Garrett's 1st Week Home

Garrett's first week home was quite a busy week because of all the trips back to the hospital that we had to make but we were able to handle it thanks to our families, especially our moms, that helped out soooo much! They watched Kimbri several different times so that I could recover and get some rest. 

We seriously feel so blessed to have such great families and friends that support us so much! I also have the best visiting teachers ever. I don't think I cooked for an entire week because of all the family and friends that brought us food. On Sunday, the day we got home from the hospital, my mom, who had been tending Kimbri, brought her back up to Provo with the rest of my siblings who hadn't seen Garrett yet. They brought us Sunday dinner - lasagna, salad with yummy Olive Garden dressing, french bread, peas and even ice cream! Needless to say we had that delicious meal not only for dinner but for lunch the next few days. Yummy!! 

On Monday one of my friends from the ward, Shelly Hargus, brought over potato soup with delicious breadsticks and strawberry shortcake. Tuesday night one of my visiting teachers, Tiffany, brought over a whole pan of incredible taquitos with a bag of salad and cinnamon rolls. On Wednesday night my other visiting teacher, Megan, brought over some sort of pasta and cheese meal that was so flavorful. I really need to get the recipes for all this food! She also brought a salad with french bread and a plate full of brownies.

 On Thursday my Grandma and Grandpa Haycock came to visit and see Garrett, their newest great-grandson. They so kindly brought a pan of chicken enchiladas, some chips and some oranges. All I had to do was stick it in the oven for 30 minutes and wa-lah, they were done! My grandparents also brought over some blankets for Garrett. And boy do we love Grandma Haycock's homemade blankets!! Thanks so much Grandma and Grandpa for the blankets and food! 

Also on Thursday, my mom stayed at our house to help watch Kimbri and take Garrett and I to the hospital to get his bilirubin levels checked. After getting home from the hospital that night my mom made us dinner - orange chicken and rice. And she did all our dishes. I honestly can't thank her enough for all the trips to the hospital she made, making us dinner and stocking our fridge full of food. 

If it isn't obvious enough, we actually had a full fridge for an entire week and it was such a humongous blessing! We are soooooooo grateful to everyone who helped us by bringing food. 

I am also incredibly grateful to Sundee and my mom for watching Kimbri. I don't think I could've made it without their help. Again, we feel so blessed and full of gratitude for everyone who has been so supportive to us. Thank you!!

Here are some pictures we took during Garrett's first week at home:

Garrett's bassinet. We just used the brown cover that we
used for Kimbri but I made some
blue mattress covers to make it more boy-ish.

Kimbri loves getting in Garrett's rocking bassinet.
Just look at that sneaky little grinning face! 

I love his chubby chin! 

This onsie has dogs all over it and says "Dog Gone Cute" on it. Ha!

Garrett snuggling with daddy.

He's got quite a full head of hair! Hopefully it stays!

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!