February! We made it! The month when our baby would join us! Even though I was still holding out hopes that I would be able to go 2 days past my due date and have baby on March 2nd, we were in the home stretch! Down to weekly doc appointments, which are good and bad for obvious (to moms) reasons. Don't love the checks, but at least they mean you almost have that baby in your arms!! At some point during my appointments my doctor had mentioned that he
knew that even if he put me on bed rest I probably wouldn't be able to do it very well with all my kiddos at home, so he told me to take it as easy as I could. I did try to stay down quite a bit, but ya it's hard to do that with school, dance, wrestling and a 1 year old! I did the best I could though, and was glad that he never ended up actually putting me on bed rest!
My dad retired the end of January, the first Friday in February his work had a retirement dinner for him. Ben was on call so we had to make a quick trip of it! We drove to Kanab as soon as he got off work then drove home shortly after the dinner. Unfortunately for us the dinner was for adults only, its been so long since I lived in Kanab that the only people I really know and would feel okay with watching our kids were at the dinner. And since I have a hard time staying awake driving and its been even worse with this pregnancy, Ben basically was my chauffeur. I sure love this man of mine!! He drove us over and then stayed at my parents house with our kids (and later joined by Derrick's kids as well) all so that I could be at my dads retirement dinner! We were able to order a plate of the food to go though! So at least he did still get some prime rib and spare ribs! Definitely his kind of meal, but definitely better fresh!
Brandi had had the idea to make a book for dad for Christmas that had a page for all the grandkids with ways they were following in grandpa's footprints with each of their footprints and pictures of them doing that thing. It didn't end up happening for Christmas so we ended up doing it for a retirement gift instead! The pages all turned out so cute!
Timber likes to eat nuts like grandpa, we had to settle for pecans since we didn't have any pine nuts!
Aspen likes to make pies like grandpa!
Hunter likes that grandpa worked with water like his dad does.
As we were putting all the pages into the book Kira got, we were pleasantly surprised by two extra pages! Tiffini and Jaylene both had a page to announce that they were pregnant! I hadn't even thought to do a page for our soon to be born baby! Theirs were cute, one said they would like to sleep a lot like grandpa and the other would be bald like grandpa, haha! Unfortunately shortly after this Jaylene had a miscarriage :(
Dad opening his retirement presents at dinner. Definitely needed some adult diapers, haha!! You could tell it was a bitter sweet night for him! He sure put his heart and soul into his work and he loved it! He has had several calls since he retired from people wanting to know about projects or to report water leaks to him, etc. I'm curious to see how long it will take for those calls to stop, he is well known in Kanab! Him and Al have been going on walks together and quite a few hikes as well since he has retired!
At grandpa Turner's birthday party in January one of the family members had made a whole bunch of beanies and they let all the grandkids pick one. Aspen chose a blue and green one, Hunter got a gray one, both of theirs were out of regular yarn. Timber chose this cute pink one that was made out of fuzzy yarn! She had a different one at one point but when she saw this one she had to have it! I thought it was funny that it matched her coat and pants outfit perfectly!
Our nightly scriptures are almost always read by Ben! Its quite often a race to get the best seat! Timber has to sit on his lap, but won't ever hold still for long there, it quite often makes it hard for him to read because of it! She usually ends up on my lap sometime during scriptures, dads lap isn't enough, she has to have both of our laps!
Hunter had a field trip to the children's museum. I have gone on all of his other field trips, but was really not feeling it this time. I did talk to his teachers and offered to go if they needed more parents, but when they said they had enough I was a little relieved. I absolutely love helping in any way with my kids and school, but the end of this pregnancy has really gotten to me! Numb hands quite often, really tired, and if I stand for very long my back would start to really hurt! Even doing the dishes I would end up leaning on the counter after only a couple minutes because it hurt so much to stand there! So walking around the children's museum really didn't sound like a great idea for me to attempt. Hunter was a little nervous that I wasn't going to be there with him, but when he got home he said he had so much fun! They even got to eat lunch at a park, which he thought was awesome! And anytime we drive past that park (near the temple) he excitedly tells us all about it!
"Doing" her hair while I was getting ready.
Ben still ended up going to Salt Lake for the hunt expo this year. I of course was hoping he wouldn't end up going, bath time was another thing that really hurt my back. Several people in both of our families were very surprised he would leave me when I was that close to my due date, but I've never gone on my own and was only dilated to a 1 at my doc appointment the day before he left, so I wasn't really nervous about going into labor. It is over our anniversary weekend (wish we would have known about the expo before we got married, it's messed up our anniversary several years now) so we just went to dinner and a movie during the week, my mom watched the kiddos for us.
She found this ladybug among the toys one day and loved it!! I thought it was so funny that she loved it so much because we got it for Aspen when she turned 1 because she loved it so much in the store! It sings a happy napper song that both our 1 year old girls can't get enough of!!
She danced around with it for a LONG time! Especially for a 1 year old!
Sibling snuggles?? Haha wish I could remember what they were doing in these!!
I was very surprised at how long these 3 played ring around the Rosie's together! I did have to keep reminding Hunter that Timber couldn't be whipped around! He is 7 after all and lasted a lot longer than I would have thought he would!
I love her scrunched up nose!!!
She pulls some good faces when she is sniffing things!! She's so funny and always wants to smell everything! I even let her taste the vanilla this time! For some reason that is so entertaining to me! Aspen always asks if that's the stuff the smells good but tastes gross, haha!!
This girl amazes me how messy she can get! We went to a park that had rubber pieces instead of wood chips and she must have kept rubbing her face after touching the rubber pieces haha!
She loves her babies!! I think she was smelling her.
Theirs that scrunchy nose again! She can smell her Clementine :)
That's my girl!! Totally the position I like to color in, haha!! Many people in my life have told me that I'm weird for laying on my stomach to color!
Hunter got to go to his friend Karston's birthday party the Saturday before we had baby. It was a Pokemon themed party, he had a blast at it! These 2 boys have become quite the Pokemon buddies!!
Tooth number 8! He gets teased all the time about having no teeth!! It's almost been a year since one of his top front teeth came out! At his last dentist appointment the dentist told us that if it hadn't broken through by the time he comes in in May that they would probably need to help it come out by cutting it open with a laser. He pulled it out sooner than it needed to come out so the gums had hardened pretty good over that spot. As it started to come out his gums got pretty swollen but it did eventually break through on it's own!
I don't think I ever posted about Timber coming to one of my doctor appointments with me in January. I had to schedule it for the afternoon and since it was still the really quick appointments I set it for while Aspen was at school and just brought Timber with. It totally stressed her out when the doctor measured my belly! I had given her my phone so she could look at pictures and thought it would distract her, but the second he got near me she got panicked and came quickly to my side! I was laying there with my belly hanging out so the nurse picked her up and set her on the table next to me. She asked me if it was owie! I think her last shots must have traumatized her! They were the end of October and this happened the beginning of January, so I was very surprised that she would have remembered them, but with how she was acting I really think she was worried about that! Poor girl, I didn't think she would have a problem having me on the table, and since it was a completely different doctors office, I never would have guessed that she would be nervous! Getting my urine sample was pretty funny with her in there! She was quite the commentator! She also didn't like it when they checked my blood pressure and was trying to climb on me while they took it, I think the noise of it made her nervous. I was trying my best to stay calm so that hopefully my blood pressure wouldn't be high, her climbing on me made it tricky to try to keep calm, haha!
At my doctor appointment on the February 10th my blood pressure was high so they wanted me to stay and do a stress test and get an ultrasound. My appointment was at 10:30 but they had been running late so by the time they got me done it was almost noon. So they at first asked if I could come back at 4. I was thinking things through out loud and mentioning when kids get out of school and hopefully my husband would be able to get off work early to watch the kids and hoping that I could get back over in time, etc, in my talking out loud they realized that I don't live close so the up front girl went and talked with the ultrasound tech and the nurse that does the stress test and they were both willing to work me in doing the lunch break so I didn't have to drive back and forth so much. So glad they did! The ultrasound looked good, it was a pretty quick one just making sure everything was still looking good. Then the stress test went great! They just put monitors on you to monitor contractions and babies movements and you have to click a button every time you feel baby move, and then they let you sit there doing the for about 20 min. Baby is quite the mover, so she let me quit a few minutes early since baby was moving tons! I've said it many times that I think this baby is going to be wild cuz it's already wild in my tummy!! I even had a few contractions while doing the stress test, just tiny ones though, but I was sure hoping they were doing something! Thank goodness for Brandi, she had my girls and took Aspen to school for me since I had to stay so much longer at the doctor's office! My doctor decided that since I was so close to the end and the blood pressure was going up so much (like it has with all my pregnancies) he wanted me to do the ultrasound and stress test with all of my next appointments. I had set up all my future appointments over a month before when I started the 2 week appointments, so the front desk girl was trying to help me by making the stress test and ultrasound appointments around the times I already had my doc appointment times. It ended up being a nightmare! She hadn't really said much to me except really that it was hard trying to make it work but she was trying the best she could to get the appointments all figured out around those times, well then the lady that normally does the appointment scheduling came back from lunch and took over so that that girl could go to lunch. This lady was not very nice about it. She got upset at me for how the other girl had been setting the appointments, normally they want the ultrasound, then stress test, then doc appointment and the girl had put the ultrasound and stress test after some of the doc appointments so that we could keep the doc appointment, so the scheduling lady basically chewed me out wondering why I was trying to do it that way. Then started telling me that we would probably need to move the appointments to the afternoon on one of them, which I proceeded to explain that I couldn't really do that because my daughter has school in the afternoons and it's only for 2 hours so not enough time to drop her off, get over to their office have all the testing and get back to get her. She just said well I just don't see how else I can make it work, it went on for a while before she finally got it worked out for the mornings, not quite in the order she wanted it to be but at least the doc appointments were last in the days line up after she changed the time on some of those. She had also tried to put me early in the morning too, which she wasn't too happy when I had to tell her I couldn't do that because I had to get my son on the bus and wouldn't be able to get over there that early. I was already stressed out about having to do all the extra testing each time and knowing that because of that there was a very good possibility that I was going to have to be started again, and just hoping that I would get to carry baby full term and hoping for no bed rest also. Then throw some pregnancy emotions in the mix, yep there were tears. And when I cry I get embarrassed, me which just makes me cry more. Awesome. I had told her that we probably didn't need to make and appointment any further than my appointment because I had always had to be started but she made one anyways, just in case.
My next appointment on the 17th, I still had high blood pressure but the stress test and ultrasound both went well again. After the doctor got done checking me he turned to me and told me that in the OB world they don't recommend going past 39 weeks with high blood pressure, so he could start me the next Tuesday if that was OK with me. Those were the words I had dreaded. We were pretty sure this was our last baby and I just really wanted to go into labor on my own. I felt like if I could deal with a good chunk of the labor at my house before going to the hospital then I would be able to go without the epidural, so I really really wanted that. I felt very defeated. Tears came again. I explained why, but understood that we need to do what was best for baby so agreed to get started. Well the next Tuesday was Jaron's birthday so I figured he would want his own birthday so said to not do Tuesday. My doc said he could do Monday but that he's in surgery so it's easier on him to not induce on Monday's. Well I didn't want to be induced anyways so I said to go for Wednesday. They have to call to the hospital and make sure they can schedule it for that day then they have to have you sign papers, so they sent me back out to the waiting room while the head nurse did that. I called and talked to Ben about it while I was waiting, and I'm pretty sure he was excited to be getting it scheduled. It's definitely easier on him to have it scheduled so he can let work know for sure. When I told him that I had told them to do the 24th instead of the 23rd so that Jaron would have his day, he told me that he had the same birthday as his aunt and thought it was so cool growing up. So we talked for a minute then decided to switch it back to the 23rd if they would let us. We had also talked about Ben taking several days off after we had this baby, he hasn't done that with the others, but because we had 2 in school and dance and wrestling going on this time we thought it would be better if he did. So with going one day earlier that's one more day he's home with me! When the lady called me back to sign the papers she had us all set to go in on the 24th, but when I explained about the dates changing, she just had me sign the papers then called the office to see if she could change the date and told me she would call to let me know the date for sure. About an hour later I got the call that we were set to have our baby on the 23rd!
Back to the lady that scheduled my appointments, when I told her that the last 2 she had scheduled needed to be cancelled, she made a comment about me getting all worked up about them and then having to cancel them! Ya lady, if you had been nicer to me about it I wouldn't have gotten as emotional about it, seriously I had just had a bunch of extra tests done to make sure my baby was OK, don't you think I would be a bit worked up!! I'm sure most people would be! Sometimes I really wonder why some people work in a costumer service type place! Since I have worked with patients for several years and have made my share of mistakes and dealt with plenty of upset patients, I'm usually pretty understanding with just about anything, but she really bothered me.
My family was all very excited and for the next week kept randomly sending texts saying they were so excited and couldn't wait to meet our baby and see what we were having... I had a hard time responding. I was not happy at all. I was still feeling so defeated, even heading to the hospital, still defeat. And on top of that I felt like we were taking Timber's babyhood away. I felt horrible that she hadn't even gotten to be the baby for 2 years. She still wanted to be carried or in my lap all the time, which I still did carry her up until I had baby! Any time she would do anything baby-ish like fall asleep on my chest for example, I would call are text Ben and tell him that she was still a baby! He kept trying to convince me that she wasn't a baby and that she was going to be fine, but it didn't work. Don't get me wrong I was excited to see our baby and really excited to know what we were having (this is the only one that waiting to find out was hard for me) but I just wasn't ready yet. In fact I hadn't gotten anything ready until a couple days before we had baby. We had bought a couple boxes of diapers but that was it, I hadn't washed any clothes, blankets, the crib, nothing. I hadn't bought an outfit for baby either. When we had Timber I had bought a boy and a girl outfit, so I brought the boy one and figured I would send Ben to the store for a girl one if we had a girl. When I finally did wash clothes I only washed the boy clothes, there were a lot of yellow clothes in the boy clothes so I figured even if we had a girl she could wear those clothes for a couple days until I washed the girl ones. I found a nightmare when I finally brought the boy clothes boxes up though! Remember my post about mice in our house?? Ya, they had gotten into the baby clothes. I washed them in hot with vinegar to kill the germs, then washed them 2 more times with soap! I didn't tell Ben, he told me to just wash them normal and they'd be fine. I sat there and googled things, and most of the things I googled said the same thing Ben said. But it was mouse poop all over newborn baby clothes!! Yuck! I had to make S.U.R.E. it was clean! That's all I really got done until the night before we were going to have baby. We got the kids all ready for bed and right before bed time took them over to my parents house so they could spend the night there in case we got our phone call at 6 in the morning like we had with Hunter and Aspen.
Poor Aspen had been sick on Sunday and didn't have school Monday or Tuesday because of S.E.P.'s. Monday morning (the day before having baby) I took her to her S.E.P. and she seemed like she was doing pretty good, until part way into the S.E.P. I could tell she still didn't feel very good. After her S.E.P. we went back home and just let her rest. I can't remember for sure when this happened but sometime during her being sick she woke up and was hysterical! She kind of wandered in the hall between her room and bathroom for a second, and when I asked her what she was doing, she was crying and saying that her tummy hurt. I asked her if she maybe just needed to go to the bathroom, she told me no. I told her to maybe go try, the second she stepped into the bathroom she peed. She stood there crying hysterically and it was like our bathroom had flooded. It is our small half bathroom, but still, it was a lot of pee! Just the thing I wanted to clean up and deal with the day before I was going to have a baby, and with my huge prego belly! It really was one of the craziest things I have seen, it was like she was delirious and didn't know what was going on, it really kind of scared me for her! It also made me really nervous to go have a baby and be bringing a newborn home when Aspen was so sick! And to leave Aspen with someone else when she was feeling so yucky was just one more thing to add to my not being excited. My mom assured me that Aspen would be OK and that they would keep lots of Gatorade in her, and would keep us posted if she got any worse. My moms assurances helped me feel a little better about leaving her. We left the kids with a very detailed list of what activities happened on what day, and what times they got out of school, etc. I think my parents thought I was crazy, haha! Looking back at the list now (for some reason it's still hanging on their fridge), ya, I was a bit crazy!!
Once we got home from dropping the kids off at my parents we packed our bags for the hospital, then Ben got in bed. I lost it. I had a huge list of everything that I felt needed to be done before we brought a baby home from the hospital and he had just gotten in bed. He explained that he felt like we should be getting as much sleep as we could before we would have a newborn keeping us up at night. I agreed with him, so told him that's why he should help me so it could get done faster! It was a rough night with not good feelings between both of us. He thought me list was dumb (he didn't say so, but I could tell) and I felt it HAD to be done. So we spent the night vacuuming the ceiling fan in our room so that no dust would fall on baby if we turned it on. Pulled the crib away from the wall (we never took it out of our room after Timber, or Aspen if I'm being honest) and vacuumed really well, especially along the edges. When I had gotten some of the baby blankets out of the crib drawers to wash when I was washing the baby clothes I found a few pieces of mouse poop. Seriously where did they not go?! And how did we never hear or see them anywhere but the kitchen!? I sure hope that the silicone-ing I made Ben do keeps them out from here on out, it really grosses me out bad!! So while Ben vacuumed I used disinfectant wipes over the entire service of the crib, and I mean ENTIRE service, every single rung, the mattress, the shelf, and all 3 drawers, even the mobile. It seems like there may have been a few other things that I had Ben help me do that night but I can't remember now, maybe dishes, and cleaning the bathrooms?? I don't know. I just remember the feelings of negativity radiating through our house that night. And the feeling of not being ready (my own fault for waiting until the night before.) It was pretty late by the time we finally got to bed, Ben still got in bed a bit before me once he was done with anything he could help me do. The late night and nervousness didn't make for a very good nights sleep, but luckily the negativity between Ben and I was mostly gone by morning!
Our last family picture as a family of 5! We took this the night before going to the hospital to have our baby!!
