3 months today!

We had a great weekend. Family, friends and sun. What more can you ask for? Abigail turned 3 months old today. She weighs now. She talks up a storm! Smiles all the time and is overall a GREAT baby! We are very blessed. She sleeps through the night and has been since she was 6 weeks old. She is getting better with the car rides and loves to take walks in the evening with mommy and daddy in the stroller.

We decided to try her Bumbo seat today while at grandpa's house. Her head is strong enough now to hold herself up while she is sitting in it. She loves it! She is so cute in it. Enjoy some pictures from today. Happy Memorial Day!

Finally caught a real smile on camera

Pappy Todd taking a walk with us in the park

It doesn't get any cuter than this

LOL

Casey sitting pretty with Abby

My First Mother's Day

We had an awesome time at my mother's house who hosted a Mother's Day picnic for the family. Abigail gave me a lovely card that I will keep forever and daddy gave me some cash to do whatever I want with! I'm hitting the mall! The wind was awful so I didn't really get a good picture of the two of us. Better luck next time. 

Me and Abby at Mom's House with a horrible hair day, but who's really

 looking at me anyways :)

Grandma and Abby

Marshall and my cousin AJ ( 1 Yr. Old ) 

Random Pictures

Well, this is my last week with Abigail until I go back to work. I'm so sad, I don't even want to think about it. I had the opportunity to go back to Sprint, so that's what I'm doing. The health benefits, 401k and PTO time are things I just couldn't pass up. As much as I hate mean customers sometimes, the company is great to work for.

So our Internet connection is finally back up to speed so I can upload pictures now. Here are a few from the last week or so.

Starting to hold onto toys

Enjoying a relaxing stroll outside

At Aunt Jessica's Birthday party

Abigail's 2 mth. photo for her baby book

♥ 2 Months Already ♥

Abigail is going to be 2 months old on the 27th !!! I cannot believe it! It seems like just yesterday we were bringing her home. Now our little girl is sleeping through the night ( most nights ) and she is starting to do really well with taking naps so I can get some work done. 

Looks like Ill be going back to work here soon. Most likely the first week in May. Marshall's grandmother will be watching her on the days we both work. 

Abby is starting to use her voice box a lot more. She coo's and screams when she gets excited. It's the cutest thing. She smiles when you greet her in the morning. She loves laying on her changing table. She will lay there and be content just staring at the walls and all her stuffed animals on the shelf. She is starting to turn her head when she hears my voice. I'm so proud of her. I'm having issues uploading pictures again, so Ill post more later. 

Easter cont...

Ok here are some more pics....

Me and Abby. The picture is blurry and it makes me sooooo mad!!

Abby's cousin AJ and his first Easter Egg Hunt walking around with mommy

 

Abby's First Easter

Ok, I must say I'm very upset at our camera. Their is a setting that was changed somehow and now almost all of our pictures are blurry. So, we didn't get that many Easter pictures that turned out good. Abby did great at Aunt Jo's house. She is still too young to go Easter egg hunting but next year she should be old enough. She took two good naps for us yesterday and slept pretty well through the night. Sometimes she wakes up for her night feeding and sometimes she doesn't. Haven't really figured out what makes her decision but oh well, I'm not complaining. 

So enjoy some photos below and in the meantime, I have to try and figure out my camera.....or buy a new one :)

This is at Aunt Jo's house while she opens her Easter gift from her Great Grandma

This was before we left the house. I tried to get a good picture of her in her Easter dress, but she can't hold herself up too well. The animals are Easter gifts from her grandparents. 

I will have to upload more later because Blogger is acting up now.....

1 Month Check Up

Our little girl has grown soooo much in the last month. She now weighs 9 lbs. 14 oz. ! That's 2 pounds she has gained since birth. Her health is great. Poor thing did not like her shot in her leg today. She screamed and I cried :( . But she is ok now, sleeping away. Speaking of sleep, she had been doing VERY well with sleeping through the night recently. I'm not getting my hopes up, but for the past 3 days she has been sleeping between 5-6 hours strait! And take 2 good naps during the day too. I love it! I finally have time to do homework and eat lunch. 

The Proofs Are In !

We FINALLY got the digital rights to Abigail's photos today. We have been waiting for almost two weeks! Below are the web files of the images we chose. I must brag though; the photographer loved the picture of Abby in the hat that she used it for her next promotional post card design that she hands out for advertisements. She also will be putting some of her pictures up in a doctor's office at Robinwood Medical Center, which happens to be Marshall's doctor for display with a few other babies. Maybe she's on her way to Hollywood...(we would never do that ). 

If you would like to get prints made of any of the images below DON'T copy these on the blog because they have her logo on them and the file is not print quality. All you have to do is email me ( bellawool@gmail.com ) and let me know which ones you would like and I will email you the print file that you can then take to Target, Walmart or where ever to have prints made in whatever size you want. There is a site which the photographer recommended to us to get prints made. It's called mpix.com. This is the site that she uses for her own prints. They are VERY reasonably priced. I suggest looking their first because you can just upload the image to their site and they will send the prints in the mail to you. 

Random Pictures

Here are some more random pictures from this week. Abby is now 4 weeks old! Man, where is the time going?

Fuss'n

Bailey Loves Abby

Tummy Time

 

Bath Time

First nap in crib

I'm trying to slowly get Abby use to sleeping in her crib. Here is a picture of her first nap I took yesterday. Looks comfy to me. She only stayed asleep for about 1/2 hours though.

Who Does She Look Like?

For anyone who has had a hard time wondering who Abigail looks like, maybe this will clear things up for you....

Abby on the left, Marshall on the right

Ordering Pictures

If anyone had planned on purchasing pictures from the website, please contact us first. We want to buy a digital package so we can have copies to print on our own. It's much cheaper this way and if you planned on purchasing prints we can all pitch in an buy the digital package instead and save a whole lot a money! 

Access Code For Pics

Sorry ya'll. The access code is 'tara' for the pics. I thought the link took you directly to it but I guess not. Let us know what you all think!

Abigail's First Photo Shoot

We had Abby's pictures taken last thursday. They turned out wonderful. They are available online to view and order if you wish. They are very expensive so it will be hard for us to choose the ones we like the most.  Just click on the link below to see all the proofs. Hope you enjoy! 

http://andersonphotographs.com/photocart/index.php?do=photocart&viewGallery=1110

In the meantime, enjoy some FREE photos below of Abigail after her first bath and her 1 week old picture :)

Family Love

Here is a picture of Abby and her cousin AJ and her Auntie Chantea

The First Week

So we have survived our first week home with Abigail. I wouldn't change it for the world. The hardest part so far is getting her on an eating schedule. My milk supply just came in and we are trying to make sure she is getting enough to eat. Sometimes she eats 10 times a day and other times she only eats 5 or 6 times a day. 

She sleeps constantly through out the day. The lactation consultant calls it "milk drunk" because she seems to pass out for hours and hours after getting a good feed. The nights have not been that bad. I expected worse, but hey, we are only a week into this so what do I know. She slept for 6 hours strait on Saturday nite! I debated waking her to feed her but decided not to. I figured she will wake when she is hungry. 

We've had a lot of visitors this week too. Everyone lov

es her. She is so beautiful! We had our first doctor's appt. on Saturday. All they did was weight her and look into her ears and eyes. She weighed 7lbs 12oz at birth, left the hospital at 7lbs 1oz and now weighs 7lbs 4oz. So she is gaining her weight back. 

Im starting to finally feel better from the surgery. I can get up and down a lot better now than when we first came home. Im still taking the pain meds the doctor gave me, but other than that, I'm doing great. Can't wait to loose this water weight from the IV and start exercising again! 

Enjoy some more pictures below :)

Birth Story

Baby Abigail was finally born on March 2, 2009 at 11:39pm
Weigth: 7 lbs. 12 oz.
Height: 21 inches

My story:
We went in on the 2nd at 7am for an induction. Started induction medicine around 9am. After 9 hours, I was check and stuck at 3cm and 60% effaced at best. The doc decided to strip my membranes. After that, I was given Pitocin via my IV to really get things moving. At 6pm I asked for an Epidural because the pain was getting intense to handle. At around 7pm, with still no progress, the doctors broke my water with no success. Apparently, little Abby's head was acting as a plug and did not want to water to be released.

At around 8pm, the doctors noticed her heartbeat was irregular. Her heart rate would dip every time I had a contraction. They decided to stop the Pitocin for about an hour and see if her heart rate stays steady, which it does. At this point, I needed to have a catheter put in because of the Epidural.

At 9pm, they decided to restart the Pitocin one more time. After 10 minutes, her heart rate began to decelerate again with every contraction. She was in too much stress and the doctors could not figure out why. They assumed that either the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck or she was lodged in my pelvic and was not descending.

They checked tuned off the Pitocin again and decided to give me another hour to progress on my own or I will have to have a Cesarean section. Well, after 1 1/2 hours, no progress. I was stuck at 4cm after 14 hours of labor and still had a thick cervix.

At this point, I was so tired and don't think I was really with it. The doctors were not willing to try anymore induction methods because Abby was too stressed over the intense contractions. So the decision was made that I would have to have an emergency Cesarean section.

At 11pm, I was rolled into the operating room and prepped. Anesthesia put the numbing meds in through my Epidural and started to numb me. However, it took the max dosage to get me to the point where I could not feel anything. Finally, Marshall was able to come in and sit with me. They our precious little bundle was born. Marshall followed her to the nursery while they cleaned and checked her as they were finishing me.

At some point in the middle of stitching me up, I realized that I started to feel the pressure from tugging and pulling more and more. It got to the point where I was screaming from the pain. The anesthesia man had to knock me out for the rest of the procedure. This meant a longer recovery time and more time in between me being able to see Abby.

FINALLY, at around 2am, I was able to be taken from recovery back to the room and my dear sweet Abigail was brought into me. The family support was amazing. I couldn't not have done this with out Marshall or anyone else that was there to support me.

Turns out Abby was stuck in my pelvic wall with umbilical cord wrapped around her stomach twice. The reason I was not progressing through labor was due to her head being stuck inside my pelvic wall and unable to descend any further. So this meant that the doctor had to cut through my stomach muscles to reach her and pull her out.

If, it wasn't for the fact that they had to cut my muscles, I would be feeling great right now because the incision is healing very well. Marshall has been an amazing support and has taken on the mommy role most of the time because it takes me almost 5 minutes to get up if she happens to cry etc.

Well, I don't want to get into other details about that right now. We were released from the hospital on Thursday afternoon. We are all home and healthy.

It has taken me almost 3 hours to finish this post due to 'new' responsibilities :)
 

Below are some pics. Keep checking back because there will more man more to come!

Abigail Mackenzie is finally here!