Sisters

I am trying to get better at documenting the things going on with the girls, but these first few weeks have really kept me on my toes. I opened my shop for a few days and Mike had his tonsils out. So I am finally getting around to it. Violet has been great with Grace. She is so sweet and soft with her. There hasn't been any lashing out or anger towards Grace and I am so thankful for that! She always wants to touch her and wake her up from naps. So we are trying to work on that a little bit. She wants to be right by grace when I am changing her clothes. She wants to be in the tub and helping with washing her too. She is pretty good about giving her a binkie when I ask. It sort of depends on Vi's mood for how helpful she is. Sometimes Vi will try to brush Grace's hair or put something on her and is a little too rough. But, honestly she has been so great and I could not ask for a sweeter big sister. She always talks in a soft little voice to her and tells her it is okay and that Violet is here. It's darling. I am happy they have each other. Vi did act out towards Mike and I for the first few weeks right after we brought Grace home, but luckily she has gotten over that and is back to her normal diva, toddler self. I got a few pictures of the girls the other day after I had changed Grace. They have turned into some of my favorites. It just melts my heart to finally see them together. 

Grace at 1 month

This lovely little girl has one of the sweetest dispositions you will ever meet. There is just something about her that is so feminine and dainty. She adores her dad and Vi. Whenever either of them are around her she settles and watches them. She gave us some of her first real smiles just this last week. They were a little bit harder to come by at first, but now she is easy to light up. She is right up there with Vi as a gassy, gassy baby. My poor kids have got it rough in that department. She has this cry that is just heartbreaking when she has gas. I have tried changing my diet but it doesn't seem to help much. So we stick her in the bouncer and try to push her legs up whenever is gets bad. Luckily that is about the only struggle she has. Nothing else really seems to get her very worked up. She really doesn't like to be alone either. She is a good eater and sleeper. She had a little bit of trouble with swallowing too much air while nursing. She seems to have gotten over that in the first few weeks.

She is smaller than Vi was at her age, even though they weighed practically the same amount. She is still in newborn clothes( she is now 7 weeks old). She can wear some 0-3 month stuff but it is all pretty big on her still. She gives me a good 5 hour stretch at night and then a 3-4 hour one after that. She goes to bed around 9 so unless i go to bed early I miss some of that good long one. She is a great nurser and spits up a lot more than Vi did. She loves the car, which has been so awesome! Vi hated the car so much at her age. It really made it a lot harder to go out and do things and not lose my mind from all the crying. She is still not sure about the bath. The first few times we put her in she screamed and was not a fan. Now she just sits there with a bit of a panicked look on her face. Its pretty funny. Vi loves to help with giving her tubs. 

We are adjusting to two and it is going pretty smoothly so far, but we have our first flight in a week and a half and ill be doing it solo. I'm just a tad bit nervous for that one. Both girls are making life fun, crazy and pretty adorable( minus the total sass and tude Vi gives out on occasion). We are just so happy to have our girls.

Meet Grace

It only took me 6 weeks to get Grace's birth story up. With everything that we have had going on I find that to be an accomplishment. It has been a crazy crazy month and a half for us but this sweet girl has made life so wonderful. I am just going to jump in with our little story.

For the last 6 weeks of my pregnancy I was dealing with a separated pelvic joint. It was pretty painful. I was having a hard time doing just about everything. I couldn't pick up Violet without a good amount of pain. I couldn't sleep because turning at all was like a sharp knife in my pelvis. I couldn't bend over or even stand for too long. It was getting very hard to do all the everyday things that I needed to do. I brought it up with my OB and she told me she would be willing to induce me at 39 weeks. Long story short we decided to go through with the induction. My mom flew in on Sunday and Monday night I went into the hospital to start the whole process.

At first everything went great. They began the process to open my cervix. I chose to do the pill that they insert every 4 hours. I wanted to get things started as soon as possible. After about 8 hours I was progressed enough for them to give me Pitocin. I didn't really get any sleep because the contractions kept me up, but by late morning I was dilated to a 6 and I decided I was ready to get my epidural. I was a bit nervous about that because when I had Vi it took them 4 times to get it in and it hurt. This time went perfectly, and I was so relieved. It didn't hurt and was fast and I was feeling great. It's so nice once it kicks in because you feel like you can relax so much more. At 12:00 p.m. my water broke on its own and I was so excited because I thought we would have a baby in no time. Up until this point the whole process had been smooth and calm.This is where things started going not so well.

I started to have a sharp pain on my right side and I could really start to use my legs. This had happened with Vi and for 20 minutes I had horrible contractions during her labor. I was getting really nervous that the same thing was going to happen. I told the doctor and she told me she wasn't going to give me more because she wanted me to feel the contractions. I figured they thought this baby was going to be out really soon so I went with it. They started to have me push but about 15 minutes in my body just started convulsing. I was starting to experience pain I had never felt before. I was shaking like crazy and couldn't even breath during the contractions. The pain came on so fast and so strong. I didn't get to experience the build up of pain that natural childbirth gives you. I went from 0-100 in a matter of minutes. When I would try to push I couldn't control my body enough to do it. I was shaking so hard. At this point I was begging for more epidural. There was a lot of crying and squeezing of mikes hand during it all. The doctor came in and decided to take her time telling me about all my options. This was when Mike had pretty much had enough and told the doctor that I had pushed out a baby before with a full epidural and that I could do it again. They went and got the people from anesthesia and as they came to give me a new dose they realized that the valve at my shoulder had come loose and the epidural was leaking all down my back. This would explain why I was feeling everything. So they fixed that and gave me a new dose. 30 minutes later I was still feeling everything and I was about ready to give up I was in so much pain. At this point I didn't understand why it wasn't kicking in. I once again was pleading for someone to do something. They had me sit up to check the needle in my back and they realized that my epidural had come clean out. So at this point they had to get the team to come back in. However, someone didn't put the room number in the page so it took so long for them to get there. In total it took 2 hours from when I began to feel the pain until I got a new epidural. Unfortunately my body just couldn't really settle down after all that. I had to go on oxygen and my body just could not stop shaking( it didn't stop shaking until the next morning). They gave my body some time to relax and calm down a bit before they tried to have me push. I got to sleep for a little bit and just take it easy. It was really nice and I was so grateful to not be in so much pain. There was one nurse in particular that was so sweet and nice throughout everything. She held my hand through a lot of contractions and was so supportive. She was talking to me and was amazed that I was able to hold still during the 2nd epidural. I told her that I had just been praying like crazy that I wouldn't get a contraction while he was doing it and it was pretty much the only time where I didn't have one back to back. She told me that she had been praying for me too. It was just a really sweet moment for me. There are so many great people out there and there were a few during this whole process that I just wanted to hug.

When it came time for me to start pushing again the doctors came in and noticed that Grace was face up and her head was tilted back. She was also slightly turned. So although I was pushing and pushing she kept getting stuck on my pelvic bone. They pulled out an ultrasound machine to look at her and see what our options were. The doctors told me that unless I could get her past that bone I would have to have a C-section. At that point I was panicking. I knew Mike was getting his tonsils out in 2 weeks and I am terrified of surgery/needles/blood/knives. Then the best doctor came in to talk to me and she was like my life coach. She told me I could do it and that I had done it before and I was strong and I could get that baby out. Her motivation and faith in me honestly helped so much. She told me if I could just get her far enough down they could use the vacuum to get her out. She had to leave to deliver another baby and a resident stayed with us. We all became determined to get her out. I was so tired at this point and my epidural began to ware off again!! So I was feeling a lot again. We pulled out the bar over the bed and grabbed a sheet for me to pull on. 2 nurses were holding my legs because they were still shaking so much. Mike was at my back pushing down with each contraction. After some serious pushing and help from the resident we got her low enough. The doctor came back in and she told me I could get her out without the vacuum. Once she had come down past the bone in was a matter of minutes before she was out. I have never been more relieved to be done with something in my entire life. Violet's birth was so easy and she was out so fast. I could have never expected my 2nd birth to be so hard.

 Our sweet Grace was pretty battered and bruised. Her poor forehead was so swollen and purple from hitting against my pelvic bone over and over again. Her whole face was just swollen and puffy. It took about a week and a half for it all to go down. Our doctor told us she would probably have a pretty bad headache from it all. That just about broke my heart. We are so so happy she is here and so glad labor is over haha. She was born at 8:20 at night and weighed 8 pounds exactly. She was 21 inches long and just a sweetheart. She has strawberry blond hair and a fare complexion. We love her and could not be happier to have her in our family. I am so happy and grateful to have her. Bringing a baby into this world is no easy thing. This pregnancy took a tole on me in such a different way. It makes you appreciate those sweet babies that come into this world so much more. I am so thankful to be a mom and so thankful for the 2 beautiful girls I have been blessed with.

 Check out that swollen forehead. You won't be able to notice how bad it was until you see her 2 weeks later with all the swelling gone.

She has the cutest little bird legs