Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Family Photos! Apr 2014

There is a studio, Pic Couture, that was doing a free session and CD for police families in honor of Law Enforcement Appreciation week.  We jumped on that!  We got some really good ones, and for free!















Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Acelynn Chori

On Sunday Jan 26th, I was sitting in church, when Jeff drew my attention to this stray sticker from a lesson I previously taught. It somehow ended up there on its own.  It was an omen! 

That same night, after we were home from Sunday dinner at my mom's and the kids were in bed, Jeff and I sat down to have the final talk of all talks about whether or not we wanted to induce this baby and when. After a full hour agonizing over it, we decided wait it out as long as we could and induce by the 10th. (I was due Feb 5.) At the closing up of this conversation, I laughed and then let out kind of a whiny "Je-eff."  Upon checking, sure enough, my water had broken. All that for nothing. We called Grandma Chris to come to our house since the kids were asleep, and while we waited for her arrival, I cleaned he house. (It is no fun going home from the hospital to a messy disaster... or to have your MIL come see that.) We headed in, and all the while I was hoping contractions would start, but no such luck. Got admitted (about 1 or 130 am) and started on antibiotics, then waited.
That takes the cake for biggest I've ever been! Forgive my pale, tired look. I was so pregnant and it was 1 in the morning!

Jeff was able to sleep a bit, I rested some but couldn't really sleep much. About 5 a.m. they started talking about pitocin since I wasn't contracting regularly.  I was a bit sad, but once I made the decision, let it go.  I got started low, but was moving slowly still. At shift change, the new nurse came in and said "I'm going to get aggressive with this pitocin." I absolutely hated the sound of that, but had little change in two hours, so I didn't say anything.  (At maybe 8am?) she quadrupled my dose, and that was it. It seemed like only minutes later I was begging for an epidural. The anesthesiologist (and student) finally came.  I was having really rough contractions, longer than the breaks between them.  While I'm getting my epidural, I can hear the A giving the student instructions, pointing, redoing, critiquing... and I was seriously dying.  It was about the best time I wanted to be a specimen for a long teaching moment. I was contracting so hard and so often that the nurse made me move and lie down in the middle of writhing so she could check me.  She said she was afraid I was ready to go. (I think I was at an 8.5 at that point.) They finally finished and it took a bit to set in. After an extra shot, I finally felt better.  Then, really only minutes later, I was ready to go!  Dr. Gibson came (yay!) with a student, and it was a pretty quick deal, like always for me.  After some good pushing and the same old tear, Acelynn Chori North was born at 10:28 am.  Our surprise (but not really too much of a surprise to us) girl.  My mom and Jaimie were there, too.

As per usual, Jeff cut the cord.  She was extra vernix-y, the most we've ever seen. She literally cried loud and hard for 2 hours right after birth.  It made me really scared for the future, but she hardly ever cried at all after that... phew!
She was 6 pounds 15 oz!
She had trouble maintaining a good temperature, so I did a lot of skin to skin with her and she got lots of warmed blankets.  When we finally moved to antepartum recovery, they kept commenting how many blankets she had. :)

They brought us a congratulations cake!  Fun.
Cutie with a hospital crocheted hat!
Ready to go home! (In a gender neutral onesie, of course!)

Thankfully, my recovery with Ace has been really great, too, which is what I was wanting out of a natural delivery, so that was a bonus!  Must just be cause she wasn't huge and she was my fourth.  And that makes me really glad I had the epidural. :)
Let me just go ahead and fill you in, since we get asked all the time.  We found "Acelynn" in a baby names book, it's pronounced just like it's spelled.  Ace-Lynn.  And Chori is the union of her grandma's names - Chris and Lori - pronounced Corey.  She's a sweet sweet baby, and she completes this family!

Alisa's 4th!



Alisa turned 4 this year on Feb. 3rd, only two days before little Acelynn was due.  Luckily, she made her appearance early and Lise got her special day to herself.  I knew that whether I was 9 months pregnant or had a newborn, I would not be up for home-making a party but I didn’t want her to feel gypped in the party department.  This was, therefore, the first time we ventured into the land of... Chuck E Cheese!  Not my first choice, but she loved it, and definitely less work for mom.  It was exactly one week after Ace was born, and I was fine until the very end, when my back was really hurting.
We started the day with birthday cake pancakes with the whole family. The birthday girl decided to head to McD’s for lunch (after the doc for baby) where we spent quite a long time letting them play. We then let her pick out a toy at Toys R Us (we do this with all of our kids – they get a coupon on their birthdays, plus money from Grandma Doris – they love it.)  Then it was on to Chuck E Cheese.  Grandma Chris helped immensely by making the cupcakes, we bought a balloon and some pizza and procured some tickets and tokens for the kids in attendance – easy peasy! They enjoyed it, although Alisa was a little bit (and Carson was immensely) afraid of the Chuck E Cheese in costume.  Many of Lisie’s older cousins won lots of tickets and gave them all to her.  She picked out a giant lollipop for her prize, she’d had here eye on it since we got there.