Owen Nicholas

 This week, was a BIG week. We welcomed our new family member into the world on July 12, 2010 at 9:57pm. I was 39 weeks and one day pregnant and here is the last belly picture, taken the day before.

On Sunday the 11th, we were hanging out at home and I was feeling a bit crampy, I figured it would just go away like it always did. We got dressed and went to church, being Catholics, mass turned into quite a work out for a 39 week pregnant woman. I tried to keep up with the kneeling and standing and sitting but it was exhausting! After mass we went and saw despicable me and the cramps kept coming, I was wondering if FINALLY my uterus was going to make things happen early!
We got home and I sat on the yoga ball, still cramping and decided to get some sleep...well as soon as i layed down NOTHING. I slept all night with no contractions and woke up a bit bummed.

As soon as I got up out of bed though my back started killing me, all the way down into my legs. I had to sit back down and it finally went away, we got ready for our day and headed off to Bisbee for lunch. The whole 30 minute drive out my back was killing me and during lunch it was hurting so much I didnt even touch my sandwich. I told Russ I thought I was having back labor and decided to call my doctors office. They told me to watch for another hour and call back if it continued. We headed back home and sure enough it kept happening!

At 230 I called my doctor and she told me to head to the hospital. I went alone because we didnt have anyone to watch Hunter and Hailey and told Russ if it was in fact real labor i'd call him to come down. Ive been fooled by my uterus many times in my life and i thought this would be the same situation.

I got to the hospital and into triage, they hooked me up and were monitoring me. I told them it was happening about every  8 minutes. She checked my cervix and I was almost a 4, which is close enough to be in labor but not close enough to stay in labor and delivery. She asked me if I wanted to be in labor and I said YES! duh... so she went me off walking and suggested I do the stairs for an hour.

I headed to the stairs and went up and around a few times OUTSIDE, and was melting so I decided to go back in and circle the halls, as soon as I walked into the hospital I hear "Nathalie (enter last name here) please return to labor and delivery! I was worried they had talked to my doctor and my doctor told them to send me back home. I go to the nurses station and they said, "call your husband you'll be having a baby today! Dr. Funckes wants to break your water" SHOCK! I suddenly got so nervous and my voice was shaking but I was excited!

They checked me into room 311(yeah!) it was 4:50pm and within minutes the nurses were getting everything going saying that Dr. Funckes was on her way and liked to do things quickly. I got my IV block put in and was hooked up to all the baby monitors and then Dr. Funckes came right around 5:05pm and got to work. She checked my cervix again and said I was at 5cm which means I was actually in labor ON MY OWN! I wanted to go into labor on my own so badly the whole pregnancy, woohoo!  Dr. Funckes broke my water at about 5:15, then like a ninja left the room.

Russ got to the hospital at 5:30 and I had already decided I wanted an epidural, NOT because I was in so much pain but because I wanted to relax and  enjoy his birth. I didn't have one with my daughter and the experience was quite painful, amazing but painful.

I received the epidural at about 6pm, at 7:30 they came back and checked me again and I was still a 5 so they gave me a small amount of pitocin to regulate my contractions.  Another check at 8:30 pm put me at 7cm! Woohoo. I usually labor really quickly and told Russ I bet he would be born by 10:00pm.

The nurse came in at 9:30 and asked how I was doing, I told her I was pretty sure it was time because I could feel him moving down with every contraction. She checked me and said OH youre right he is right there and youre a definite 10.

After that the room went a bit crazy with all the nurses getting everything set up for baby to be born. My ninja like doctor arrived right around 9:45 and got ready, I did my first push attempt at 9:55 and my second at 9:57 when he was born!

He was 7lbs 5 oz and 19" long and he looked JUST like his brother and sister did at birth.

I had a small tear so Dr. sewed me up and by the time we realized what happened she had left the room.

It was a beautiful and quick birth, it was SO relaxing and just perfect. I remember as we were waiting for my 2nd contraction to push I felt like I could be on the beach drinking a margarita with Russ, haha!

Now our beautiful baby boy Owen Nicholas  is here....and without further ado, the pictures!

Waiting for baby!

Russ and I on our "date" not very often were alone without kids.

Me pretending to be in pain haha

Little baby O, I swear we have a picture of Hailey making the same face :)

Sporting the hospital beanie

 Owen and his very excited Daddy

Meeting baby O

After his bath

Getting warmed up!

Nothing like a newborn, arent they just so magical?

 Baby Feet!

 Hunter and Hailey meeting their baby brother for the first time

 Brothers!

 Brothers and Sister

 Sister and her baby brother

 Daddy and Owen

Hailey Owen and Me

 A family pic, which i really don't like...but hey I just had a baby and my family needs to learn to smile haha

 Going home!

Home!

Thanks for looking, we are very blessed and very much enjoying our brand new love.

Summer

Summer gets HERE in southern AZ in May.

So weve been living in the HEAT for awhile now...

It hits 90 every single day....it gets above 95 every single day....it hits 100 often. How do people live in Phoenix? I would die. We live up at 5000 ft elevation so we don't get the same summer as Tucson and Phoenix. It still knows how to hot though!

I havent taken many pictures this month here are a few that are totally summer.

How Nasty are these summerlicious feet?

Hailey and one of the flowers in our front yard.

Russ and the kids taking a 7:30pm swim in our glorious backyard pool.

As for me, ive hit 37 weeks! Baby-O has received his notice to vacate the premises.

I Heart Faces "All About Babies"

Over at http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com/ Its "All ABout Babies" week!
This is my first time entering in IheartFaces but I love this blog! So very inspiring.
Anyway here is my entry for All ABout Babies week!

My baby belly @34 weeks.
go check out the other awesome entries at  iheartfaces

10 on 10

Take a photo every hour for ten consecutive hours on the tenth of each month.

Document a day of your life and find beauty among the ordinary moments.

I have been wanting to do a 10 on 10 for a year now! This is my first one, thanks to a few friends reminding me to get it going.

I woke up with a sore throat this morning, so I made myself a cup of tea.

I told Hailey it was 10 on 10 day and we were going to take pictures....

 I always find toys set up around the house like this, Haileys ZhuZhu pet eating hunters REAL Hamster food.

Hunter enjoying lunch time and watching a video on Daddys Computer

Haileys belly button has an infection and I tried to get a picture of the redness....FAIL.

She has a cute little belly button though!

Another toy, hanging out....with a dish towel.

 Do you spy my ladybug friend?

 The mobile hanging in Baby O's crib, It was Hunters....and then Haileys.

 Grilling porkchops for dinner!

 My FAVORITE moment of the day? Finding my husband doing the dishes, and I didnt ask him too! Yay!

Belly Update.

We last left off HERE

Time for an Update! 8 weeks later, sheesh this is going fast!

This is my 7th month weird hand gesture, haha. Its 28 weeks

29 weeks

30

31

32

33

and  34

Stay Tuned for more growing!

However looking at them like this, really doesn't seem to get much bigger?

Its just my imagination.....

Hailey is a VERY imaginative child. She is rarely just Hailey, usually she is a Mom, a princess, a ninja and always has her friend "Shee-me" at her side.

From what I can tell Shee-mee is a nice kid, he has manners and plays well with Hailey. He also never whines or complains and seems to generally be a very happy boy.

He comes everywhere with us, and every now and then we forget him...he always seems to find us though. Right now Shee-mee is at the doctor because he is sick. Get well soon Shee-mee!

here she is playing tag with sheemee

Today I was informed that Hailey's Granddaughter named Sally is here and Hailey's assistant Brobee is protecting them from bad guys. Now Brobee is the only one I can see, it is the dancing Brobee toy from the Nickelodeon show Yo Gabba Gabba. Brobee has become one of Haileys best friends and she holds his hand and walks him all over the house.

In the car Hailey will talk up a storm and tell you about the dreams she has.... even in her sleep this little girl is in a world of amazing! Most the dreams she tells us about contain Unicorns, dragons, princesses, castles and battling the evil witch. She will go on for 15 minutes describing every detail of what happened in her dream. This is ALWAYS in the car which is a huge bummer because I want to write it all down! I need to buy a recorder.

Hunter is also quite the imaginer, though he doesnt share with me exactly whats going on, I just witness it. The past few days he will go into the backyard and just RUN as fast as he can in circles. Every few laps he will do a kung fu kick or punch to the air then keep on running.

This afternoon I found him in the backyard with a wine bottle opener and a meat tenderizer, when I asked what he was doing he said they were his weapons to fight the bad guys in the backyard. I told him those were dangerous and offered him a plastic spatula...he looked at me like i was an idiot and said "THAT is NOT a weapon mom." My bad.

I love my kids, they are so entertaining. I just wish we could keep those imaginations forever!

Things I learned on our trip San Diego

1. La Jolla beach, is STILL my favorite place in the entire world.

#2. Pepcid Complete works 1000x better for Heartburn than Zantac. I was lucky enough to experience the WORST heartburn I've ever had in my life the 4 days we were in California. It started here in AZ and apparently wanted to go on Vacation with us. NOT being able to eat greasy food makes eating on a trip incredibly difficult. Pepcid helped though, hooray!

#3. When you're going to spend the whole day at the beach with your kids, mother in law, father in law, sister in law, brother in law and husband....TAKE YOUR CAMERA! We had an entire day of beach fun and I didn't get a single picture of it. 

The boys made an awesome sand castle. My sis, mom and I all hung out in the sun watching people beach. The water was  only 54 degrees so only Hunter was brave enough to play in it the whole day. Hailey built tons of sand Castles and even took a 2 hour nap inside our beach tent. Those of us that used the spray on sunscreen got interesting patches of sunburn. It was a GREAT day at Mission Beach.

#4.  If you have a daughter who is 3 and named Hailey, who doesn't like water much....do NOT sit in the splash zone at the Shamu show. She hates being splashed, she hates water on her head, she hates water that does anything she didn't initiate. However we decided to sit in row 8 at the night show. I thought maybe they wouldn't do as much splashing and we would be okay.....WRONG. Shamu got us good, Hailey screamed. Then we were Salty all the way back to the hotel in Alpine.

#5 When you drive to the beach for sunset pictures.... Bring a CHARGED battery for your camera...I got about 10 pictures before it died and the sun wasn't even at the best part yet.

#6   Our little family belongs in San Diego. We felt like we were leaving home to come back to our house. SOMEDAY CALI! reserve me a spot!!!!

I had more things I learned...but my brain is not allowing me to remember them at the moment. Maybe if I remember ill have a CONT. Story :)