The Arrival of Baby Lanora Lindsay

Hello everyone, James gave you a quick sneak peak at our little baby Lanora (Lanie) Lindsay and I thought that I would now give you a little more meat to the story for those who may be interested (otherwise you can scroll down and get to the good part -which are the pictures of course).

Baby Lanie was due Thursday (Thanksgiving Day). Though I had been feeling good I had started to have some contractions on Wednesday which got my hopes up. Unfortunately they seemed to completely stop by Thursday and I was worried I was going to have a very late baby as is common in my family. I had been to the midwife earlier this week and it was just not looking like Baby wanted to come. So needless to say I was rather disappointed as the days came and went with no sign of a baby.

I had been going on many walks trying to get something going but they didn't seem to do the trick either until Thursday night when we were watching football on TV and I decided James and I needed to walk up by the Provo Temple where there are some really good and steep hills. After a 45 min hike up those hills we finally decided to go home to bed.

I went to bed around midnight with very few contractions but then woke up about 2:20 am to moderate contractions which quickly progressed to stronger, more frequent, and longer lasting contractions. After a few hours of pacing, trying to distract myself, etc. I woke James and we got ready to head to the hospital and arrived at 7:00 am. There they put me in a triage room and a nurse came to check on me and found I was dilated to a 5 and they were going to keep me! (three days ago I was only a 1.5 and had been that way for about 2 weeks).

The hospital was wonderful and got anesthesia to me right away and I was so grateful for an epidural. It made everything so wonderful. Then my midwives Jana and Sarah came in and checked me to find that I was to 6+and so they also broke my water. All I had to do now was wait to get to a 10. James and I tried to rest at this point.

By 11:00 I was a 9.5 and we decided to start pushing at 12:00pm. The midwives were awesome and coached me through pushing. Unfortunately Baby Lanora had been swimming in tons of amniotic fluid and so she never quite properly engaged herself. When the water broke she kind of engaged her head a little to the side which made for a harder time of pushing her out. We had tried to rotate her but after an hour and a half we decided to stop and have me lay on my side for a while hoping that she would then rotate herself. I was feeling less comfortable at this point and was therefore so grateful for the epidural.

Baby did not rotate like we had hoped and so the midwives decided to call the doctor in for fear that a vaccuum was going to have to be used. Fortunately by the time he got here he decided to have me push a little more and it was finally at that point that Lanie decided to start cooperating and turned herself. The doctor and midwives were both wonderful in getting Lanie here.

Lanie was born at 2:58 pm and weighed 8 lbs 8 oz and was 21.5 inches long (which was surprising to me). In the pics she is a little bruised, especially on the side that she was trying to come out on.

This is a dark picture, but I'm glad I took it. This is what I looked like right before I went to bed on Thursday night. I never really posted any baby bump pictures so I thought I would include this one and the next one.


This is another baby bump picture of me about two days before Lanie was born. I like it because the lighting makes it almost hard to see how big I actually was. (Which of course was huge!)


Now for the good stuff. Here is our sweet little girl. This was soon after her first bath. She cleaned up very well. I just can't get over how little her mouth is and how chubby her cheeks are.

Here's another of her after her bath. Poor baby with a black eye. She really wedged herself.


Here she is getting her bath. As I was going through all the pics I realized that we hardly gave her any privacy so I won't show you her bath pics, but I figured this one at least wouldn't offend anyone. ;)

Baby is Here

Out little Lanora was born just one day late. The birth process started at about 2:30 a.m. and Lanora was born at about twelve hours later. I guess twelve hours is pretty common for a first time baby. Paula suffered through the contractions until about 7:00 a.m. before we even went to the hospital. Once we were there she had to suffer a bit more until about 8:00 a.m. when she got the epidural. The epidural was great and Paula didn't have to suffer any more for the rest of labor.

Anyway, enought talk, here are some pics.

Lanora, moments after birth.

Lanora after a bath.

We'll post more pictures soon I'm sure. Just wanted to get this out to all those who were waiting.

15 Days!

We are just 15 days away from my due date, though I think my ideal day for having this kid would be on the 23rd which is just 13 days from now, but definitely not any sooner than that. I think my classes would certainly suffer if she came earlier than that. I can't believe how busy life has been.

We finally smoothed out the texture on the walls and painted our living room. It looks so much better and I would post a picture if I wasn't up on campus. Thanks so much Catherine and April for dedicating your Friday night, supplies, and expertise. It was very needed.

I will try to post some pics, but if I don't get around to it soon I am sorry, it will probably be a while after this baby comes.

Countdown Continued

Just an update, only 27 days left for baby to come. It's going by fast and I am realizing that there is still so much to do and so little time!

Birthdays!

This last Saturday was James' 29th B-day. It was a great day which started out with sleeping in, some house cleaning (James was so nice and helped me out even though it was his B-day) and then we ran errands. We bought a rug for the living room (but have decided it's too small), then we went window shopping and had a great lunch at Tucanos. That night we had friends and family over for cake and ice cream and gifts.

Some of these pics are from the birthday.

The Birthday Boy
(Please ignore the ugly walls, they are still a work in progress right now).

It was Catherine's B-day this week too so we had all the family over on Sunday.

Us after all the celebrations.
(My tummy kind of gets in the way of proper hugs now as you can see)

Countdown

Alot of my friends have put up baby widgets on their blogs counting down the days until they are due. I can't do this because it would make the time go by too slowly for me. Unfortunately I can't keep myself from counting down anyways until November 26th. As of today I only have 50 days to go. This sounds forever away but then I think about everything I need to do for school, house, and baby and I realize this is a very short time indeed. Amazing how days can speed by but be long all at the same time.

Updates

This may possibly be my last post at least until January or February when I have finished school, had a baby, and taken the NCLEX. So I thought I would just post a few updates on some things we did this summer on our house.

We have started a series of projects that are now needing to be finished such as our bathroom. Our bathroom looked like this when we bought the house. It did not have a bathroom fan much to our dismay.
Since these pictures we have installed a bathroom fan (Thank you handymen James and Niel) and have also pulled off two cabinets and painted the vanity a simple black. Unfortunately we now need to pull off another medicine cabinet, repair walls, texturize some spots to match the rest of the room, paint, and put up a new mirror and cabinet. I think the project has just gotten bigger since we bought the house, not smaller.

Another project was the flooring in the living room. Before the living room looked like this.


James and I very much wanted to get rid of the tile meant for a wood burning stove and I was thrilled when I found some laminate wood flooring on Craigslist for much cheaper than we could have gotten it in the store. As soon as I had it my sister and I had fun beginning demolition of the living room floor so that there was no going back. After tearing up much carpet (some lovely green shag included) the room looked like this.Then the family arrived to help us out of the mess I had gotten us into. Thank goodness. Niel, James, Jens, Catherine, and Joy all worked hard on the floor while Mom and I ran errands getting supplies and food for the crew. Half way through the job the room looked like this.

(What good brothers I have)


We were glad when April and her kids showed up to help us measure our flooring. It kept us from having to buy a box from the store.


Such good little workers.


The finished product.

By the end of the day we looked like this.

We were so grateful for everyone's help. The floors look so much better now. Unfortunately the room is in shambles again as we have decided to replace all the baseboards and to tear off all the paint/wallpaper. With school starting it may be a while before we see a finished product. :)

We've done many other projects that I don't have pics for, but they included repainting around windows and the carport, ripping up dead bushes/cutting up dead tree branches, tearing off painted wallpaper, etc, etc. Our goal however is to complete a few projects before November. We'll see if we can do it.