Lily's first month

Lily and I were in Seattle when she turned 1 month. We went to spend a week with my in-laws while Dusty caught up with school work. It turns out that he likes being home with Lily much more than he likes school so he started to fall behind a little bit. He's all caught up now and we're hoping it doesn't happen again.

The first month with Lily flew by! We had lots of good company and a little alone time with her. We just love her so much! She's loves to stare intently right over your shoulder and fakes sleep sometimes. She always growls when she eats or right when she falls asleep. It reminds me of a cat. She adores bath time. She could sit in the water all day if we'd let her. We've started making bath rime a nightly ritual since she likes it so much. It relaxes her right to sleep. Lily lover to swing in her swing and will sleep for hours at a time in it if we let her. She also likes to go for walks and drives. Any motion puts her to sleep. She started cooing... well I've been told its cooing but its really just a lot of grunting when she is happy. She outgrew all of her newborn clothes which made me super sad, I loved how tiny they were! I love playing dress-up with her. She almost always has a flower or bow on. Dusty keeps telling me that she hates them but I'm pretty sure that it's him that hates them and not her. She is just so cute, we can't get enough of her.

Church Debut

Lily went to church for the first time while we were staying with Randy and Susie. My mom bought her that super cute little dress. I absolutely love it! She lasted through sacrament meeting and then we went home. It was so nice to go back to church after staying home for a month.

Daddy Time

Dusty and Lily adore each other and I think it is the most wonderful thing in the world. He has a hard time going to school in the morning because he want's to spend all of his time holding Lily. I have to get all of my Lily fix out before he gets home at night because he will hold her until we put her to bed.

This is how they snuggle after he gets home from school

Reading Lily her first book, Yertle the Turtle

She loves sucking on his nose, I told him he had to stop because it was gross!

We left him for a week so that he could catch up on his schoolwork. He wouldn't let go of her to put her in the carseat.

I am so blessed to have a husband that loves his little girl as much as Dusty does. 

Grandmom Comes for a Visit

My mom came and stayed with us for two weeks. I can't remember the last time I had this much one on one time with her and I LOVED it! We crafted, went for a lot of walks, ate great food and just hung out. I am so grateful that she was able to take that much time off of work to come stay with us.

Burping Lily the day my mom got into town

We celebrated Lily's 2 week birthday with Angel Food cake (we made a new Angel Food cake every few days)

We took some more pictures of Lily while she was sleeping. We tried to get some family one's but Lily wouldn't cooperate. 

We went out to lunch after getting Lily's pictures taken

Right before my mom left, it was so sad to see her go! We're excited to see her in October for Lily's blessing! 

First Photoshoot

With my mom here we decided to be brave and take Lily up to Spokane get some newborn photo's taken. Lily was not a fan. She slept the entire way to the photo studio and then cried for most of her pictures. I hope this isn't a preview of how the future is going to be. The highlight of the shoot was when she peed all over Dusty, he handled it like a champion though. Overall it was a super stressful photo shoot but I'm grateful that we took the time to do it.

 

Little fingers, little toes

I wanted to try to capture a how little Lily is so that we don't forget. She was napping so perfectly that I couldn't pass up the opportunity. It's amazing to me that someone so tiny and perfect is mine!

Smiles

Lily was so adorable and flashed me her first smile. I hope to see more of it soon!

So Much Company

Grammy left on monday and Susie left on tuesday but she came back for the weekend. She brought Cole and Randy back with her to meet Lily. It looks like we're going to have a lot of company coming in and out for the next couple of months. Company is hard for me. Growing up, all of my family lived so close that we didn't usually have them come over and sleep. I'm not saying that I don't like company, its just hard for me to figure out what to do with them especially because Pullman is so small. But that's my problem and not yours.

Randy and Cole were so cute when they met Lily. We were wondering how Cole would take to babies since he is the youngest but he and Lily were fast friends. Sometimes he just gets up and walks out of the room without saying a word. When he comes back he's washed his hands and then he informs us its his turn to hold Lily. Its fantastic.  We're so grateful that Lily has such a big family that loves her!

We took Lily and walked around the Palouse Empire Fair. I wanted to see the display that i'd worked on for the health department in action. It won first place, which was a nice way for my last project for the health department to end.

First Walk

For some reason I was feeling really ambitious and decided to take Lily for a walk. We walked up to campus to see Dusty. It's a couple miles to get there and by the time is was halfway there I was regretting the decision. I don't think i'll be feeling this ambitious again any time soon.

I finally got to change a diaper

Dusty and Susie are so helpful and they do everything they can think of and leave very little to me. It's been really nice but I realized recently that I've never changed Lily's diaper. She was four days old before I'd ever changed her diaper. It was quite the experience. Dusty and Susie came to watch and take a picture to prove that I've actually done it.

Great Grammy

We were so blessed to be able to have Susie (Dusty's mom) and her mom, Grammy come out and stay with us a few days after Lily was born. It was so much fun for Lily to meet her Great Grammy and her Grandma (but we call her Nana) at the same time. Susie and Grammy were so helpful in getting us settled in back at home.

Great Grammy

Grammy took some great photo's of Lily

Susie gave Lily her first bath at home

Meet Lily

I've been super hesitant to write Lily's birth story. Not because I don't want to share it but because, of all the things I've ever done, giving birth to Lily was the easiest of them all. I know that lots of women have a tough time with labor and have horrific stories. Because of that, I didn't want anyone to feel that I was flaunting how easy of a time I had and have been super hesitant to write this on the blog. My doctor told me over and over again that most women would give anything to have a labor like mine. I guess I was made for childbirth... I've found my calling in life ;). So here's the story of how our little Lily-Pad came to us.

Thursday August 29:

I had a doctors appointment at 3:30. I left work and went alone, which was odd because Dusty went to almost all of my appointments. Dr. Campbell had told me the week before that he thought I could go into labor anytime and that I probably wouldn't make my due date. He was surprised to see me at my appointment. I was dilated to a 2.5 almost a 3 and he offered to strip my membranes. I let him because I was super ready for Lily to be here. He kept teasing me that he was messing up his weekend by doing it because he was the on call doctor for the next four days. I just laughed and told him I was sorry. He said I'd have mild cramping afterwards and not to worry about it.

I went and picked up Dusty from school right after my appointment and we just sat at home for the rest of the night. I had cramping, but I didn't think anything of it.

Friday August 30:

I woke up at 4:17 with a contraction. It wasn't too bad, though, so I didn't wake Dusty up. I went to the bathroom and eventually found my way to the living room. I tried laying on the couch but I was too nervous so I paced the living room, drank water and timed contractions. They were about 20 minutes apart and I could definitely talk through them so I just kept counting. At 6:30 Dusty got up to get ready for school and I told him what was happening. By this point my contractions were irregular and varying from three to ten minutes apart. This was supposed to be my last day of work and I really wanted to go in and fill out my timecards, so Dusty kindly called the hospital to see what they said about coming in. The nurse informed him that as long as I could talk through my contractions, they weren't consistently under five minutes and I was comfortable that I shouldn't come in. Because of that we decided that I should go to work.

I got myself ready for work and Dusty finished packing my hospital bag because we assumed that I wasn't going to come home before she was born. On my way to work I called my mom and told her that I thought we were having a baby today. She was excited and chatted with me until I got to work about 30 minutes later. By the time I got to work my contractions were about 6 minutes apart and I realized that driving to Colfax probably wasn't a good idea. I went in and told the only other person there that I was having contractions and she thought I was crazy for coming to work. I agreed and asked her to watch the front phones while I went to the bathroom (on Fridays I was the secretary, but only on fridays... it was an odd arrangement). While in the bathroom I realized that I needed to head to the hospital. I'd been at work a grand total of 15 minutes at this point. When I got back into my office I ran into my boss. Another one of my coworkers had told him that I was having contractions and he asked if he could drive me back to Pullman. I agreed and off we went. My boss Troy kindly prattled to me about inconsequential things on the drive and we timed my contractions.

After we got back to Pullman, we met Dusty at WSU, dropped off Troy at his house (his wife was going to drive him back to work) and headed to the hospital. We were at the hospital by 9:00 am. As we walked in, the nurses said they were expecting us (they should have told Dusty that they thought it would be that fast and I wouldn't have gone to work). They put me on the monitor and watched my progress for about 20 minutes. By this point my contractions were between four and five minutes apart and Lily's heartbeat was in the 150's. After monitoring that they decided to check to see how dilated I was. I was afraid i was going to be one of those women who came in and hadn't progressed at all but I was pleasantly surprised that I was dilated to a 5.5 by that point. They officially admitted me and the waiting game began.

The nurse asked me what my pain management plan was and I told her epidural. She was surprised because she'd thought that I'd been handling the pain really well but she called the anesthesiologist. I got my epidural around 11:30. It honestly didn't hurt like I'd been told. I didn't feel a thing while it went in and it kicked in quickly. It was perfect because I could totally move my legs and support myself but I couldn't feel any pain or discomfort.

About an hour later my water broke on its own. I thought for sure that I had peed my pants because I was drinking apple juice like it was going out of style and I assumed that I'd just lost control of my bladder. I was super nervous to tell the nurse but it turned out to be my water breaking. That was a relief! Around 1:00 my OBGYN came and checked me. By this point I was dilated to an 8. He said that he would be back around 5:00 to check again.

I slept the rest of the afternoon. I was terrible company for Dusty but it felt great to just sleep. I'd wake up when the nurses came in but besides that I was passed out. As it got close to 5:00 I started feeling pressure in the lower right side of my abdomen and the nurse let me get some additional pain medication to help the feeling go away. It turned out to be Lily trying to get out on her own.

Around 5:15 the nurse came in and started getting me ready to push. We'd done a few trial pushes by the time the doctor got there around 5:30. The doctor told me that pushing out a baby was like pushing out a big poop and I informed him that I was really good at pooping since I'm always a little sick to my stomach (I don't really follow my gluten-free diet as well as I should sometimes) so getting Lily out shouldn't be a problem. I started officially pushing at 5:33. In between pushes I'd lay back and laugh and chat with the doctor and nurses. My nurse kept telling me that this was the quietest labor she'd done for a really long time and that she was impressed. When we started pushing Lily's head had about half an inch to go before it started coming out, she'd already decided that it was time to come. I had no problems pushing. Lily was coming so smoothly that Dr. Campbell even let me rest a little because he didn't want me to tear. I pushed for 41 minutes before Lily officially arrived.

Lily was born at 6:14 pm. She weighed 6 lbs 13 oz and was 19 inches long. She is beautiful. On the Apgar scale she scored a 9. She was (and still is) perfect. We postponed her shots and everything else so that I could try to feed her and Dusty could get to know her during the first hour. She didn't cry hardly at all and instead prefered to stare around the room. We stayed in the hospital until Sunday and then took her home and it's been wonderful ever since! Lily gained weight quickly and hasn't ever had a problem eating so we consider her to be the perfect baby!

38 weeks pregnant, 1 week before Lily was born

Our last awkward photo with just Dusty and I. We snapped it in the car at the hospital

All checked in, with my first big cup of apple juice

I don't usually like jello but I thought it was amazing in the hospital

Dusty took a million picutres of me sleeping, this is pretty much how I looked most of the day

Snuggling Lil right after she was born

Getting weighed

 First picture with daddy

First picture with mommy (after mommy got to shower)

Our little princess. 

First family picture

 Dusty and Lily watched football all day Saturday in the hospital

Getting ready to go home

We had the same nurse for all three days we were at the hospital. She was AMAZING!

First time coming home

This is the picture they put up on the hospital website of Lily. She hates that dress. Every time I put her in it she is ornery. She isn't usually ornery, unless she's in that dress.