Friday, November 28, 2014

Eva's first Thanksgiving - Momma's first.... (pictures and a long story)

Yesterday was Eva's first Thanksgiving. She slept lots. See?

Daddy napping, too.

Me 'n the kids.
Eva met her Aunt Sydney for the first time yesterday. It was love at first sight (for both of them):


She's been smiling lots when she's awake. Here Eva's smiling at Grandpa:


We've been having a beautiful time here. And it was a lovely Thanksgiving.

Yesterday was also my first time ever at the ER (Yayy!!... or not really so yay ;). About 10:45-ish it started really hurting right below my rib cage. At first it was just uncomfortable, but in a matter of minutes it was really bad. I mean, right up there with being in labor kind of painful. I have never been in that much constant pain.

So Chris and Steve gave me a blessing and then Chris drove me to the ER just off of Eagle road. He sped to get me there, (even more than he sped to get me to the hospital when I was in labor with Eva or Nathan) and we checked in at the desk. I was trying not to hyperventilate but it was really hard to breathe normally with that pain and through the tears. After what seemed like forever (but was probably only a few minutes), we were taken back to a room and a nurse took my vitals, asked a few questions and said the doctor would be in soon (by the way, when the nurse asked me to rate my pain, I said nine).

A few minutes after the nurse left, the pain started to subside. Quite quickly actually. At that point I was thinking "well... I'm really glad that I'm not in hardly any pain now, but I'll feel really foolish if we came here and all it was was that the turkey and mashed potatoes didn't agree with me." Still, the doctor came in and decided we should do some blood work, a urine sample, and an ultrasound.

We did all three of those, and during the ultra sound, the technician seemed to identify the source of the problem, but since she's not the doctor, she didn't tell me what it was. She just asked if it hurt when she pushed a little on a specific organ and when I said yes, she nodded as if she knew what was going on.

After waiting around a while longer, the doctor came in and told me that I had gall stones in my gall bladder. She said her recommendation was that I be admitted to the hospital and they'd do surgery to remove my gall bladder some time during the day (it was probably about 1 am at that point). Thankfully, my mom had her gall bladder out a few years ago, so I was already a little bit familiar with the procedure.

Eventually we got moved upstairs to the surgical ward, I had awesome nurses who took such good care of me. And I even got to try out one of those hospital grade breastfeeding pumps. Whoa. That guy works fast. That's all I'm saying.

Chris stayed there the rest of the night and we both got a few hours sleep. At about 9:00 the next morning, the surgeon came to my room to explain the procedure and answer any questions. He said if all went well, I'd be able to go home sometime after lunch.

They wheeled me down to pre-op at a little after 10:00. The anesthesiologist came and explained a bit about the meds they'd be giving me and side effects and such. He was probably my favorite doctor there. We ended up chatting (he and Chris and I) about our kids and marriage and stuff for 5-10 minutes. It was really fun.

Soon after that, they gave me my meds, and I don't even remember falling asleep. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the recovery room and was really drowsy (and a bit dizzy). They wheeled me to where I could finish recovering for a little bit (just enough to be able to go to the bathroom and walk a little without aid) and Chris joined me there. We left the hospital at about 1:30 pm, and the rest of today I've just been taking it easy at Chris's parents' house.

This adventure totally wasn't in my plans for the weekend, but in spite of that, here are a few of the things I'm grateful about in this experience:

  • Chris and Steve were able to give me a blessing, and God's timing meant that it was after we went to the ER that the pain went away. If God had timed the pain to go away right after they gave me a blessing, we probably wouldn't have gone to the hospital, and my disfunctional gall bladder would probably still be in me.
  • We were here at Kim and Steve's so I didn't have to worry about Nathaniel and Eva being well taken care of. I knew they'd be safe, happy and loved with Grandma and Grandpa (and Aunt Izzy, too!)
  • I'm still on Medicaid. If this had happened a few weeks from now, I wouldn't be, and it would have been a very expensive trip to Boise!
  • I didn't have a gall bladder attack until after I ate turkey and mashed potatoes and rolls and pie. And I didn't throw up. That might have ruined Thanksgiving food for me. 
  • My parents are just a phone call away and offered to let me and the kiddos stay with them next week once Chris has to start school again on Monday.
  • So many people were praying for me. I feel incredibly loved. Even some people I hardly know. (like Selby!) Thank you for thinking of me and caring!
  • The staff and doctors at St. Luke's were phenomenal. Everyone was so competent in their duties, and even more, they were friendly and talkative and supportive. I felt treated like a real person, and it seemed like everyone truly cared about me getting better.

When you add all those things together, I'd say that's evidence of a God who cares about me, and loves me more than I can know. Wouldn't you?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Jubilation

Yesterday morning I woke up to a triumphant shout:

"I did it!!"

Nathaniel had opened his door because it wasn't latched. He was soooo proud.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Birth 2.0

The three or so weeks leading up to Eva's birth were quite the mental/emotional struggle for me. Each week I felt like the contractions were "going up a notch" and getting us closer to the real thing, but because of how Nathaniel's labor/delivery went, I didn't really have a clue how many "notches" I still needed to go before we were at the real thing.

Enter Saturday, October 18th.

I'd had some uncomfortable contractions during the night, but by morning they had stopped being regular. One of the songs Chris wrote was being premiered up in Salt Lake that evening, and so his Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Tine came down for the premier. They took us out to lunch, took us shopping, and then drove us up to the concert in Salt Lake. I'd been having sporadic contractions throughout the day, but I wasn't timing them, and they weren't increasing in intensity.

During the concert I started realizing that the contractions were coming at a fairly consistent rate. We went out to eat afterwards and during dinner, the contractions were starting to get kind of painful. I was having a harder and harder time concealing them from everyone else (As a side note, I'm not exactly sure why I felt like I needed to conceal them, maybe I just didn't want anyone to fuss over me or worry about me? Whatever the reason, I just wanted to keep them to myself).

On the ride home (about a 45 min drive) I began timing them. Sure enough they were consistently coming 3-5 minutes apart and they were getting harder and harder to deal with.

As soon as we got home, I told Chris that I thought this was the real thing. I was fairly certain our little girl was on the way. So... now we had to figure out what to do with Nathaniel while we went to the hospital. A good friend told me we could bring him over to her house, but I couldn't get a hold of her. I tried calling my mother to let her know and see if she could start making the two-hour trek down to our house, but no one at home answered the phone (and no answer on any cell phones either).

Finally I tried my brother and asked if he could maybe just hang out on our couch until we got a hold of someone who could take his place (he had a one-month-old baby at the time and also worked early morning custodial). He answered his phone and was able to come over.

During all this, the contractions were getting hard. I was sitting on our exercise ball trying to do anything that felt like it helped me cope with the pain of each contraction. I also began singing during them. Each made-up song went something like ,"Oh maaaan, this is reeeeeaaally uncomfortable right nooow! I really really wiiiish that this contraction would end! I really really hope that this is the reeeeall thing because if it's not, then I don't want to know what the reaaaaal thing feeeeeeels like!! etc. etc. etc."

Hey, you do what you gotta do, right?

Once Stephen was on his way, I had the idea to try calling my aunt who lives kiddy-corner from my parents to just see if she knew where they might be, or if they were home. She answered and said she'd go over and knock on their door to let my mom know I was in labor.

Stephen arrived, I grabbed my hospital bag, and Chris and I drove over to the hospital. On the way over there (about a 5 min drive) my mom called. Yay! She sounded super apologetic. She said that they'd all been watching The Two Towers downstairs in the basement and didn't hear the phone ring. They were at the battle of Helm's Deep and it was really intense when they finally heard pounding on the door from my aunt.

Very appropriate I thought, that while my family was watching the orcs' chant of war, I was facing my own intense battle and chanting/singing to get through it.

We filled my mom in on what was happening and said we'd call her as soon as we knew for sure that I was staying at the hospital.

We checked in at a little after 10:00pm and were shown to a room. The nurses came in a little while later and checked me. Melanie, who did the checking said, "Oh, yeah you are totally having this baby. You are at like a seven!" Whhhaaa? a seven!? I had nooo idea that's what a seven felt like! I felt kind of proud of myself, but the first thing I asked was, "Is that too late for an epidural?" "Nope," Melanie replied, "but we gotta step on it".

Quickly the nurses got the anesthesiologist who gave me a very big dose of epidural stuff. I don't know how far along I was by the time it took effect, but I think I was further than a seven by that point (my contraction-coping songs and noises were getting stranger and stranger by that point, but thankfully no one commented :). They also called my doctor, and did all the other things like hooking up monitors, asking me questions about my health, etc.

My water broke a little while after the epidural really started kicking in, and I could feel as our little girl descended the rest of the way down into pushing position.

By midnight, we were at pushing time. My doctor had arrived a couple of minutes earlier and we started pushing. I was asked if I wanted a mirror to which I tried to politely but firmly say "no." My doctor, the two nurses and Chris all cheered me on with every push. Once she started crowning, my doctor exclaimed, "She has so much hair!" (woohoo! I thought. I'd certainly had enough heartburn for her to have a lot of hair.) She really was ready to come by then. Nathan took over two hours of pushing before he came out. With our little girl, I pushed for about 20 minutes. She emerged all beautiful and blue and squirmy and as soon as she was cleaned off and weighed and stuff, I got to hold her and nurse her.

Our Eva Magdalena Machado was born at 12:21am, October 19, 2014. She was 20 inches long and weighed 8lbs 8oz.


Eva and I spent the normal two-days in the hospital and have both recovered well. She's even more mellow than her older brother, and I thought he was an easy newborn. Nathaniel loves his little sister and calls her, "Uh-va."


We're happily adjusting to life as a family of four. There are some challenging times, but there are also lots of beautiful moments each day.


Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Siblings

Today, Eva fell off the couch. She was fine (there happened to be lots of pillows), I think it just startled her, but her momma felt horrible. Nathaniel was all concerned when he saw my tears. He came and sat by me on the couch and started wiping them away. Unfortunately, because Eva was laying on my chest, that meant he kept smacking her in the face. Sometimes being the little sister is hard.

Nathaniel likes to go try and pick Eva up when she's sad. He doesn't get very far, but the cuteness melts my heart.

Trying to pick her up