Garrett's Birth & Our Hospital Stay

I just realized that I never posted on our family blog about Garrett's birth - I only posted about it on his blog. But since this is like our family journal or scrapbook type thing, I want to have it recorded on here. So I just copied and pasted the exact same thing from his blog onto this one... better late than never, I guess. 

Last Thursday was my last OB appointment before Garrett was born! We met with Dr. Thorpe and he confirmed that I was scheduled to be induced the next morning at Timpanogos Regional Hospital.

So the rest of that day we made a list of some things we wanted to get done before Garrett's arrival and went to work! Rick was such a sweetheart. He cleaned, vaccuumed, did dishes, bathed Kimbri, helped finish packing for the hospital and countless other things! I really wanted to get the house especially clean so we could come home from the hospital with a new baby to a clean home.

Later that evening we packed Kimbri a suitcase and drove down to Salem where she was going to have a sleepover with her Grandma and Grandpa Stone! We feel so extremely grateful to have parents that are willing to help out so much. The Stone's kept Kimbri for us on Thursday night since I was going to be induced at 6:30am. That allowed us to get a good nights rest and to be able to just get up and go straight to the hospital instead of having to drive Kimbri down south and drop her off before going. So a huge thank you to them! The Stone's also watched her all day Friday and kept her Friday night as well. Then my parents picked Kimbri up on Saturday to keep her the rest of the time. Thank you so much!!

Anyway, so after dropping Kimbri off in Salem on Thursday night, Rick and I came back home and finished up a few last things on our to-do list. We got to bed around 10pm and set our alarm for 5:10am. It was getting so close to meeting baby Garrett!

So when our alarm rang we got up, showered, ate breakfast and left our house at about 6:10am. It was -2 degrees on our way to the hospital to have Garrett. He would be born on a very cold, January morning! We also took one last pregnancy picture to represent week 39:

We arrived at hospital at 6:25am. They put me in room 103 and hooked me up to an IV and the machine that would monitor my contractions. Surprisingly my body was already contracting, but they just weren't hard enough that I really felt them. They then started me on pitocin at 6:50am.

Rick and I started a game of Phase 10. We thought we'd have all the time in the world while I was in labor to play games so we brought several card games. Little did we know... 

I started out with contractions coming about 6-8 minutes apart but they got closer together pretty quick. After the contractions became closer together, around every 2-4 minutes, they decided to have Dr. Thorpe come and break my water. That was probably around 8:30am. Up until that point I was able to handle the contractions pretty well, however, after having my water broken they started to get pretty hard and painful. I decided that if I was going to get an epidural I might as well get one then because I was starting to feel quite a bit of pain. They called for the anesthesiologist and by the time he got there, about 10 or so minutes later I was having really strong and painful contractions. He finally got the epidural in and I was NOT feeling much relief. They wondered why and decided to check me. I was dilated to a 9 by the time I had even received the epidural! Ha. No wonder I felt so much pain. Unfortunately I was having a ton of back labor. I experienced back labor with Kimbri because she was in the posterior position which causes more back labor anyway, but Garrett was anterior so I guess I'm just one of those few who has to have back labor...

Anyway, after receiving the epidural I tried to lay down on my side to get comfortable but I suddenly just felt like I needed to push that baby out right then! The nurse kept telling me to wait and to try and not push. But how was I supposed to do that when I was feeling everything?! I told her I didn't think I was going to be able to wait so they quickly went and grabbed Dr. Jacob who had just finished delivering another baby in the room next door. He came right then and said that I could start pushing during the contractions to try and "push the pain away".  I started pushing at about 10:13am and finally the epidural started to kick in. Funny because after it finally started help relieve some of the pain, Garrett Richard Stone was born only 20 minutes later at 10:33am! 

Garrett was  8lbs. 8oz. and 19.5 inches long! 

Wow. I can't describe the emotions I felt. The nurse asked if I wanted to hold him right after he came out and I of course said yes! I was honestly kind of shocked that I got to do that because when Kimbri was born they whisked her away so fast to the NICU because she had breathing complications. I didn't really get to hold and snuggle her for about 3 hours after she was born. So this time when they let me just hold him I was so so happy. A flood of happiness just overwhelmed me. I felt so much gratitude that Heavenly Father would send us such a precious little soul for us to raise and be parents to. We feel so blessed to have Garrett join our family. I already could feel an infinite amount of love for him!

 I also got to start nursing him right after he was weighed and measured, which was another first. With Kimbri I didn't get to nurse her until the next morning after she was born. So I was really excited to get to try nursing right after Garrett was born. He caught on quick, which I am so grateful for! Rick and I just got to be together with Garrett for quite a while. It was so perfect to just be together with our brand new little baby boy sent right from heaven.

After a while of snuggling and getting to hold and nurse him, the nurses came back in our room to give him a bath and give him a couple shots. It was really fun to get to see him bathed because they did it right there in the room. Both Garrett and I got all cleaned up. They dressed Garrett and wrapped him all up and brought him back to me. He somehow got his arm out and up to his face and started sucking on his hand so I decided to nurse him again. By this time it had been about 2 hours since the last time he nursed. And he did soooo good, again! Hopefully he keeps up with his good nursing skills ;-) 

During all that time we talked to our parents and told them the good news and sent out some texts to family and friends. Around 2:30pm they took us to a recovery room. They had me order my meal for when dinner comes around 5pm. And as a non-important side note about the food menu... it looks fantastic! I guess we'll see after I have dinner in a couple hours but I ordered Pesto Chicken. Maybe it's just because I'm super hungry but I'm really looking forward to dinner! 

We are excited see our family when they come to visit within the next hour or so! We are sooooo happy that Garrett is here and that he's healthy and doing well. He is just the most precious and perfect little guy!

{And here is the second post about his birth/hospital stay that I wanted to have recorded on our family blog}

Well, it has been over a week since I have written anything. I wrote the last post not long after Garrett's birth. We had made it to the recovery room and got situated. Rick brought our hospital bags in from the car and I told him I wanted to quickly write down a few thoughts and things about the birth and right after before I forgot. Well, a few thoughts turned into quite a long post, but I left off at having just ordered dinner and we were anxiously waiting for some of our family members to come up and see Garrett! So now I'm wanting to finish writing about the rest of our hospital stay before I forget too much.

So as I mentioned, we ate dinner. I had some hospital food, pesto chicken which was actually really good, and Rick ate pizza that we had packed for dinner for that night for him since your spouse only gets one meal from the hospital for free while you're there. But they give you a lot of food so Rick was able to have some of mine too throughout our stay, so that worked out good. 

Just after we finished eating our visitors started arriving! It was so fun to see them. My parents and my little brother, Enoch came. Garrett is my parents 5th grandchild and 3rd grandson. Also Rick's parents came and of course brought Kimbri and Jessica also came! Josh and Diana also made the trip up to visit us! Thanks to everyone who came to visit. We loved seeing you! Here are some pictures we snapped:

Grandpa Haycock & Garrett

Grandma Haycock & Garrett

First family photo

It was so precious to have Kimbri see her new little brother!

Little Brother with his Big Sister

Grandma Stone & Garrett

Kimbri & Garrett

Grandma and Grandpa Stone & Garrett

Our hospital stay was so great! To be honest, I was a little sad when I found out I had to go to Timpanogos Regional Hospital for this delivery. Last time I delivered at Utah Valley and it was just more convenient because it was close, and I had delivered there once already so it was what I was familiar with. But honestly, if I have another baby in Utah I would totally chose Timpanogos over Utah Valley. I felt like their "Not bigger, just better" slogan is so true.  Everyone was so personable and it really was overall just a great hospital experience! 

The first day Garrett was taken to get his hearing test and his congenital heart defect test. He passed his hearing test but failed his heart test. That scared me when the nurse told us, but she said that they would test him again in one hour and that it's not totally abnormal for babies to fail the first time. So a stressful and worrisome hour passed and they took him again to test him and he passed! I was very grateful to hear that! 

That first night in the hospital was full of waking up several times. I remember when I had Kimbri it was so hard to sleep cause all I wanted to do was hold her. The same happened with Garrett. Every little noise he made I would wake up and just look at him. He is just so precious! And such a handsome little guy! 

I also had to wake up a few different times for the nurses to check my vitals, etc... and give me shots. My rubella had worn off so I had to get that one. I also hadn't had a flu shot yet this year so I got one of those. Then when we found out Garrett's blood type was O+ they had to come draw my blood so they could give me a RhoGAM shot since I'm O-.  But again, the nurses were just so nice and helpful the whole time we were there and I was so appreciative of them all. 

The next day, on Saturday, we had some more visitors. My mom came up with Olivia and Kimbri. She brought us lunch from Cafe Rio. Yum! And Zach came up after he got off work. Cosette also came after she got off work. And my dad came again later that evening after running some errands in the area and visited us. Thanks everyone for coming to visit us! It was great to have visitors and have so much support from our family! 

The nurses gave us the paper work to fill out so that we could be discharged from the hospital the next day. Then, that night around midnight they tested Garrett's bilirubin levels. I was so hoping that he wouldn't have to be on the lights like Kimbri. When we left the hospital his levels were low-intermediate so they told us we would have to come back to get them checked in 48 hours from leaving the hospital. We would later find out that he would have to be on the lights :( But I'm grateful for the technology that we have today to help little babies with jaundice get all better! 

Here are some of the pictures we took while in the hospital:

Hospital Bath

These are the pictures we took right before leaving the hospital on Sunday morning. 

Daddy with his son. So precious.

Just look at those chubby cheeks and long fingers!

All snuggled up for the ride home. It was 9 degrees
outside on our drive home from the hospital! 

It was so amazing to welcome Garrett into this world and to just love and hold him! We appreciate our families watching Kimbri so that Rick and I could be together in the hospital with Garrett!! Thank you so so much! Holding our little baby felt like we were holding a little piece of heaven and we are SO happy to have him finally here with us! 

Over Christmas Break...

Over Christmas break we were able to spend a lot of time together as a family. Rick didn't have school or studying and so we were able to hang out a lot together and we really enjoyed it! I was looking through some photos and realized I never posted some of the pictures we took over the break. So here they are:

These first two pictures are from when we went to Cafe Rio for lunch as a family...all thanks to Olivia! She gave us a Cafe Rio gift card to us for Christmas and so we went over the break and enjoyed some yummy food there. They even give free cheese quesadillas with a strawberry on top to kids. Needless to say, Kimbri loved it! ;-)

Rick has thoroughly enjoyed pulling gigantic icicles down from off our house and bringing them to the front door to show me. Haha:)  

Also during the break, before Garrett was born, Kimbri and I went to Spanish Fork to visit a few times while Rick was working at the ER in Payson. Grandpa Haycock took Kimbri on a few sledding adventures and Kimbri absolutely LOVED it!!! So of course I snapped some pictures and even recorded some on the video camera. She had quite and excited face the whole time! 

So excited to go on a sled ride! 

Kimbri on the sled on a big snow drift, waving to me! 

Grandpa and Kimbri

It was a fantastic break with spending a lot of time together with just our little family. And of course we ended the break and started the new year with welcoming little baby Garrett into our family!! We are so in love :-)

Daddy Daughter Time

During the past couple of weeks Rick and Kimbri have spent lots of extra time together. I'm so grateful to Rick and for everything he does, especially during these past couple weeks with having a newborn along with an energy-filled little girl running around!  Even on top of school and work, Rick will still get up with Kimbri in the morning to give her a bottle, play, and read with her so that I can sleep a little longer to make up for the lost sleep during the night due to Garrett's feedings. Rick has been the one to give Kimbri her baths and he has been getting her all ready and taking her to church with him. He is so supportive and is just the best daddy to Kimbri and Garrett I could ever dream of!  I just love him so so so much :)

Here are some of the pictures I've taken of Rick and Kimbri:

Bath Time! - Kimbri LOVES taking baths.

And she loves her bath letters/toys that Grandma & Grandpa Stone got her!

Daddy Daughter Buddies

Christmas 2012

Wow. I'm posting about Christmas when we are almost halfway through January. It's been a little bit crazy, especially having our newborn little Garrett in our family now. I've been recovering and resting from labor and delivery and we are adjusting to life with two kids! We love Kimbri and Garrett so so so much! I'll post more about Garrett's birth on this blog a little later but I want to quickly write about our Christmas for the year 2012! 

So this is our Christmas tree with the gifts underneath! Rick and I decided that we could spend $20 dollars on each other. Since we each needed some things we weren't very secretive. For example, Rick's jeans have holes in them so he needed some more pants. We went Christmas shopping and he picked out and tried on the pair of pants sitting under the Christmas tree in this picture. He also needed some socks so we got those for him too. I needed some new face lotion and then I also picked out a pair of warm and very comfortable sweat pants. I had been wanting something warm and comfortable to go and come home from the hospital in when having baby Garrett. For Kimbri, she got some books and a two babies with a baby doll bed. The books we were able to get for free since I hosted a book show a while back. The baby doll bed has been around for years! My grandpa Haycock made the bed for me a long time ago and my grandma Haycock made a little padding for a mattress for the baby dolls along with some pillows and blankets. They've been stored away for years, since I was little, so I washed the blankets and pillows and got out my twin baby dolls that I had from when I was younger and we gave them to Kimbri. We also got her a little pink and gray bracelet for $1. I know I've mentioned before in a previous post how much Kimbri loves "pretties" or in other words, bracelets and necklaces. She always likes to wear my bracelets so we got her one for herself that is her size. 

She loves her babies!

After having Kimbri opening and seeing her gifts and playing with her for a while, we loaded up and headed down to Spanish fork to spend Christmas morning with my family. I wish I would've written about the day sooner so that I could remember more details but it's been a while now so I don't remember as much. 

Kimbri LOVED picking up the wrapping paper from when anyone opened a present. My mom had a big trash sack and Kimbri would go and pick up each tiny bit of wrapping paper and throw it away. It was pretty funny and very entertaining not only for her but for everyone watching. Haha!

Kimbri loving the big pillow my mom got.

I don't have many pictures from Christmas day :( Bummer! But Donna and Jason, my aunt and uncle from Texas, and their two kids Micah and Maddye were here in Utah for Christmas this year! Also here for Christmas was Dale and Delicia and their three girls, Mckenzie, Mallory, and Katie, also from Texas. It was sooo fun to see them all!!! We didn't get to go to Louisiana for Thanksgiving for the big reunion with all my mom's siblings and parents so it was extra fun to see them.

My uncle Jason reading Christmas books to Kimbri.

We weren't able to get really fancy or that nice of gifts for other people because of our limited amount of money but we tried to get things people might need and enjoy at the same time. We got Rick's parents a cookie scooper. Rick said that his family didn't have one. It's not really a necessity to have a cookie scooper but it's kind of fun and makes scooping cookie dough a little bit easier and faster! Hopefully they enjoy it :) We decided to get my parents a new potato peeler. They have had an old metal one since I can remember that is getting pretty bent and beat up. Someone had given us a nicer potato peeler for our wedding and I love it so hopefully they enjoy their new one too! And I think I already talked about the sibling gift exchange in my Christmas Eve post...but if not, I'll quickly mention it. We had Nolan's name this year and got him a gift card to Red Robin so he and Brooke could go out on a free date. And on Rick's side of the family we had Levi's name and we got him a part that goes to his ukelele. 

Each of our parent's went over the top in giving us a Christmas this year. We feel so grateful to them and feel so blessed to have such amazing parents! Rick's parents got us pass of all passes! We are soooo excited! That gives us tons of free dates. And we'll get to spend a few weeks at Seven Peaks this next summer before moving to Arizona! They also gave us some money for Christmas. Thanks to both Mike and Sundee for so much generosity. I don't think they will realize how much it means to us right now in our lives! 

My parents got us a Chicco double stroller! I was totally shocked! It's gray and black and the car seat we have will snap into either the front or back seat of the stroller. I am sooooo excited. I can't even express how amazed I am. I've been wanting a double stroller for quite a while now, especially with a new baby! But we just new that it wasn't something we could afford right now. I've just been thinking about how when we will be living in Arizona and me being at home with two kids and how hard it would be to go anywhere. Kimbri and Garrett are just so close in age that they are both young enough to need to ride in a stroller. Thanks mom and dad! I can't believe it and I'm so excited!  They also renewed our Sam's club membership that came with a gift card which we are also so grateful for! They even looked up to make sure there was a Sam's Club in the area we will be living at in Arizona. Also they gave us a Walmart gift card and some extra cash. 

Again, I'm not sure if our parents will realize how big of a blessing their generosity has been for us. With the money we received from both of our parents we were able to buy food and even replace some of the food storage we had eaten. Rick and I often talk about how we want to be like our parents when Rick is done with school and we actually have money. We want to help others out like so many people have done for us. We want to be able to leave an extra big tip for someone who might really need it or secretly buy groceries for a family in need, like someone "secretly" did for us. I say "secretly" because we found out who actually did it and we can't even begin to express how grateful we are for the fruit, vegetables, meat and food money they left on our front porch.

During this Christmas season people have been so generous to us and as I have sat here and typed this out I'm overcome with tears and just hope that we can someday pay it forward to others who are in need. We love our family and friends and are so grateful to every one of them in our lives! 

Merry Christmas! 

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was so fun! Rick, Kimbri and I got to spend the whole day together! We got up and had breakfast and just lounged around together. We did have to get a little bit of laundry done but other than that, we spent the whole morning hanging out together. Kimbri took a nap mid-morning and Rick and I just played games together. Since Rick got done with finals we've had way more time to play some games. We've probably played Phase 10 the most. It goes a lot faster with 2 people and is still really fun. In between Kimbri's naps we decided to make Christmas sugar cookies. So we did that and made cookies into Christmas trees, stockings, candy canes, snowmen, and a few stars and frosted them different colors. Kimbri sure enjoyed taste-testing the cookie dough, frosting and the final cookie when they were done!

The beginning of a ton of snow just in time for Christmas!!

Lunch time on Christmas Eve plus Kimbri's silly faces.

We also had to finish up gathering up and wrapping a few presents for each of our sibling exchanges, so we made a quick stop at Sam's Club and at the mall. On my side we had Nolan's name and on Rick's side we had Levi's name. We got Nolan a Red Robin gift card so he could take his girlfriend, Brooke, out on a free date. Rick and I have always enjoyed gift cards that we've been given because then we can go out to eat and have a free date together! So hopefully they enjoy that :) Then for Levi's gift, we got him what I think is called a capo, for his ukelele. We sure hope he enjoys that as well!

Olivia had Rick and I for the sibling gift exchange...and she went way too all out with it and got all the members of our family something! Even Garrett who isn't even born yet! That was really thoughtful of her and we appreciate it a ton! She gave us a baby gate. And that is something that we have really been wanting for when Garrett is born. Attached to it was a Cafe Rio gift card! I'm soooo excited for that:) She also got Kimbri as couple of cute outfits; one is purple and dark blue. The shirt has polka dots and a pink flower and the other one is a onsie with cute flower pants. And then she got Garrett a little red and black flannel sleeper that is so soft! I can't wait to dress him in it! On Rick's side of the sibling exchange, his sister Mindy had us. She got us a movie gift card!! We are SO excited for that! We usually just wait til it's in Red Box or sometimes we'll splurge and go to the dollar theater. Haha :-) So we are really excited to go to the 'real' movie theater together!

So this year we were going to spend the main part of Christmas Eve with my family and then drop in at the Stone's to visit them after that since last year we were at the Stone's house most of the night and then dropped in at my family's to say hi. Well, it turned out that several people were sick at the Stone's and we didn't want to risk getting sick, especially since I could be having the baby any time now. So we were just at my family's house for the night.

Things started around 6pm. Camille and Tim plus their son, Jake, spent Christmas in Utah, from Colorado, this year, so they were there along with my Grandma and Grandpa Haycock. Two of my aunts on my mom's side, Donna and Delicia and their families were in town too! So that was fun, but they ended up having to split time with other family around this area too. But it was soooo fun to see them since we didn't get to go to Louisiana for the big family get together for Thanksgiving!

We had our yearly Christmas Eve 'dinner' which was super yummy. It's not your typical dinner but more of snack-type foods. My favorite are my dad's homemade taquitos with salsa!! Yuuummmm!!!! I probably ate way too many. But it's one of the Christmas Eve favorites, in my opinion:) There was also my Grandma's homemade rolls with turkey and ham meat and cheese to make little sandwiches. And a whole lot of other types of food. Different kinds of chips and dip, mini pickles, another of my favorites, a huge variety of cookies and of course the tradition of a sherbet and sprite slushy drink! It was really yummy.

Later in the evening we did our little "Gift to the Savior" show. It is a time where you can present something you've been working on or share a an experience, etc... but mostly it is sharing our talents. For example, several people played Christmas songs, or other songs, on the piano. My little cousin, Jake played a song, Zach played one and so did Wyatt. Enoch performed a dance that Olivia had helped him learn. Rick played a song on the piano. My dad wanted me to play a Christmas hymn. And then everyone finally got my dad to sing a song, along with Wyatt and Rick. It wasn't really Christmas related or anything but rather a fun random tradition of me playing Phantom of the Opera songs and the boys all singing along. They belt it out and sing along and it's really funny! And they're actually quite good.

The rest of the evening was spent just hanging out and relaxing, spending time with family and just lounging around together. We also played a round of Tommy Right & Tommy Left. Rick got a box of popcorn and I got two Christmas dish towels. That game is a Christmas tradition that I want to continue on with our family! It was really fun to spend time with family and to get to visit with family from out of town that we don't get to see very often!

Here are a few more snapshots of Christmas Eve I took at my parents house.

Kimbri opening a present from her Uncle Zach.

She LOVES the soft purple blanket he gave her! 

Thanks Uncle Zach!