April 2011

What a month April has been...
Ella is still growing like a weed and continuing to pick up on new words she hears every day. The most recent thing she says that cracks us up, is she calls us by our first names. When Tim is in the restroom she pounds on the door yelling "DIM, DIM, you done DIM?" she yells for "herder" (me) when I am not in the same room as her. We correct her by telling her mommy or daddy, its cute though.

Tim finished school! Well at least at LDS Business college. He now has his associates degree. I am so proud of him, he beats himself up for not being further along in school but what can you do when you are working full time, trying to support a family and doing school all at once? He is an amazing father and husband, we couldn't ask for more! As of right now, he is looking for a higher paying job, in the marketing/advertising field. Pending what job he finds, the plan from here is to start at Weber State in the fall, working toward a bachelor's degree.

As for me, I am currently 35 weeks pregnant and so ready to be done!! at 31 weeks we had a scare. it was a Saturday night and I was having all sorts of back pain and contractions, I didn't think that they were close enough together to go in, so I sucked it up and kept playing games with our friends that were over.
Well... I was up all night! every 15 to 30 minutes in so much pain it was all I could do not to cry! I kept going in to sit on the toilet thinking maybe if I empty my bladder it will help, no such luck... about 830 in the morning (Sunday) Ella woke up, Tim was trying to give me a back massage, feed Ella breakfast and look up stuff on the Internet to see if he thought I was in labor. we got Ella in the bath and I told him I was sure that I was in labor and we had to go! we called my mom and sister who came over to take Ella. We were off... I was freaking out the whole way to the hospital. Every bump in the road made the pain worse, and I knew that if I were to give birth that day that my baby would have a rough time and be in the NICU. We got there and the first thing the nurse asked (just from the look on my face) was "has your water broke?" I said "no, I am only 31 weeks I can't have the baby yet!!" they rushed us straight to a room and got the monitors hooked up. I was having strong contractions 3 to 4 minutes apart. The baby's heart beat looked fine and she was kicking like she was angry between contractions. The pain by this point was so bad I was in tears and I couldn't stop myself. They gave me a shot in my arm to stop the contractions and came back 20 minutes later with pain killers. The contractions had not even slowed and they said it should have been working by now. The nurse told us that the OB on call was on her way in, and we might be having a baby today. I got really nervous and couldn't think of anything except what if she doesn't make it, her lungs are not ready, I want a healthy baby that I can take home... panic, which I think made the pain worse... when the Doctor came in she gave me another medicine through my IV this time to try and stop the contractions, they gave me more pain meds, and she informed us that there was a lot of blood in my urine and she had ordered an ultrasound to check my kidney function. Tim and I both calmed down a little at this point, kidney stones I could handle, but I didn't want the baby to come yet. The contractions slowed to only about 2 an hour and the ultra sound tech came in. He said he couldn't see any stones, but that didn't mean they weren't there. worry started again, if there were not stones then what was wrong, the pain in my back was getting worse not better. They showed the urologist the results of the ultra sound (this took hours) and finally around 6 pm they decided it was most likely kidney stones, they wanted to keep me in the hospital to monitor the baby and myself while I passed them, the next night I had still not passed these invisible stones and my doctors told me that it would really be best for me and the baby to have surgery to remove them. What!! surgery? I was 31 weeks pregnant! how could that be safe? We had lots of questions and our doctors were able to answer them all and reassure us that the baby and I would be fine. Tuesday afternoon I had surgery, they removed 3 huge stones! one was so big that it was cutting off function from my kidney, they said had they left it there I wouldn't have been able to pass it on my own and it could have caused permanent damage to my kidney. With in an hour after surgery I was nearly pain free! They sent me home and it took a few days to feel good enough to be completely on my own. Both of my wonderful Grandma's and my mom took turns babysitting me and Ella. My sister and my aunt cherry had Ella the whole time I was in the hospital. I cannot thank all my family and friends enough for all the help and prayers during that week. We made it through and now are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our little princess Alexis Marie.