Our Baby Story

I already posted some photos of Avery's arrival, but for those who are interested, here are a few more details and pictures.

The night before, Darren's mom came to stay with the kids. She also took us out for dinner, which was great since I didn't get to eat for quite awhile after that. That night, when I tucked the kids in bed, I was a little sad knowing I wouldn't see them for a few days, so I took a picture with both of them.

Me and my buddy Logan - He always loves to feel my tummy and talk to the baby. He loves talking to her even more now that he can actually see her and he is so sweet with her!

My sweet Rylee - I am a little worried about how she is going to adjust to the baby and her NOT being the baby anymore. She was excited that I was going to the "hopsital" and that the baby was going to "come out" and she told me the baby in her tummy was going to come out, too.

I haven't posted many prego pics, but here is me the night before delivery at 39 weeks! I am looking ready to pop!

We had to be to the hospital about 7 am for my 8:45 C-Section. I slept awful the night before stressing over everything and worrying about surgery... Here is a quick shot before we left for the hospital.

Here I am getting all hooked up and ready to go. This is the WORST part of having a baby for me - The waiting for the C-Section and all the nerves! I don't do hospitals or needles or any of that very well, so it is hard for me. It took forever for them to get the IV in and I almost passed out, but other than that, things went pretty smoothly! Soon after this, I walked down to the OR for my epidural and to have our sweet baby!

What a cute daddy to be! He took great care of me and helped me get through everything.

Ready to have a baby! We had a great labor and delivery room with an amazing view of the mountains and the sunrise while we were being prepped for the C-Section. It was a great way to start the day.

And here she is - Baby Avery! My C-Section was pretty long. They took out my old scar first and it seemed like FOREVER before they got her out and I heard her cry. I was so relieved when I finally heard her. When I saw her, she was all arms and legs and looked so big! The first thing everyone noticed was ALL that dark hair and the nurses couldn't stop talking about those eyelashes!

She was also a screamer!!! She screamed for a long time but she did calm down eventually and rarely cries now. She is a really calm baby. While they were doing all the final prep for my surgery, my stomach was moving all over the place and all the nurses thought it was so funny and said they had never seen anything like it! It looked like she was just going to break right through on her own. Everyone kind of figured from all her moving she would be a fighter and a screamer.

Avery's official time of birth was 9:33 am and she was 20 inches and weighed 7 lbs 11 oz. They joked in the delivery room that she was going to get free slurpies for life!

I am looking fabulous here, I know! I actually got to hold Avery while they were finishing the surgery. They had never let me do this is the past and I was so excited about it! It has always been one of the things that I hate about a c-Section - That I had to wait so long to see and hold my baby, but this hospital was so great to let me be a part of everything. It made the experience so much better! My epidural didn't seem to work all that great this time and I could feel more than I remembered feeling in the past and had a lot more pain, so it was great to hold the baby to take my mind off it. It took a long time to stitch me back up as well because they were doing some repair from my prior C-Sections. They were pretty concerned about me having more babies because of how thin my uterus is but my Dr was able to do some repair and thinks I can have at least one more, which was happy news for me.

Me and my sweet baby girl! There is nothing like holding a brand new baby!

Avery and Daddy in the recovery room. They let her come in there right after my surgery as well and even let me feed her before they took me up to my room. It was so great! Lots of bonding time. Darren is such a sweet daddy!

This is our FIRST picture with all 3 of us. It is still in the recovery room, and I am looking pretty great and have 7 chins, but since it was the FIRST picture, I figured it should be part of the post! We didn't get any family pics at the hospital since the kids couldn't visit, so this is the best we could do.

Here is our beautiful baby! She looks huge in this picture for some reason.

Avery looking cute!

A better picture of all of us together! This is just after we got to our room.

The nurse came in and did Avery's first bath right in our room so that I could watch it. I really appreciated all the little things they did to make sure I was part of everything and to make the experience special. She wasn't too happy about being cleaned up.

Avery did love having her hair washed though! She stopped crying and looked like she was loving it! Right after Avery's bath, I got really nauseous and ended up throwing up. Not so fun...

Once we got to our room, Avery got to meet her Grandma and Grandpa Boman and also Grandma Webber. For some reason, we don't have a picture of her with Grandma Webber - I think Darren must have only taken one on her camera on accident.... Everyone was very excited to meet her and loved all her hair!

This was the first time that she really opened her eyes for awhile. What a cutie! I have a picture of Rylee that looks just like this - I think they look a lot alike!

Grandpa looks like he is in heaven!

Another picture with her eyes open - She is a great sleeper, so it is hard to catch her with her eyes open. Especially at first!

A shot of all her hair. It still doesn't really do it justice, but we had to try!
Avery and mommy

Avery and Daddy

Cute kisses!

Avery had a couple other visitors that day - Aunt Heather drove all the way up on her BIRTHDAY to see her - What a great aunt! Avery is a lucky girl to share a birthday with Aunt Heather!

Aunt Vanessa came, too. She was a good sport to watch all the kiddies so that everyone else could visit and then she got her turn to come, too.

Isn't she a beautiful baby?

My first day in the hospital (Friday) was pretty rough. I was pretty nauseous any time they tried to sit me up and seemed to be in more pain than in the past with my c-sections. When they tried to get me up to walk to the bathroom, I ended up throwing up again and almost passed out. They were also concerned about the amount of blood I lost. I was so tired and hungry and hormonal and everything else that I was an emotional mess! It was a good thing I had this beautiful baby girl and that she was SO sweet!!! It was definitely worth all of it!

Day 2 - (Saturday) We had another great view of the mountains (and the USU football stadium which Darren loved!) from our room and great sunrises! I loved how the light came in! Day 2 went a lot better and I was able to get up and walk around by the end of the day and start eating again. I was still feeling pretty sore, but I was doing much better.

Such a cute daddy! I love how sweet they look together! Darren wasn't feeling great and had a sore throat so he has a mask on in most of the pictures from the hospital, but not this one!

Sweet little sleeper - She loves to have her hands up by her face while she is sleeping!
Avery had a few visitors on Saturday - Grandpa Webber and Uncle Matt stopped on their way home from Yellowstone and our good friends, the Lifferth's, also stopped for a little while. My mom also came and stayed for the night while Darren took the kids to the USU Homecoming game. It was fun to have her stay. We were able to hang out and watch a chick flick.

On Saturday, I also walked down to the end of the hall where there were some big windows and was able to wave to Logan in the parking lot and hold up the baby for him to see (Ry was asleep in the van but she came on Sunday). Logan was so excited to see us and said "Ohhhh...Baby Avery is so cute!" He was only interested for about 15 seconds but I loved that I could see him.

Sunday was even better. I was able to get around much better and went to a class on breastfeeding. While I was up, I started to get a terrible headache. Whenever I was up for very long, I started getting a headache. It got worse throughout the day. They had me drink Coke since the Caffeine seemed to help. Darren was so jealous that I was prescribed Diet coke! It seemed to help a little.

On Sunday, Avery had lots of guests. Here are Uncle Dean and soon-to-be Aunt Laura! Aren't they cute?

Uncle Brad

Uncle Jeff - Uncle Kyle had to wave to Avery from the parking lot since he wasn't 14 and couldn't come in. I walked back down to the end of the hall and waved to him, Logan and Rylee again since they didn't get to come in. Rylee was pretty sad she couldn't come in, but I got to see them the next day.

Avery close-up!

I love how sweet she looks while she sleeps!

Some more cute photos of Baby Avery

Me and Avery spent Sunday night bonding. I just held her all night long while I watched movies and wrote in my journal. It was just the 2 of us for most of the night and it was nice to just enjoy her for awhile since I know I won't get to hold her as much as I want at home!

Monday morning was a bit of a fiasco. My headaches were getting worse and they decided I probably had a spinal headache from the epidural. They told me they could do a blood patch to fix it, but it would require another procedure, I would have to stay for another 2 hours and have another IV and more needles and take blood...it didn't sound fun. The anesthesiologist said that a lot of times the headaches correct themselves and since I didn't want to be there anymore, I decided to wait and see how things went. The headache lasted about 3 more days, and sometimes I thought I should have had the procedure done, but I am doing much better now and I think they are gone, so that is a good thing. It was quite an emotional decision to decide what to do, but I couldn't wait to get home to the kids! The checkout procedure seemed to take forever - We had to deal with our bill, I got a tetnis shot and there was lots of paperwork and stuff to handle. We finally headed for home around noon!Avery dressed and ready to head home!

Leaving the hospital!

She looks so tiny in her carseat! It felt great to be going home!!!