SHE IS HERE!!!!!

So we have had quite the eventful week here.  I was scheduled to have our little girl by c-section on Thursday, June 30th.  Well, apparently, she had different plans.

Sunday morning, I woke up to get ready for church and noticed that the baby was not moving around as much as normal.  After eating breakfast and taking a shower, I still didn’t feel anything, so I decided to call the doctor.  The on call doctor told me to come down to get monitored.  Jeremy was at work, so I called my mom to come pick the kids and I up and then drop me off at Jeremy’s work so that we could go down to the hospital together.   I hadn’t packed anything, so I quickly packed a bag for the kids and I  (just in case, which was apparently a good call!). 

Jeremy and I arrived to the hospital and I was hooked up to the fetal heart monitor.  Thankfully, they were immediately able to pick up her heart beat.  However, she still wasn’t moving.  Now if you’ll remember from a previous blog post, this baby did NOT like to be monitored.  She always got very active and moved away from the sensor.  However, this time, it took about 30 minutes before I felt any movement, and even then it was nothing like I was used to.   The OB doctor on call decided that I needed to have an ultrasound to make sure everything was okay.  The ultrasound showed that my amniotic fluid level was low, so the decision was made that I would be monitored overnight and have a c-section the next morning. 

I got to stay at the hospital in a labor high risk room, which I am pretty sure was in the dungeon of the hospital.  It was quite a maze to get there and we had no cell reception.  My parents brought Gavin and Mikayla down to see me.  These are our last family pictures of me with my two children (with my BIG belly in the middle) and our little family of four. 

After waiting for quite some time Monday morning (or at least it seemed – I was anxious!), they finally found a spot for me to have the c-section at 10:45am.

On June 27th, at 11:19 am,

Brooke Eliza Matthews

was born.  She weighed 7 lbs and was 19 1/4 inches long.  She has a normal sized head ( a first for one of my children) and is just a perfectly, petite little girl.

Isn’t she precious?!?!

This is my first up close look at her.  It’s hard to believe that she was JUST inside of my belly.

An OR picture of the three of us, thanks to the anesthesiologist.

When we got to recovery, Brooke was very hungry (I hadn’t eaten in about 12 hours prior to surgery), so they were able to put her up to my chest, skin to skin, and she immediately nursed like a champ.  After she ate, I got to hold her on my chest for quite a while.  I forgot how soft and sweet newborns are!

Daddy and his little princess.

Jeremy and I got some good cuddle time with Brooke prior to being moved to a room.  It took us about 4 hours to get up to a room – the hospital was packed!  Don’t you love the hat that the nurse made for her?  So cute!

 

Gavin and Mikayla waited in the hospital atrium for about two hours prior to us getting to our room.  They were obviously anxious to see their sister, but according to the grandparents, they were very well behaved.

These are the first pictures of Mikayla and Gavin holding their new sister.  We got to spend about 30 minutes together before the rest of our family came into our room.  They both just love her so much!  I knew Mikayla would do wonderful ( and she has ), but we have been pleasantly surprised with Gavin’s reaction.  I thought he would be indifferent with her, but I was so wrong.  He keeps telling me “ I just love Baby Brooke! “  He loves to hold her and is in fact a little possessive of her.  Mikayla is such a natural and loves to help us with her.  She is such a good big sister.

I can still not believe that I am the mother to THREE children.  I feel so incredibly blessed!

Our attempt at a family pic – LOL! 

She is such a sweet girl.  I am so happy that she is here, healthy and happy.  We are loving this time with her and can’t wait to bring her home!

Last Day of School!!

This past Wednesday was Mikayla’s last day of school.  I decided to make it a fun day for her. 

I first made her lunch and decided to make it look a little fun!  Mikayla loved it!

Mikayla on her way to her last day of school – I can’t believe how much she grew up in just a year. :*(

When Mikayla got home, I had this sign posted on the front door for her to see.  Unfortunately, it didn’t bring a lot of smiles.  When Mikayla got off of the bus, she was not running and yelling for joy like all of the other kids.  Instead she was walking very slowly and sadly.  When I got to her, her eyes filled with tears and she asked me “Why do I have to leave Kindergarten?”  I brought her inside and just held her.  My poor sweet girl is just so tenderhearted.  She loved Kindergarten and her teachers so much.  She is not keen on change.  I reminded her that first grade would be so much fun and that she would still get to see her friends and teachers.  She perked up and after a trip to the pool she was all smiles.  I later found out from her teacher that she was pretty tearful at the end of the school day as well.  She ended her school day crying in her teachers lap.  Thankfully, she has made a full recovery and is really enjoying summer vacation so far. 

Kindergarten celebrations

With the school year ending, Mikayla’s class had a little end of year celebration.   It started with all of the Kindergarten classes performing some musical numbers together.   They did such a great job!

This is Mikayla walking in and catching a glimpse of me.

The Kindergarten class of 2011 singing their best!

After the performance, everyone went to their respective classrooms for a little party.  The teachers presented each child with a certificate for doing such a great job over the past year. 

This is a picture of Mikayla with her parapro, Mrs. Warren and teacher, Mrs. Brown.  I could not have asked for better teachers for her.  They were the perfect balance of loving and caring along with being structured and discipline.  Mikayla learned so much this year!  She is now a confident reader (which I just love to listen to) and a little math whiz.  I am so grateful that she has been given such a good foundation by such wonderful teachers to carry her throughout her educational years. 

Last Day of Preschool

Gavin had his last day of preschool last week.  They started off the morning with a musical program, which Gavin rocked!  He sang all of the songs, did all of the motions and had a smile plastered across his face.  He was happy to be able to see us in the crowd of parents and took great pride in waving at us from time to time.

Afterwards, the kids had a little luau to kick off summer.  Is that not the face of  pure happiness??

The had a bubble machine set up outside which Gavin just loved.  I think he could have stayed out there for hours.

The also had a limbo dance, preschool style.  This just basically means that they all dunked under the stick.  Pretty cute, though!

Gavin with his class and then his teachers.  Gavin had the best teachers this year.  He loved going to school and playing with his friends and teachers.  I know he will miss it this summer (me, too!)

Field Day!

Mikayla recently had a her first Elemetary School Field Day.  She had a blast!  I was able to go see her in the morning while Gavin was at school.  Even though it was so hot and I was very pregnant, it was a lot of fun.

I loved getting to see her with her friends.  She has a great group of classmates this year.  I had to go to work in the afternoon, but Jeremy and Gavin went and watched the afternoon session.  They even let Gavin join in on some of the fun!  I heard that they had a lot of fun together (which always makes a mommy super happy!).

Strawberry Picking Fun

At the end of April, Mikayla had a teacher workday, so we decided to drive out to Athens and spend some time with my sister and nephew.   There is a local farm near her that grows strawberries and they were in season, so we decided that would be a fun activity for the kids. 

Our attempts to get some pictures of the kids at the farm prior to going out and picking some strawberries.  

The farm uses a system with these pink flags to mark where the strawberries have been picked.  You go down to a pink flag, pick it up, start picking strawberries down the row, and then place the flag at the end spot where you stopped picking.  The kids had a LOT of fun with these.

Mikayla quickly turned into an expert berry picker.  She was very good at picking out ones that were perfectly ripe and picking them from the plant without demolishing them.

Gavin, on the other hand, was not as enthusiastic about picking the strawberries, at first.  He did eventually come around though.

Mikayla and Gavin ended up working very well together to fill their bucket.

Ah, the fruits of our labors! (And I mean labor!!!  It is not that easy to bend down and lean over to pick strawberries when you are 7 months pregnant!)

As we were leaving, the kids spotted this tractor and begged to sit on it.  Emily and I thought it was a good photo opportunity, so of course, we let them. 

After baking in the sun, we decided to go swimming.  Thankfully, Emily’s complex opened their pool pretty early.  I don’t think I have ever been swimming in Georgia during the month of April.   The kids were super excited! It was a perfect ending to a very fun day.

This is a small picture of what 10 pounds of strawberries look like all washed and hulled and ready to be used in lots of recipes.  I spent all week using these things!  We made freezer jam, strawberry syrup, strawberry bread, and strawberry leather (which was a total flop!).  We still had plenty of strawberries left to just snack on, too.  It’s amazing the difference in taste in freshly picked berries – they were just delicious!

We had such a great time doing this.  It is something that we will definitely have to make an annual trip of.

Easter fun!

We had a nice Easter weekend several weeks ago.  It was a little out of the ordinary, because I had to work on Easter Sunday, but it was a nice weekend, nonetheless.

On Saturday, we went to my parents house for an egg hunt, dinner and some Easter fun.  It was so nice to be able to spend time with everyone.

The kids had a blast hunting for eggs this year.  Mikayla was real good about letting her younger brother and cousin have plenty of eggs to find.  She had fun showing them where they could find some. 

After dinner, we let the kids dye some Easter Eggs.  This is a picture of Mikayla dying an Easter Egg blue.   What I don’t have a picture of, is her accidentally spilling that blue dye all over the place.  

Mikayla’s leg was dyed blue and well as the bar stool she was sitting on.  Thankfully, it came off of my mother’s hardwood floors.  Mikayla’s leg returned back to normal after about two good scrubbings in the shower.  The bar stool, however, is still tinted blue.  I’m glad Mom was thinking of repainting them sometime soon anyways!

Our Eater eggs…notice there is one lonely little blue egg.

On Easter morning,  the kids had fun opening there Easter baskets and playing with some of their goodies.   We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast and spent about an hour together before I had to get ready and leave for work.  Mikayla was a little bummed that I was leaving, but I explained to her that unfortunately, kids still get sick and hurt on holidays and someone had to be at the hospital to take care of them.  I told her that all the nurses took turns working on holidays and this year, it was my turn. She seemed okay with this.

After I left, Jeremy got the kids ready and they went to my in-laws house to have another egg hunt and an Easter lunch.  I am so grateful that we have so much family close by to celebrate these holidays with.  It made me not being with them a little easier, because I knew they were still with family and having a wonderful day. 

My sassy little girl

Okay, I know I still need to blog about Easter, Mother’s Day and some other fun adventures, but I just have to intercept with something fun that happened today.

I have a sassy little girl.  You may think I am talking about Mikayla ( I very easily could be, goodness knows she is one sassy girl!), but no, I am talking about the little girl that is growing inside of me. 

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning.  I will be 32 weeks tomorrow and am scheduled to have a c-section on June 30th at 7:15am.   I’m at the point where my appointments take all of about ten minutes.  When they were checking her heartbeat they noted that it was only about 115 beats/minute.  Normal is 120-160.  I had an early appointment (she is definitely less active in the morning) and I had not eaten breakfast yet.  My doctor was pretty sure this was the reason for the low heart rate, but just to be sure I had an impromptu non-stress test. 

When they put the fetal heart monitor on, well lets say the baby did NOT like it!  She has never been a fan of the doppler, so I was not surprised.  It was pretty funny to watch and feel though.  She was literally kicking the monitor and trying to move away from it.  The nurse and I were laughing.  I had to push a little button every time she moved, and I think I was pushing it about every 30 seconds.  Needless to say she woke up, perked up and had a heartbeat of 130 with good accelerations.  While I wasn’t super concerned, it was nice to have the reassurance.

I have to say how good Gavin was through all of this.  He doesn’t come to a lot of my appointments, but as luck would have it, he was with me on the very prolonged appointment.  Other than my iPod for entertainment, I was not prepared to be there for more than about 20 minutes.  Thankfully, when the nurse got me some apple juice and a NutriGrain bar she also got Gavin some Goldfish crackers.  Gavin was a little concerned at first when they hooked up the monitor, but I assured him that nothing hurt.  He really enjoyed listening to his baby sister.  He kept saying “She’s loud!” (you could hear the kicks very well over the monitor since she was giving it some direct kicks).  He also climbed up on the table and would lean down and kiss my belly.  Such a sweet boy!