of sleep. If anyone has any suggestions on how to get her to sleep in her bed or bassinet at night, please let me know!

We'll keep you posted on more pictures and updates.

Our Baby Girl is Here

We had our sweet baby girl yesterday, December 17th at 2:03pm. Her name is Kate ? Wells. We are still working on a middle name. She weighed 7lbs. 2oz. and was 20 inches long. She is perfectly healthy and all is well. She is trying to learn to breastfeed and is finally getting the hang of it! Yea! We will post pictures soon. It's been a hectic 24 hours but all went well with the labor and delivery. All I have to say is epidurals are wonderful!! More to come soon.......

Baby Time??

Well, this morning I woke up around 5am with some pretty uncomfortable contractions. They started out about 12 minutes apart and stayed that way for a while. My doc had always told me to wait to come to the hospital until they were about 5 mintues apart, but I called her anyway because I just wanted to get her input. I was suppose to have a check-up tomorrow but she asked me to go ahead and come in today for my appointment and see where I'm at. Well, I'm still only 2 cm dilated, but I was about 80% effaced so that improved. I was just sure I'd be farther along than that. Some of the contractions I was having were so intense I thought how in the world am I going to be able to handle these every 5 minutes for an hour before we leave for the hospital!? But then they started to taper off in the afternoon. Well now they're back and they hurt. I don't think I'm going to get much sleep tonight, but we'll see. Hopefully tomorrow will be the day. We'll keep everyone posted!

9 Month Baby Bump

Here's my 9 month baby bump. She's getting bigger and bigger. We still have about 4 weeks until our official due date, but hopefully she'll come before that because I am ready to not have an aching back anymore! I think she's about 6 lbs. right now. I go back to the doctor on Tuesday for another check-up. Leland has to go to Dallas Monday and he'll be back Tuesday evening, so pray that I don't go into labor while he's gone! We have our sweet neighbors and so many people at our church have offered to give me a ride to the hospital or come be with me if it so happens while he's gone, but I hope that won't happen. Now would not be a great time to have her because my doctor is ill right now and just starting to get over it and Sadie just had surgery last week (we got her fixed finally) so she's kind of under the weather and Leland is traveling. So as soon as he gets back and everybody is feeling well again, I'm good to go!

Dogs, Doctor's Appointment, Snow!

I had my 36 week doc appointment. We had our final ultrasound-baby is head down thank goodness and she weighs 5lbs 13oz right now. The doctor said she has really long legs-I'm not sure who she gets that from-Leland I guess. Everything looks great. I'm now 1-2cm dilated and 50% effaced. Her head is really really low so the doc thinks she will come before our due date even though the ultrasound was telling us her due date is now Jan 6th but that's just based on her head measurement so hopefully she just has a small head-I'm good with that! So, we'll see. It could happen very soon......or it could go for another month-who knows. I still have some last minute things I'd like to get done before she gets here so I hope she holds out for at least a couple more weeks!

We had a good Thanksgiving! Some friends from our church invited us over for their family Thanksgiving. It was a lot of fun. They were so nice to think of us.

I'm now officially a stay at home mom! Yea! Today was my first day to not have to go to work. I don't think it's set in yet.....just feels like I'm on vacation. But today I stayed busy-one of the ladies at our church just passed away and the church was putting on a lunch for the family today before the funeral service so I volunteered to bring a dish and help serve the food/clean up, etc. It's nice to have the free time to help out with those sorts of things now. I had to leave early to go to the doctor so it was a pretty busy day. I was worried I'd be bored being home but I have a feeling I'll be busier than I think.

We're dog sitting this week for our neighbors who went to Costa Rica for Thanksgiving (must be nice). The puppies love each other and have so much fun together. It's kind of nice because they keep each other entertained and wear each other out and then just crash. Normally, Sadie just follows us around the house and wants us to alway pay attention to her and if we're not she whines-it's can be really annoying -but we love her anyway!

We had our first Snow for the year yesterday and today. It was cold and windy!