Thanksgiving

Happy late Thanksgiving everyone!  I hope you all ate lots of delicious food and had an excellent holiday. This will just be a short post to let you all know that we had an awesome Thanksgiving and to give a quick little update.

This year was our year to have Thanksgiving dinner with Tyler's family and we made sure to only include immediate family since we're still trying to keep Aleah away from crowds and germs.  We had an awesome time!  Pumpkin rolls are quite possibly my favorite dessert in existence but since Tyler can't eat dairy, I only make them during the holidays when other people can help me eat them.  This time around I decided to make things interesting by doubling the filling in our pumpkin roll and my oh my was it tasty.  It was probably a gazillion calories but totally worth it!!

We love Thanksgiving at our house because we get to enjoy family and friends, eat good food, and join in festivities, but skip all the stressing over presents.  LOVE it!  Plus, how cool is it that we have a day dedicated to counting our blessings?!  Pretty dang awesome if you ask me.

This year especially, Tyler and I have been amazed at how abundant the blessings are in our lives.  It has been amazing to watch the blessings pour in once we found out that we were pregnant.  We have incredible families and friends, food and shelter, a wonderful ward, tons of opportunities, great jobs, etc.., etc...  Plus, we have been given the gift of always finding ourselves surrounded by some truly great people.  In fact, I think that the people in our lives are oftentimes are greatest asset because of the support and shining examples that they always give us.

In closing, we are soooo THANKFUL for a wonderful year.  Life pretty much rocks.

7 Weeks Old

The other day it occurred to me that I haven't posted pictures of our growing little baby on here.  For one thing, we're so horrible at taking pictures that we don't even know where our camera is right now.  For another, I've been trying to soak up every little minute I have with her on maternity leave.  But anyway, enough with the excuses and on with the post...

Thankfully I do have some pictures.  They were all taken on my phone so you'll have to overlook the poor quality and know that hopefully soon I'll be able to redeem myself.  We recently bought a camera online that is small, durable, and does video and pictures so I can have it on me at all times.  Now we're just waiting for the shipment to come in.

Anyway, can I just say what a joy it is to be a mommy?  I seriously ADORE this little girl!  She doesn't like me to sleep, eat, or get myself ready in the morning, but I couldn't be happier.  I mean, I get to wake up to this face every morning:

It doesn't get any better than that :)

As you can see by the above picture, she has grown a lot.  She is starting to get those cute baby rolls. Hooray!  I love them!

Here are some of the other pictures I've collected over the last month or so:

I took this one yesterday after she fell asleep on me in a sling.  I love it when she curls up like this!

Aleah has a cute habit of reaching up to find skin when she falls asleep.  She likes to know that she is being held so oftentimes she'll keep her hand there just in case you decide to pull a fast one on her and lay her down.  That's my theory anyway ;)  Tyler wanted me to take a picture of it because he loves it so much.  He always tell me that it "melts his heart". Aww.

Aleah's arrival has introduced us to the most comfortable sleeping position ever.  Here is a picture of Tyler demonstrating it for us.  I snuck up on him one night to get this image so he has no idea that it exists.  Mwahaha!

Everyone told me that Bumbos were amazing but I had no idea how cool they really were until we put Aleah in it.  Not even a month old and she sat up just fine in it.  Pretty crazy-cool, right?

I took this one last week.  She just looked so beautiful, I couldn't help myself.

This was taken on Sunday.  I just love these little lace rompers!  Hooray for having a girl that I can play dress up with!

 One of the things I love about this girl is that she pull faces all the time!  Here is me trying to capture some of them on camera one day.  She is just a few weeks old in these pictures.

I'm afraid that's all for now.  Basically we are all doing well and loving life.  I can't express how thankful I am to have this little girl in my life!  She is such a blessing.  I feel so humbled to have her.  I really don't know what I ever did to deserve this sweet little girl but I will be grateful for such an incredible blessing.

Sorry to only be posting about baby stuff right now.  Since we've locked ourselves in the house during cold/flue/RSV/crap season, she's literally my world.  But I'm totally okay with it.

Until Next Time,
Shaela

3 Weeks and Counting

I can hardly believe that Aleah is already 3 weeks old!  She has seriously been so much fun already.  Tyler and I are still working hard to figure out how to be parents, particularly how to get her to sleep at night.  While we're not there yet, we've sure been enjoying ourselves along the way.

Aleah is growing fast!  At her two week check up, she had more than surpassed her birth weight and the pediatrician was impressed.  She went from 5 lbs. 14 oz., to 6 lb. 8 oz. in 2 weeks.  Alright!  We must be doing something right if that's the case.  She is in the 25 percentile for height and the 10th percentile for her weight.  She is beautiful, cuddly, and smiles a lot (and no matter how many times I hear it, I refuse to believe that it is gas in her case. She does it on cue when we're talking to her... so don't even go there).

Motherhood really is the best and I feel so blessed to have her as part of our family.  I'm already dreading the day that I don't get to spend all day at home with her, loving every second.

We had her first photo shoot 6 days after she was born.  Here are some of my favorites.  More to come later!

Our Birth Story

Well... it's been a while, hasn't it?  Sorry about that.  Internet time is hard to come by these days so I'm just going to jump right into this while I have a spare second.

I always love reading birth stories on the rest of y'all's blogs so I'm going to go ahead and write one myself while it's still fresh in my memory.  However, there's a fairly good chance that I'll include bits of information/pictures that may give off a big TMI vibe so if you think you might have a problem with it, steer clear of this post.  And with that, I'll start off telling you about the day that we welcomed my beautiful little daughter into the world.

In the beginning it started out something like this: 8 month check up- I was at a 3 and 60% effaced.  Sheesh.  The next week I was at a 4 and 80% effaced.  At this point the doctor surprised me by telling me that my water felt like it was about to break and that he wasn't confident that I would make it through the weekend.  Since I had a baby shower, my doctor was leaving town, and we still had weeks until her due date, we decided to take it as easy as possible.  During that entire week I had my feet up as much as possible and did nothing to strain myself.  The next week I was still at a 4 and 80% effaced and the doctor told me I might have to be started around my due date.  It was so frustrating!!

Going from thinking that I wouldn't make it through the weekend to being told I might have to be induced (which I really wanted to avoid) was one of the most frustrating things ever!  So I did what any rational-thinking pregnant woman would; I ate spicy foods, spent a lot of time on a birthing ball, and made Tyler take me on midnight walks every night.

On Tuesday night (October 4th), I had about had it.  I remember telling Tyler that I was done.  I told him I was done being pregnant and that it was time for her to come.  Then I woke up at 4:30 in the morning.

The Doctor told me that he thought I would go fast and that I needed to rush to the hospital as soon as things started.  But when I felt contractions at 4:30 in the morning all I could think was that it was just another bout of Braxton Hicks contractions so I laid there trying to forget about it.  Eventually I got up, showered, and started getting ready for work but it soon became clear that these contractions were different.  They were so strong and were coming every three to five minutes.  Soon I could barely stand up so I woke up Tyler and told him to eat some breakfast because I was pretty sure he was going to need to take me to the hospital.

Tyler got up and was totally calm until he found me in the bathroom on all fours.  Needless to say, we were out the door and on our way to the hospital within minutes of that occurrence.

I was terrified that I would alert everyone at work and then get to the hospital and be sent home and back to work again.  Thankfully this was not the case.  I was at a seven and fully effaced and they told me we were crazy for waiting so long.  Hallelujah!

The unfortunate part about waiting so long was that the baby was ready to come and we weren't ready.  I had tested positive on the strep test which meant that they had to give me 2 bags of antibiotics through an IV so that the baby could come and not be subjected to it through the birth canal.  Dang.  The nurses there had to slow me down and let me basically be a slug in a hospital bed while we waited for the antibiotics to flow through me.

A family friend of ours was kind enough to be on call for me and she was by far the BEST nurse EVER!!!!  I will forever love her for all that she did to help us.  One of the things I'll always remember about her helping us was the coaching she gave me while we waited for the doctor to arrive.  At one point she even asked if we wanted to take a quick peek and see what color of hair our little girl had.  I of course was all over this.  So she called Tyler over and when I asked him what it looked like his response was, "greasy.... and wet."  Haha!  Love it!



The rest of the process came really fast.  The doctor arrived, went right to work, and five pushes later I got to meet my little daughter.  What an incredible experience!  It was nothing like the horrific movie-like scene I had been expecting.  Hearing that baby cry (or scream hysterically in my case) for the first time and watching the doctor hold her up for me to see was one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life.

We chose to do skin to skin so as soon as she was out and Tyler finished cutting the umbilical cord, they laid her on my chest and I was in heaven.  She was just so beautiful and so tiny!  It's crazy because up until she was born, I was aware of the conversations going on around me, I knew people were talking and working, but mentally I wasn't there.  It was just me and my baby.  So the 5th push and subsequent crying brought me back to earth and totally shocked me.  All I could think was, "I still have one more push for this contraction."

We totally lucked out because she pretty much crawled out and started nursing.  I have a good breast feeding baby!  Yay!!!  Since my temperature spiked right before she was born and she was so tiny, the doctors and nurses had me hold her against my chest for one hour before I could be moved or have anyone else in the room.  That was quite possibly the fastest hour of my life.  She is just so precious!

We named her Aleah Esther.  She weighed 5 lbs, 14 oz. and had the darkest hair ever (it is more brown than black now).  She is tiny and perfect and such a joy!

Apparently red heads bleed badly and they were worried about me hemorrhaging so they actually put me on pitossin after she was born.  Now that is some nasty stuff.  I hated it.  But it's over now so all is well.

Oh!  One quick TMI tidbit: I was not expecting to not be able to pee after.  The nurses took me into the bathroom once we were back to our recovery room and man oh man was it rough.  They squirted me with cold water, ran tap water, tried everything.  I couldn't get a drop out.  That was a totally weird/frustrating feeling.

Becoming a mother is so intimidating but seriously... such a natural transition.  It's tough, particularly the recovery process, the sore boobs, and the lack of sleep, but it is heaven.  It has been so awesome to get to know this darling little girl and to watch Tyler be a daddy.

Here are some pictures of the process.  Steer clear if you don't want to see them.

 Here we are waiting around at the hospital

Sorry.  This picture took way too long so there is no way I'm going to rotate it and reload it all over again.

First family picture

Grandma was in the delivery room with us and followed the baby around while they weighed and measured her.

Aleah and Daddy

Here is my pitossin face

Her little lips and face were so swollen when she first came out.  She was still beautiful!

Daddy and Grandma G.

Proud Grandma

Jake was so afraid to hold her at first.  Then he didn't want to put her down.  So cute!

My Lovely Baby Bump

Somewhere there is an 11 week picture floating around... I just have yet to find it.  So for now, here is the progress of my lovely baby bump:

20 Weeks

26 Weeks

32 Weeks

Now that I'm growing more huge every day, hopefully we can be better about these picture updates.  And hopefully when baby is here and it really counts, we'll be able redeem ourselves in the regular picture-taking department.

Hope all is well with y'all!

Four Years of Togetherness

On August 2nd this month, we reached our latest milestone.  It's hard to believe that we've already been married four years.  FOUR years!  That's enough time to serve two full missions!  Wowie!

This year we decided that we needed to do something bigger than we have in years past.  Mostly because we suspect that the addition of a child in 2 months will make getting away slightly more difficult.  So with that in mind, we set off to Heber and went about seeking some fun.

First we stopped at Kneaders in Bountiful for some of the most incredible tasting french toast and pancakes we've ever had.  If you've never been there, you must (thanks for the tip Amanda)!  The french toast was made from big slices of cinnamon bread and cinnamon/pecan syrup.  It was probably at least 1000 calories but totally worth it if you're okay with splurging now and then or if like me, you know you're going to get fat anyway so you might as well enjoy it :)

Then we sent to the outlet malls in Park City.  We bought some cute pajama sacks for our our baby girl and enjoyed looking at all the other things we wanted to spend money on but knew we shouldn't.

We had every intention of going hiking after our shopping trip but apparently the extreme heat at the outlet malls sucked the energy right out of us because instead we went straight to our hotel room and crashed for two solid hours.  Aren't naps the greatest thing ever?

Long story short, we did several small hikes and enjoyed ourselves immensely as we did whatever we wanted for two days.  It was a great way to welcome in a new year of marriage! Here are some of the pictures we collected along the way:

Stopping for a Mormon whiskey break at Whiskey Springs

Haha!  We stopped at Whiskey Springs because we found a trail head and thought we'd check out the hike.  About five minutes later, we were back to where we started.  That trail was probably about a quarter of a mile long.  Wow!  Some hike, huh?

Poor Tyler got eaten alive on the first hike we went on.

We stayed at a beautiful lodge here!

Here is a picture of the lodge we stayed in.  It was perfect!  And so fun to be at Daniels Summit again where I spent my summer LITE team camps during high school.

The past four years have been so much fun.  Here's looking forward to many more to come!