Still Waiting . . .

Well, no baby yet. I do feel like I’ve got everything ready now, just about. I got all of the baby clothes out and put onto the shelves, and I set out the coming-home-from-the-hospital clothes, Courtland’s new red fleece manta (blanket) that I made him, the infant carseat, and the winter carseat cover, so those are all ready to go to the hospital. I scheduled a photo of all 5 boys for the end of February. And I got down the basinet and put it out in our bedroom. And I went on eBay to find a baby book for Courtland (since the baby books that I’ve used for the other boys have been discontinued at the Hallmark stores, so I have to find one online if I want it to be the same size and style as the others). I found one that would work and I bid on it, but I just found out that I didn’t win it on eBay. So, that’s the only thing I don’t have ready yet, I’ll have to find another baby book. Maybe that’s what Courtland’s waiting for – he doesn’t want to come until we have everything totally prepared for him. :)

I have been feeling like I’ve been pretty good about being patient for the end of this pregnancy (probably since I know from experience by now that it is more work and you get less sleep after the baby comes, no matter how uncomfortable you get at the end of the pregnancy). But I have to admit that when I had those contractions for two hours a week ago and I thought we would be heading to the hospital that night to have the baby (since none of my previous pregnancies have ever had contractions for that long that have just stopped like that before) that I have been a little less patient since then. Not that I’ve been really impatient, but I keep thinking that any little thing could be the beginning of labor. After a week of that (and not really having any more contractions to speak of) I have decided that it’s not going to happen. This pregnancy has been different than my last couple – I haven’t had Braxton Hicks contractions since nearly as early on as I did with Camden and Isaac, and now it’s almost the end and I still am not having them regularly at all (not even having them every day). So, now that we are nearly a week from the due date, I have decided that this baby may wait for his induction date to come (at least we have an induction tentatively scheduled for February 10th, the day after the due date, so that it’s not just a wait for who knows how long until the baby finally decides to come). We’ll just have to wait and see (but at least thinking that way is better than thinking that it is going to happen every day between now and then and being disappointed when it doesn’t happen yet). [Although I am glad that it looks like he won’t come today, since it is Eli’s birthday and I didn’t want two of our kids to have to share a birthday – even having birthdays a day apart would still be better than having to share your special day, I figure]. Anyways, I think that no matter how hard you try to be patient, that once you get down to the last week or so it gets hard not to have it on your mind all the time, especially when you know what a big change it will be for you and your family. So, I guess I’ll just keep waiting . . .

Yes, I know this is another long post . . .

So, this has been a nice week for our family. We started out on Monday with the Hymases coming over for family home evening. It was nice to see them, let the kids play together, and just sit and talk. We did a little lesson from the new nursery manual (if you have young kids and you don’t have a copy of the new nursery manual, I would suggest getting one. The new manual has great lessons that are just the right length for the attention spans of our kids, and the coloring pages, activities, and photographs and church art are included right in the lesson. You can order it online from the church distribution center, with free shipping, for less than $10, and then you have a family night lesson all ready and you don’t have to scramble to think of something to teach the kids at the last minute. Anyways, we’ve really liked using it for our kids so far).

On Tuesday I had another doctor’s appointment. I am down to having appointments every week now. At my last appointment they explained to me their policy about elective inductions – that as long as the cervix is favorable, you can choose to be induced at 39 weeks up until 7 days after the due date (if the baby doesn’t come before then, then they recommend you be induced, but they say it’s medically indicated, not an “elective” induction if it goes that long). So, I talked to Michael, and we both feel like we shouldn’t do an induction early this time, but that scheduling it for right around the due date would be fine (I don’t really like the idea of having a Valentine’s Day baby). So, at this appointment we tentatively set an induction date for February 10th (the day after the due date). I thought that was a good day – exactly one month after my birthday. But really I’ve felt for quite a while now that this baby is going to come on his own, and I’ve really thought that he would come sometime in the week before his due date, but it’s nice to have a date scheduled as a back-up, just in case, so if he doesn’t come then we won’t have to wait too long after the due date. So, she said that how it works is they never schedule a specific time for an elective induction (because there is always a chance that there will be several other women who need to be induced for medical reasons and they would get in first). So, they call you from labor and delivery the night before the induction is scheduled and give you instructions, like to call them back the next day at a certain time to make sure they weren’t too busy with other patients before you come in. So, it feels nice to have a plan. Although I really still think he will come before that date, if I do go in to be induced, I think it will work out well, as I was induced with Kolby (he was full term and they decided to induce because I happened to have high blood pressure that day), but being induced with Kolby worked out just fine – I have heard horror stories of women getting the pitocin and it causing them to have a pattern of terrible contractions followed by labor stopping, but when I was induced with Kolby the pitocin seemed to work just as it was intended with no problems at all. So, either way I expect everything to go smoothly.

On Wednesday I made dinner for one of the ladies that I visit teach and her family, because she had been in the hospital earlier this week. I tried a simple recipe for a strawberry dip that turned out very good (although I’m sure it is less than good for you). But you just whip together 8 oz of cream cheese with one jar of marshmallow cream, and it is very, very good to dip fruit in. (It’s always fun when you try out new recipes and they turn out good, especially the kinds of recipes that don’t call for a lot of ingredients and don’t take too long to make). Also on Wednesday I did Camden’s night out. I have been running low on good ideas for free kids’ nights out to do in the winter (in the summer, it is always nice to just go on a walk, a bike ride, or go to a playground), but in the winter the options decrease and I’m not too fond of taking the kids to McDonalds to play in their play area, walking around the mall, or going to a toy store just for fun. If anyone has any good winter ideas that are free and are things you can do in the evenings, I’m open to suggestions. This week Camden and I went to the library, which was fun. He was excited to sit in the kid-sized chairs there and to have me read books to him that he picked off of the shelf by himself. But the highlight of the night for him was definitely when we were leaving the library. We were going to the car and I saw a lady down the street walking her dog, so I pointed the “puppy” out to Camden because he loves dogs. That lady must have had amazing hearing to overhear me all the way in the library parking lot, because she turned around and walked over to us just so Camden could pet her dog, which was so nice of her. Although he absolutely loves animals, especially dogs, he was a little shy at first (as usual), but he did get brave enough to pet the dog a few times before we got in the car. Then the entire ride home he kept telling me that he wanted “his puppy,” that he wanted to go to the puppy’s house, that he didn’t want to go to our house, and that he wanted the puppy. Over and over. He was definitely excited to pet that dog.

On Thursday we had a fun, full day. First of all, after I picked up the boys from preschool, we went to the dentist’s office. I scheduled an appointment for Kolby, Eli, and Camden with a pediatric dentist over a month ago, and it was finally time to go. So, we had been to a pediatric dentist a few times before for Kolby and Eli in Milwaukee. We liked the dentist that they saw in Milwaukee, and I thought it was nice that they had a dental assistant to assist each of the boys in stepping up on a little stool, each at their own sink, and showing them how to brush and floss their teeth, and then they both sat together in the dentist’s chair (they were both still little then, and fit fine in the big chair together) while the dentist looked in their mouths and talked to them about brushing their teeth before sending them off happy with a new toothbrush and toothpaste. They thought the dentist was a lot of fun, and I was pleased with the dentist in Milwaukee. It was not until we went to the dentist here that I realized how run-down, cheap, and technically out of date our dentist in Milwaukee was (although he gave the kids good dental care, it was made obvious to me the difference between a dentist who accepts Medicaid and a more “normal” pediatric dentist). When we went on Thursday, the first thing that impressed me was the office. Of course, you don’t need fancy decorations or toy to have a good experience at the dentist’s office, but it was nice for the kids to have something fun to do while I filled out all of the many forms necessary for 3 new patients who were all coming for their first time that day. We walked in the door and a whole section of the lobby was fenced off and decorated like a jungle, complete with trees sprouting up from the floor and a little Jeep that the boys enjoyed sitting in and playing. The walls and furniture were all decorate in a jungle theme and there were plants, statues, and stuffed jungle animals all over the place. When we got back into the room where the boys would be seen, it was a large room with four kid-sized dental chairs in a row, a large fish tank right in the middle, and more jungle animals and decorations all around the room. Camden was especially excited about the stuffed lion sitting in the corner of the room that was bigger than he was. The dental assistants took all three boys in for x-rays of their teeth (The boys never had x-rays in Milwaukee). Then each boy got to lay down on the dentist’s chairs and they each got little headphones to wear so they could hear the sound from each of their individual televisions (that were imbedded in the ceiling above each of their chairs) that they could watch cartoons on while the dental assistants cleaned their teeth. And they used the normal dental tools and suction to clean their teeth (Kolby was pretty excited to tell Daddy that they squirted water in his mouth) – in Milwaukee they just used a toothbrush and a piece of floss. Afterwards the dentist came in and counted their teeth, looked at the x-rays, and told me that their teeth looked good. Then he took the time to give me a recommendation for an adult dentist, since I need to get a crown to cover a tooth that had a root canal when I was in high school. When I called my mom to tell her how cool this pediatric dentist was, she said that every experience they had had was similar to that (minus the jungle décor). So, I guess the one in Milwaukee was just a little low-tech. But either way, it was actually a really great experience, because all of the boys, even Isaac in the stroller, did wonderfully and I didn’t hear a single cry or whine the entire time we were there. The boys were also very excited to pick out a prize at the end of the appointment, and all three of them picked out little red sunglasses – Kolby told me that he gets to keep his sunglasses for the rest of his life.

So, on Thursday night Michael went to go play basketball with some other guys at the church, and after getting the boys to bed I was planning to just lay down and relax. For several days before that I had been spending long hours while the boys were asleep (and staying up far too late at night) trying to do research to figure out who the parents of my 3rd great grandfather, Cummings Gilmore Monk, were for sure. I had come into contact via the internet with several distant relatives on that side of the family, and two of them had given me different information on who his parents were. In 2006 one of the people who contacted me told me that his parents were George Shadrack Monk and Anne Wright. And then recently another relative contacted me with new information supporting the idea that his parents were actually a different couple, Shadrack Peter Monk and Margaret Anne Williams. The second person’s information fit better with the family information I had, and she had good notes and sources to support her research. I was very excited to find this new information! But after doing a little research on the family myself in order to familiarize myself with the research again after a few years, I started to wonder. The information about Shadrack and Margaret is good, solid information and they are definitely the parents of Cummings Gilmore Monk. The only problem is that I have found two Cummings Gilmore Monks who were both alive in the midwest at the same time, and I am not sure which one is the son of Shadrack and Margaret – if it is my 3rd great grandfather or the other Cummings. And with an uncommon name like that, and the fact that they were both born in Virginia within 5 years of each other and then both moved to the Midwest by the time they were old enough to get married, I am assuming that they were probably cousins, likely both named after a common ancestor (maybe their grandfather?). So, I spent a lot of time this last week trying to find out which Cummings was which. I ended up making a chart in excel showing both of the Cummings’ and all of the information I have found about each of them throughout their lives – trying to sort out what information went with what Cummings. But as hard as I tried I could not find any actual source that told me who the parents of “my” Cummings were for sure. I thought that if I put in enough time and effort in researching this, (and after praying about the research and trying to follow through with the ideas I’d had when I did that), I just thought that I would be able to find them if I tried hard enough. So I was pretty disappointed that I was trying so hard and not turning up any good information. So, I had decided that I was just going to have to move on to something else and not worry about that family for now, since I wasn’t finding any new leads and I was getting frustrated with it all. I e-mailed the relatives that I had been in contact with to let them know what I had been researching this week and ask if they had any last suggestions for me. And I was so glad that I did! One of the Monk descendants wrote back and gave me an idea about ordering a death certificate, and she even offered to pay for one of the orders if I paid for the other one (since we have a 10-year range for when Cummings could have died, so we are going to do two orders to find the death certificate, and we think that they will look at a 5-year range for each order). Anyways, I know that all this probably isn’t too interesting to most of you, but I was excited to get that idea and I am looking forward to hopefully getting a death certificate (there is a section on a death certificate for parents’ names, so if we can find a death certificate and if the certificate is filled out with the parents’ names, it will be really exciting!) So, the reason I went into all that in the first place was that on Thursday night I was pretty worn out from all the late hours of research and I decided that I was just going to relax – I told Michael that after the boys went to bed I was going to lay down, watch tv, and not do anything productive at all for the rest of the night. I turned off the computer, watched a couple shows, and went to bed at 10pm, and felt like I had caught up on my rest pretty well the next day. Oh, and Michael was pretty disappointed that when he went over to the church to play basketball no one else had shown up, so he just came back home. He found out today that he had gone to the wrong building, and so I think he will try again next week (the week after this one, I guess, since Eli’s birthday party is planned for this Thursday evening).

On Friday morning I had to go out to the WIC building for a class on breastfeeding, and Grandma had a doctor’s appointment so I had to take all of the boys along with me, even though I wasn’t required to take any of them to the class. So, we got out there and the majority of the class was taken up with general announcements about the WIC program. Then I had to take Camden to change his diaper, and when I got back into the classroom with all the boys they were finishing up what must have been a very short discussion about breastfeeding. Oh well. Not that I really think I need a breastfeeding class anyways – there’s not much they could tell me at this point that I don’t already know, I don’t think. So, after we got out of there, we went to Deseret Book store. Michael got me these beautiful Willow Tree figurines for Christmas and there was one with a father and a son, one with a mother and a son, and one with two brothers, but he couldn’t find a single baby boy figurine to finish off our family. So, I went back to the store and found a different figurine with a mother, a son, and a baby boy, and I exchanged that one for the mother and son figurine. Now we have the whole set for our family and I love how they look. The other thing we did while we were at the bookstore was exchange a DVD. For Christmas we got the movie, The Other Side of Heaven, and when we tried to watch it it wouldn’t work. We could get it to the DVD menu, but then it would skip repeatedly when we tried to play it. I tried it on 3 different DVD players, and it wouldn’t work on any of them. So I exchanged it a couple weeks ago, and the second one had similar problems. We finally did get it to play once the other day, after skipping the beginning of the movie. So I took the second disc back, and told them about the problem. I asked if we could exchange it again and then try to play it on the DVD player in the store before going home so I didn’t have to return again if there were problems. So she opened a new disc and it wouldn’t play on their player either. They must have gotten a defective batch of discs or something. She called the manager and they decided to keep opening and trying discs until we found one that worked. I was glad that the next disc they tried worked (and I was also glad that the one I brought back to exchange didn’t work on their player, so they didn’t think I was just incompetent and didn’t know how to work a DVD player). After that, we stopped for a few minutes at my new favorite store at the mall, Maurice’s, where I got a new shirt on a half-off sale with birthday money. I am planning on saving most of my birthday money to get some new clothes that fit after I have this baby and get closer to a normal size again, but I couldn’t resist getting a couple shirts this month, since they were so cute and on a good sale, and I haven’t bought clothes for myself in so long. Plus they should fit after the pregnancy, so that will work out too. After the mall we headed to Costco, with promises from the boys that they wouldn’t fight, whine, or be wild at all if I let them try each of the sample foods in the store for lunch. It worked out well – the boys started whining once, and I reminded them of their promise that they wouldn’t whine at all or else we wouldn’t come back to Costco for lunch again, and they did really well after that. And it was one of the rare days that the West Valley Costco happened to have lots of samples (for some reason this store doesn’t often have very many samples), and by the time we got through the whole store we had picked up a few items we needed, the boys had tried every sample except for the diet drinks that I didn’t let them try, the boys and I were all pretty full for lunch, I did something that I rarely do – I bought one of the foods that we tried a sample for so we could have it for dinner that night, and the boys were all tired enough to go right down for naps when we got home. It turned out to be a nice day out.

When we got home that afternoon I put all the boys except Kolby down for a late nap, and then Kolby practiced his piano songs before his lesson (it got switched to Friday this week because his teacher’s daughter had been sick earlier in the week). Grandma made it home from her appointment just in time for me to go with Kolby to his lesson. Before Grandma got home, Kolby was kind of concerned how he was going to go to his lesson, and he was asking me if I was going to get a babysitter to come stay with his brothers while we went. I told him that if Grandma didn’t get home in time, I would have to stay home. And before I explained the plan to him, he was quite concerned that someone might take him if he walked to his teacher’s house alone. I explained that if he had to go without me I would stand outside and watch him walk the entire way until he was inside his teacher’s house, and I would call and make sure his teacher would watch him the entire way home until he got back into our house afterwards (his teacher lives a couple houses down from us). Fortunately, Grandma got home before we had to leave, because I do like to go along and listen to him at his lessons. On our walk over to the lesson, he said, “Mommy, if I had to walk alone and you were watching me and someone tried to take me, you would run and get me, huh?” I assured him that I would run as fast as I could and I wouldn’t let anyone take him. He didn’t seem too worried about being kidnapped, he just wanted to know all the details of the plans to stay safe. I wondered about how I have done with teaching him about safety – you don’t want your kid going around being worried about being kidnapped all the time, but at the same time you want them to be aware of danger and avoid dangerous situations. I think Kolby is aware of danger, and he obviously thinks about making plans to avoid it, but I don’t think he’s going around being scared all the time. Things like that are hard to figure out just how much information you should give a small child. I guess that’s how it goes, being a parent, especially with your first child. There are a couple other things I’ve been thinking about lately with how best to teach Kolby at this age. Like, over Christmas, we took Kolby and Eli to see a movie, and before the previews started there were commercials playing in the theater that were meant to recruit people for the army. They showed soldiers shooting guns, and Kolby quickly said, “Those are the bad guys, huh?” How do you explain to a 5-year-old that, even though Mommy has always said that guns are unsafe and people who shoot other people are bad and that we don’t play like we are shooting our brothers or friends, that the people on these commercials who you see shooting people are really the good guys? I told him that they were soldiers, and that sometimes when there is a war soldiers are needed to protect the good people against bad guys (although I don’t really believe that there is really one good side and one bad side in most wars). But it’s hard to start explaining the grey areas, when a year or two ago everything Kolby asked me about would be black and white – Mommy, do good guys shoot people with guns? No, Kolby, people who shoot other people are bad guys and we don’t use guns because they hurt people. I guess there will be more and more of these “grey areas” that I have to continue explaining as Kolby and the other boys keep getting older. There was another one the other day, although less serious than bad guys with guns vs. soldiers protecting innocent people. A couple weeks ago Kolby was invited to spend the night at the Barker’s house. The Barkers have four girls, ages 10, 8, 5, and 3, and they were also having the Adamson’s two girls over that night too. I figured that since Kolby was just 5 he was fine sleeping over with girls there, because it’s all innocent at this age and he doesn’t really see any difference between his friends who are boys and his friends who are girls. Once the kids are older, I don’t plan on letting them sleep over with girls, but now while they are so young I don’t see any harm in it. So, then a few days later we were at another friends’ house for dinner and after Kolby and his friend, Kaitlyn, were playing they both came and asked us if they could have a sleep over. Kaitlyn’s mom told me that she had always thought her daughter would be about 10 years old before she had to tell her she couldn’t sleep over with boys, not as young as 6 years old. So, how do you explain to your 5 year old son that it’s ok to sleep over with some of his friends who are girls, but not with others? Luckily he didn’t press the question of a sleep over with Kaitlyn that night and I didn’t have to discuss it with him – I didn’t really want to tell him that Kaitlyn’s mom didn’t want her to sleep over with boys, because I didn’t want him to start thinking about why that would be. I just want him to stay as innocent as he is now about his little friends forever. I know that won’t happen, but he doesn’t need to be thinking about those kinds of things at age 5.

Well, this post is getting so long that anyone who might have actually started reading it in the first place has probably quit by now, but oh well. I guess I’ll finish off telling about our weekend. On Saturday morning I made 6 loaves of bread while Michael worked on laundry, and then I went over to the church for a visiting teaching interview. After we put the boys down for a short nap (I don’t know if any of them actually went to sleep, and we finally just decided to get them all up because they were all awake and making noise in their rooms after a little while), we got ready and headed to Lehi to visit Mel and Christian and Annette. We had a good afternoon and evening at their house, eating dinner and playing a game of Life. We headed home later that night, and all four boys were asleep in the car before we got home. When we got home, we learned that my mom had been hit by a snowboarder from behind while skiing in Mammoth and her arm had a bad spiral fracture. It sounds good that she probably won’t need a surgery, but she is in a lot of pain and it’s a bad break. Trying to make her feel better, I told her I could Photoshop a picture for her with her skiing off some cool snowy cliff, and she could show that to people as an explanation of her injury when she gets back to San Diego in a few days. Then I came up with an even better idea: a picture of her skiing off a cliff and being hit from behind by a snowboarder mid-air. Hopefully she can recover quickly, because it sounds like this is very painful for her.

So, today we went to church. I reminded the boys before we went inside of one of our family goals, to be reverent in church. And when I said that, Kolby said, “And Mommy and Daddy need to not yell,” (that was another one of our family goals, that the boys and the parents would not yell at each other), so I told him that we would remind them to be reverent in church and they could remind us not to yell. I’m glad to say that Kolby, Eli, and Camden all did quite well with being reverent in church today (and Michael and I did well at not yelling in church today too). Isaac had several loud crying episodes (so that he could leave the meetings at church today), but overall he did pretty well. I took him out for a while during the sacrament meeting (and he was happy in the hallway, as long as we didn’t go too close to the chapel doors), but he did last through the entire Sunday school class, and then he fell asleep in my arms for most of my Relief Society class. So that went pretty well too. . . . so, Michael just turned to me and asked if I was still writing the blog. When I said yes, he said, “No one’s going to read it [because it’s so long].” I told him it’s not for anyone else, just for us. Anyways, I know it’s long, but oh well. . . . So, at church a lady said that her granddaughter was moving in with her and brought her furniture, so she had a couch and two hide-a-bed couches that she wanted to give away because she didn’t have enough room for them. So, after church I called to ask if they were still available, and she asked us to come over and take a look at them this afternoon. We went over and told her we would take one of the hide-a-bed couches, and then when our home teachers came over later in the afternoon they went with Michael to help pick it up from her house. This was perfect timing, since we had been thinking the last couple days that we needed to switch the boys’ rooms around, because Camden has been waking Isaac up at naptime a lot lately and not letting him sleep, but we didn’t know how to do that since Kolby and Eli share a bed, and we didn’t have an extra bed for one of them to move into the other room. So, this little couch was perfect – we are going to keep it as a couch, because opening it up as a bed takes up too much space in the bedroom downstairs. Kolby had already willingly volunteered to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor in Camden’s room, but we thought this was a good alternative. He now has his own little couch, “his new bed,” in Camden’s room. Our home teachers helped Michael move the couch downstairs, move the table and filing cabinet into the storage room so there would be more room down there, and move Eli’s bed and dresser over to make space for Isaac’s playpen in Eli’s room. We’ll see how the new arrangement works out. We figured that Kolby would be a good match for Camden, because Kolby will continue to nap on our bed during the daytime, so Camden can be alone and not have anyone to wake up during naps (and so he might actually end up sleeping more in naps too, if we’re lucky), and then at night Camden does pretty well anyways and Kolby will also hopefully be able to help a little with Camden not doing certain undesirable actions that have started to become habits lately when he wakes up in the morning or from naps, such as taking off his clothes and sometimes his diaper or climbing out of the crib and turning the table upside down. Also, we hope that Eli and Isaac do well together – as long as Eli follows my instructions not to get Isaac out of his bed without my permission, I think it will all work out well. We’ll see. But it was so nice of that lady from the ward to give us that couch (and such perfect timing), and we were really thankful to our home teachers for their help with lifting all that furniture – I definitely couldn’t have done it at this point.

Well, that’s about it for our week. Tomorrow it is nice that we will have a relaxing day, since the boys don’t have preschool because it is Martin Luther King Jr. day (although Michael doesn’t get the day off work, of course). Also this week I have another doctor’s appointment (I hit 37 weeks tomorrow, (which, for all of you non-pregnant people, means that the baby will be considered full-term and they wouldn’t try to delay labor at all if he started to come anytime after then). And Isaac has his 15-month check-up this week too. So, we’ll keep everyone up to date on any changes with this pregnancy, and hopefully it won’t be too many weeks before we get to start posting pictures of our little Courtland.

A few pregnancy thoughts

Well, I think there are several somewhat humorous things about pregnancy. For instance, I have never really preferred to sleep on my side before, but for most of my previous pregnancies I have done so for a good amount of the time – even if I would go to sleep on my back, I would almost always wake up on my side. But this pregnancy is different. I have always preferred to sleep either on my back or my front, and that has stayed the same so far throughout this pregnancy. If I try to sleep on my side, I can’t fall asleep and my arm gets sore. Actually, I can’t really sleep on my back much anymore either – if I fall asleep on my back, I almost always wake up on my stomach. And now that I am approaching the half-way point of this pregnancy and am starting to really get a pregnant-looking belly (I’m no longer really in that ‘is-she-pregnant-or-just-gaining-a-little-weight-lately?' stage), I am wondering how I am going to sleep in another month or two when I start to get really big and I can only sleep on my stomach??? I guess I’ll just have to wait and see – but I really hope I doesn’t mean that I won’t be able to sleep at all anymore.

On another note, I started to feel the baby moving last week, so that is always reassuring. Actually, (as with my last 2 pregnancies) most often it is more that I can just feel the baby than that I can feel the baby moving – like he just rolls over or moves in a certain direction, and I can feel some little baby body part just poking out. But I have felt him moving around in there too.

Another thing is the cravings. My latest thing is that I want a sandwich (I am never very big on sandwiches) with big, juicy slices of tomatoes, lots of feta cheese, and Italian dressing on top, all heated up. I’ve never made anything like that before. But it’s kind of nice that I’m past the morning sickness, because for a while there a lot of foods that I usually liked just tasted awful to me – including pasta, feta cheese, fresh spinach, etc. The only thing that is still bothering me is eggs. We often had eggs for a special Saturday morning breakfast when Michael was home, and we haven’t had them as often lately with Michael’s busy work schedule, but the few times he has made eggs over the last couple months I have felt sick after eating them (even though they tasted great when we ate). So I have resorted to steering clear of eggs for breakfast since then.

Well, I am planning on posting fun pictures from Camden’s birthday party on Thursday and our fun family trip to the Utah State Fair on Michael’s day off on Friday. I’ll get those posted before we head out to San Diego next week.

Baby Isaac Has Arrived!

On Tuesday I started having contractions in the morning. I had them irregularly all day, and by that evening I was having them every 7 to 10 minutes. Michael and the boys and I went and ran a couple of errands, and when we got home around 7:00pm I started having the contractions about every 2 or 3 minutes, so Michael put the boys to bed and we called a friend to come stay with them while we went to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital about 8:30pm, and I was dilated to a 7. I got the epidural, which worked just right this time, and then they just had me wait. I was strep B positive, which means that they try to give the mom antibiotics for 4 hours before the baby is born, so they didn’t want to break my water because they were trying to wait the 4 hours. I got the first dose of the antibiotics, but my water broke on its own before they could give me the second dose. After my water broke, he came really quickly. I pushed once and his head came out, and I pushed a second time and he was delivered. That was definitely the quickest delivery yet!

Isaac Steven Bradshaw was born at 11:43pm on October 23rd, seven days before his due date. Michael told me later that he had the chord wrapped around his neck when he came out, but I didn’t even know that. I held him, and then they checked his weight and height and cleaned him up a little bit. He was 8 lbs 13 oz and 21 inches long, so he was our second smallest baby – Camden was 9 lbs 8 oz, Kolby was 9 lbs 1 oz, Isaac was 8 lbs 13 oz, and Eli was 8 lbs 8 oz. (I’m rather glad he wasn’t a 10-pounder).

He got a chance to nurse and we held him and called all the family members, and then we moved to our room. They took him to the nursery for a little bit, and the nurse must have noticed how tired Michael and I looked, because he was all bathed and dressed when they brought him back to us. By then it was quite late, and we got about 4 hours of sleep before morning. Isaac was a noisy breather – kind of making little snorting sounds every once in a while and breathing loudly, but he slept well that entire time. I tried to nurse him a few times the next morning, and he didn’t really latch on well at all. A little while later we let the nurse know that it seemed like he was having a little trouble breathing, and she said that she would take him to the nursery to give him some saline drops and use the bulb to suction his nose. We thought that would be a good thing to do so that he wasn’t so stuffy and he could then nurse without any trouble.

After a little while, we were informed that the bulb had not helped, and they had talked to the pediatrician who had ordered a few tests to check on why he was having trouble breathing. A chest x-ray didn’t show anything abnormal and they put a tube down his throat, but it went down fine, so they didn’t suspect any problems with his throat. They said that they tried to pass a tube through his nose, but couldn’t – so they suspected some kind of blockage. Some NICU doctors came and said they were taking him to the NICU and they were going to see if they could figure out what the problem was.

So, when we went down to the NICU a little while later to see him, they told us that they thought it might be a dermoid cyst (a blockage of dead skin that would have to be removed in surgery, but which was not any type of cancer) in the nasal area which was making it hard for him to breath through his nose, but that they would have to wait until they got a CT scan to see if their hypothesis was correct. Later that night we returned to the NICU and a resident showed us the CT scan. It did not show a cyst, but just that the nasal passages looked more narrow than they should be. We had to wait until this morning until we talked to the ENT (ear, nose, throat) doctor to find out his diagnosis and plans for treatment.

So, today the ENT told us that Isaac has a pretty uncommon condition called Congenital Perform Aperture Stenosis, which just means that the nasal passage is really narrow. They said there is no real reason that this happened, it is not genetic – it just happens to be the way that his bones formed, and they didn’t separate as much as they should have. I guess this is a pretty uncommon condition. But they made it sound like it isn’t going to be a serious problem, and he shouldn’t have any long-term effects from it.

Isaac’s scan showed that the bones in this area were a little closer together, and on one side the soft tissue looked like it was really close together. This is a pretty rare condition, and there is not much information about it online. We did find a few articles that mentioned that babies with this condition could also have one large tooth in the middle, instead of two top teeth in front – but Isaac’s scan showed normal teeth. Other articles mentioned a triangular palette associated with this condition, but we haven’t noticed anything like this in Isaac. In fact, except for the breathing problems, he seems to be doing just great, and he looks like everything else about him is just how it should be. The doctors told us that other articles say sometimes this condition is associated with problems with the hypothalamus and pituitary, two organs in the brain that control many of the hormones needed for growth and development, like thyroid and growth hormone. They want to do an MRI tomorrow while he is already sedated for the surgery, just to make sure that everything looks ok. The doctors seem to be doing everything possible to help us out here.

They are going to do surgery to correct this tomorrow morning. They will remove some of the bone and put in two tubes to make the passages stay open, and then the tubes will be surgically removed in about 3 weeks. They will do this all through an incision under his upper lip, so it won’t leave any scars. I am pumping now, and they hope that he will be able to start nursing normally after his surgery. And they said that as long as everything goes well, he will be able to go home from the NICU two or three days after his surgery. We are not allowed to sleep in the NICU and I got discharged from the hospital today, so we will be home tonight, and then I will probably return to be with him in the morning. My mom is arriving tonight, so that will be helpful to have her here. (By the way, my parents were able to return and see their house last night since the evacuation for the wildfires down in San Diego, and their house was not damaged by the fires at all. A couple of the houses up the hill from them were burned, and the fire burned down the hill to within 50 yards of my parents’ property, but their house and yard were not touched). So, thank you to all of you who have helped out with watching the boys for us this week. And thanks to everyone for your prayers and support. We really appreciate it! I’d better head back down to Isaac’s room now to be with him.

I will post photos of Isaac once I’ve had a chance to get them off of our camera on our home computer. But he’s really cute – he has light brown hair that looks kind of golden in the light, just the same color as Camden’s was when he was born, little round ears, dark eyes, and it looks like he’ll probably have a dimple on the left side. Michael thinks he has the Bradshaw nose. And Tyce Kearl said that he definitely looks like a Bradshaw boy. He is long – he looks tall and he has cute long feet and long toes. And he is strong – when they rolled him on his tummy yesterday, he was lifting his head up over and over. I can’t wait to take him home with us!

Contagious

So, Kolby has strep throat. I was pretty surprised to get the call from the doctor this morning saying that his culture came back positive for strep.

Last year both Kolby and Eli had strep throat. We had never dealt with that before, and Kolby had been complaining for a few days that his teeth and his mouth hurt and he had trouble eating because of that. I was pregnant with Camden at the time and thought about waiting another day or so to take Kolby to the doctor – because he was complaining about his teeth hurting, we thought that it might be a cavity – and I remember feeling pretty tired, but deciding to take him in for an appointment anyway just to have it checked out. We took the boys in, and it turned out that Kolby’s throat was sore, not his teeth. The doctor did a rapid strep swab on each boy and both came back positive immediately. It turned out that it was a good thing that we took them in that day, because I ended up going into labor and having Camden that night. And with strep throat they need to take the antibiotics for 24 hours before they are no longer contagious, so it was a good thing that they had gotten started on that before we went into the hospital.

So, for the last few days Kolby has been acting sick, but I didn’t even consider the possibility that it might be strep throat, because it has been nothing like when he and Eli got it a year ago. Since Friday Kolby has been getting fevers off and on – he would seem fine for most of the day and then spike a fever and lay around and act tired and fussy. Then the next day he would feel warm, but wouldn’t have a high fever, but he would act normal much of the day and then act sick again later on. He did that for several days, and then on Sunday we thought he had gotten over it. We went to church that morning, and then after the first hour of church Michael took his temperature and it was 102.7 degrees and his face looked all red. Michael took him home and he got some rest, but Kolby hasn’t had a fever since then. That night Kolby woke up drying several times in the night, so I decided to take him to the doctor’s office instead of his preschool classes on Monday morning, but on Monday and today he has not had a fever or acted sick at all. I took him in yesterday, and we noticed that the red rash on his face was also on his stomach. The doctor did a swab and it came back negative, and since Kolby had been acting normal all day, we figured it was something viral that he was already starting to get over. So last night we took him to a birthday party. I felt pretty bad this morning when the doctor called and said that the culture came back positive for strep today. I had to call the moms at the birthday party and the preschool at the YMCA to let them know that their kids may have been exposed to strep – so, if any of your kids have been around Kolby over the last few days, I’m sorry and I hope they don’t get sick.

Anyway, I have had a cough the last couple of weeks and we had no specific plans for today, so I was planning on staying home in my pajamas all day today. When I got the call from the doctor, I knew that we would have to go to the pharmacy to pick up Kolby’s medicine, and I really didn’t want to get all the kids all packed into the car just for that. Michael is so thoughtful – I called to tell him that Kolby has strep, and he came home from work during his lunch break to get Kolby’s insurance card and went to get the prescription and bring it back home, and then he had to go right back to work. Isn’t that nice? He knew that it was something I could do, and I just really didn’t feel like it, so he volunteered to do that for me. How kind!

So, Kolby started his antibiotics this afternoon. Once he has taken the medicine for 24 hours, he will no longer be contagious. I was glad to find out that he will not be contagious anymore by tomorrow afternoon, because we are having a little birthday party for Kolby on Friday and he would have been so disappointed if we had to cancel it. Plus, if we had to cancel the party on Friday, I don’t know when we would have rescheduled it, because this baby will be here before too long.

It’s interesting that Kolby has strep throat now, with this baby due so soon. When Eli was born Kolby had roseola, and when Camden was born Kolby and Eli both had strep throat. So I have been jokingly wondering what contagious sickness my boys would have when baby Isaac is born. Hopefully our family is all healthy when the new baby comes. We’re getting close – only 14 days to go until the due date!

Halloween Portraits

We went last week to have the boys' Halloween portraits taken, and we just got them today. I always enjoy taking the boys for Halloween photos, because it is one of the few occasions when we have individual photos taken of each boy -- usually we are trying to get a group shot of all the boys or of our entire family, which is often difficult in the end to choose the one shot that most everyone is smiling in and looking at the camera. But when we take the individual shots of the boys, there are often quite a few cute ones to choose from and they love to dress up in their Halloween costumes too. This year for Halloween Kolby is going to be Tigger, Eli is a dinosaur, and Camden is going to wear the adorable lion costume that my mom made when Kolby was 1 year old. And I am still crossing my fingers that this baby will either come a week or so early or wait until November 1st to arrive, so that I can enjoy celebrating Halloween with the boys too. But at least there are going to be a few Halloween parties for church and the medical school before October 31st, so hopefully I'll get to join them for at least part of the Halloween events, even if I happen to be in the hospital on that day. We'll see. Enjoy the photos.

Bad Luck at the Grocery Store

This morning I felt like I was doing a pretty good job of getting everything done. I spent about half an hour preparing our two-week dinner menu and then making a grocery list with all the ingredients we would need for the next two week’s worth of meals. I got all the boys ready and dropped Kolby off at his class and we went to the grocery store. I had only been in a store a few minutes, and I went to the meat section to get a roast and some hamburger. Since I am getting to that point in my pregnancy when many of my maternity shirts aren’t even quite long enough for me anymore, I set my grocery list down on the wrapped pieces of meat for a second so I could pull my shirt down and make sure it was covering my belly all the way. Before I could react, the vent in front of the meat sucked my grocery list away. Now this wasn’t just a little slip of scrap paper with a couple things written on it, it was a full 8.5 x 11-inch paper with a grocery list the whole length of the page. The vent in front of the meat where the cool air comes out apparently sucks air inward too, and I could see no way to get the list – I could hear it being sucked all the way down below the meat to the floor behind the counter. At that point I didn’t know what to do. I never go grocery shopping without a list, and this time I had planned several meals that we haven’t had for a while, so the ingredients weren’t familiar to me.

I briefly considered packing the boys back in the car, driving home, packing the kids into the house, consulting my dinner menu and recipe books, making a new list, packing the kids back into the car, driving back to the grocery store, packing the kids back into the store, and starting the whole grocery trip all over again – but I don’t think I could have handled all that. So I pulled a new piece of paper out of my purse and stood there in front of the meat trying to remember all of the ingredients and the correct measurements that I had written on my original list. And I don’t know why, but Camden was having an especially difficult morning. He kept bursting out in tears and crying uncontrollably (and very loudly), for no apparent reason – and we had only been in the store about 10 or 15 minutes before he started doing this. I wrote everything down that I could remember on the list, and went on to get all of the groceries, Camden crying like he had been hurt for the majority of the trip – he had red eyes and nose and little old ladies kept coming up and trying to talk to him to make him happy, but they didn’t really help. At least I didn’t have to haul the boys home and back again to make another grocery list, which I’m sure would have been worse. When I got home, I was pleased to look at my dinner menu and find that I’m pretty sure I remembered everything I needed to get – I just need to double-check the measurements on one of the recipes to make sure.

After I unloaded all the groceries at home, we made a quick run to Wal Mart and got Camden some new shoes that match the ones that Kolby and Eli have. We got him size 4 wide shoes when he first started taking steps, and those were a little snug, so lately he has been wearing some old hand-me-down size 5 shoes I found in our storage bins of kid’s clothes, and those have been really hard to get on and off of his feet lately. So, I went to get him some that fit, and they didn’t have size 6, just size 7. I tried them on, and he can walk fine in them and they haven’t fallen off his feet yet, so that’s what he got. He’d better not grow out of size 7 shoes before winter is over.

Random Unrelated Topics

So, I’m wondering if I started to feel Braxton Hicks contractions yesterday. You would think that by the fourth kid I would know for sure, but each one is different. It felt like the pain of contractions, and they were spaced out like Braxton Hicks, but instead of being a pain down low like with cramps, it was painful all over my belly. And they happened every once in a while all day yesterday. So, we’ll see. It’s interesting that I haven’t felt anything up until now – except with my first pregnancy, I felt the Braxton Hicks contractions much earlier on in the other pregnancies.

On a different subject, I think there is something seriously wrong with our VCR. We have a nice VCR-DVD player combination machine that we got when we were married, and we have really liked having the ability to play both types of movies. The DVD part of the machine is working fine, but the VCR has started having problems the last couple of days. A couple days ago I taped a show from tv and when I went back to watch it, every time I tried to fast forward through a commercial, the tape paused and wouldn’t let me hit play. If I stopped the tape it would let me rewind or fast forward, but even if I only hit the button for a couple of seconds it would quickly jump through most of the tape all at once. I figured that the tape was done for – we must have just taped shows on it over and over so many times that we needed to use a fresh tape. We tried that last night, but found that the machine had the same problem with a different tape. After messing around with it for a while, we finally found that the tape would only play correctly if Michael sat on the floor a foot in front of the VCR – if he would get up or even shift his weight a little, the tape paused. So, he sat on the hard wood floor last night for an hour while we watched our show that we had taped. It was actually rather comical to watch, although I’m sure it was less than comfortable for him. We have never heard of a problem like this before – any suggestions?

And on an entirely different topic, I had to mention something that happened to me yesterday. The other day I wrote a lengthy post about always getting negative comments from strangers about having all boys. So, I was getting all the boys out of the van yesterday morning to take Kolby into his preschool class at the YMCA, and a middle-aged man walked by and very jovially announced, “Three boys – you are so lucky! And probably another boy on the way. That is great!” I smiled and he just kept on walking by, and I felt like that nice comment from a stranger maybe (in some small way) redeemed all the other strangers who have said such thoughtless things when they saw how many boys we have.

Oh, and I just wanted to mention a cute thing Eli said last night. We went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant last night to celebrate Michael finishing one of his Step 2 Board exams, (Pedros is quickly becoming one of our ‘favorite’ restaurants. Not so much because of the amazing cuisine – we like the food fine – but more because they keep sending us buy-one-get-one-free dinner coupons. They serve tortillas and chips and salsa and we usually take sandwiches and some snacks for the boys, and then Michael and I each order a meal and one of them is free with the coupon, so it ends up being a pretty cheep dinner for our family. No, we have no shame, we are not to proud to take sandwiches to a restaurant for our kids – but kids can be picky sometimes and not eat the restaurant food anyway, so why waste the money? We are just wondering how old our kids will get before they start demanding ‘real food,’ I guess when it gets to that point, we will just have to stop eating out altogether). :)

Well, I was going to tell about the funny thing that Eli said. We were at the restaurant and at one point in the meal the boys noticed a painting of a rooster hanging on the wall behind them. I said something about the rooster, and Eli said, “No, it’s not a rooster.” (I just assumed that he thought it was a chicken, and that maybe he wasn’t familiar with the word ‘rooster.’) Kolby told him that it was a rooster, and he said, “No, a moose.” I smiled and Kolby corrected him and told him it was a rooster again, and Eli said, “No, a mooster.” I thought that was pretty cute.

Ok, last thing. While I was writing this, Michael just called and said that he got another interview for a transition year program here in Milwaukee. It is at St. Luke’s Hospital, which is supposed to have a nice transition year. He set it up for November 16th. It has been nice to get a few invitations already. We’re just waiting until next month to start hearing back about dermatology residency interviews. Hey, here’s a question for any of our fellow medical students, residents, or fellows that may happen to be reading this: As you may know, most of the interview invitations are done by e-mail, and with many of the programs it seems that if you don’t respond to the e-mail invitation immediately, all the interview dates may already be full by the time you call. We heard of another student setting it up so that she receives a message on her pager when she gets a new e-mail (so she doesn’t have to worry about checking her e-mail every 20 minutes each day). Does anyone know how to do this? Is this something you do through your e-mail settings, or something extra that you have to pay for through your pager service (or both?) If anyone knows about how to set that up, that would be great, thanks!

First Week of October

Well, this first week of October has been much more relaxed than the schedule we were on for Michael’s rotation last month. He is now doing one of his elective rotations called “Promoting Health in Urban Underserved Communities,” and he has basically had a 9-5 schedule with a lot more flexibility to get time off if he needs to, which is nice because he is taking one of his Step 2 Board exams and we are expecting the baby to come this month.

So, this week was pretty uneventful. Kolby had preschool, which he always loves. It is interesting because his classroom teacher is blind, although I don’t think that the kids really realize this. On Monday Kolby wanted to take a cut-out of a footprint that he made in his church class to show his school teacher. He was showing it to her at the beginning of class, and she was asking if she could hold it, asking what color it was, and telling him that he must have big feet if it was traced from his foot. And he loves his gym class too. Often we go about 15 minutes before the end of class and if they are wrapping up a game that is not very structured, I will let Eli join in with Kolby and the other kids. They have played freeze tag a couple times and the boys really like it. Kolby seems to be one of the only kids that really comprehends the idea – many of the others just kept running after they were tagged without waiting to be unfrozen. And on Wednesday when I went to pick him up, Kolby and another little boy named Simon were running around holding hands and they came up and Kolby told me Simon was his best friend. I let Eli run around with them, and they were holding his hands and playing great with him too. I think Eli will really enjoy going to the classes in a few months – he will be able to start in the winter session once we get back from our trips, since he will be 3 years old by then.

Well, on Wednesday I hit 36 weeks with this pregnancy. So now I have just over 3 weeks to go. I am glad we waited a while in the beginning of the pregnancy to announce to people that we were pregnant this time – I know that it’s all in my head, but it really seemed to make the remainder of the pregnancy go by much quicker than with earlier pregnancies when we announced it soon after we found out. So, on Wednesday night Michael had an AOA meeting, so I took Kolby to his swimming lesson. He is doing great. They have these little float belts that they put around the kids’ waists to give them confidence, and the kids all swam the length of the pool with those on several times in this week’s lesson, then at the end they swam a few feet from the edge of the pool to their teacher with no float belts, so that was pretty cool. It is fun to see Kolby’s confidence increase as he is now really learning how to swim.

On Thursday morning we went to the Twelmyer’s house for the family history group, and I was able to help Sister Twelmyer to learn how to search for some ancestors on the IGI online so that she can prepare the names to take to the temple. Later that afternoon I had my doctor’s appointment – I am down to the last month now, so I am having an appointment every week – and Michael was able to join us for the appointment this time. Everything is going well with the baby, and I am dilated to a 2. (I don’t really care if I’m dilated much yet or not, except that my midwife had mentioned that they would induce me a day or two after my due date, if it goes that long, but that if you get that far and are not dilated at all, they might not do it as early. So anyway, I got her to commit to inducing me on November 1st if I haven’t had the baby by the due date, which is nice to have a final date set). And Thursday night Michael took Eli to swim lessons, and said that they had a lot of fun.

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Eli decorating cookies . __ . __ . __ . __ . __ . __ . Eli licking his frosting

On Friday morning, after I dropped Kolby off at preschool, we went to Jill Hunter’s apartment for some fall activities for the kids from the apartment complex. All of the kids went outside and collected fall leaves, and then we went back in and they decorated cookies that were shaped like leaves. Eli had fun doing that. Then on Friday night we went to the Townsend’s house for our ward dessert groups, and the Sanders family came too. We had banana splits and had fun talking with the adults while all the kids played.

And this weekend has been spent watching General Conference on the internet. The boys kind of had a rough time sitting through the first session yesterday, but it seems like they are getting used to the idea of sitting quietly and watching the 2-hour sessions at a time, and they have done pretty well today (as well as you could expect for a 2- and 3-year-old, and Camden napped through most of this morning’s session). After the last session that will be starting up here in a few minutes, we will eat the roast that Michael has prepared for dinner and then he is going to head down to Chicago. He got a pretty good deal on a motel room, so he can drive down tonight and not have to get up super early in the morning and he can avoid any bad traffic tomorrow. In the morning he will take one of his two Step 2 Board exams. It is the one where they have different standardized patients and they are graded on how they give exams and take the patients’ histories. So, hopefully he will have a safe drive down there and back, and his test will go well. Then I think we are planning to go out to dinner as a family when he gets home Monday evening to celebrate him finishing his test.

Eli, Mommy, and Kolby watching Conference

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention that Michael got another interview invitation this week. He got an e-mail saying that he is on the early invite list for the transitional year program in Salt Lake, and that they will let him know the dates for that interview shortly. So things are all going pretty well. I’d better run get the computer set up now so we can catch the last session of Conference. Hope you all had a great week!