3 Months

Well, we’ve managed to keep little Sadie alive for 3 whole months! She’s growing so fast too! She now weighs a whopping 13 pounds and is 24 1/2 inches tall…that’s almost half the height of Mommy already!

Sadie is so much fun. She “talks” all day so we know she’s going to be a little social butterfly. She loves to sit up in her Boppy and smile at us, hates tummy time with a passion, and drools all over her clothes so much now that we have about 3 outfits a day (4 if she has her daily diaper blowout).

She loves bath time, loves being outside and turning her head in every direction she can, and is such a good little sleeper. She’s been sleeping through the night for almost 2 weeks now averaging about 7-9 hours between feedings. For some odd reason she absolutely is mesmerized by looking at wood…yes, wood.

Speaking of feedings-she doesn’t like nursing in public so much. Sometimes she does awesome. Other times she’s not in the mood to be under the Hooter Hider and starts screaming and thrashing the Hider all over the place…she has a very good grip. Doesn’t make for good times nursing in public when your child is purposefully trying to unveil all that should not be seen.

Daddy loves putting Sadie in her car seat (especially first thing in the morning) because she always manages to give big smiles. We’re still trying to figure out why she is such a morning person because neither of us are. Daddy also loves being the one to put Sadie down to sleep at night.

She has such a sweet and curious personality so far. TJ and I still are catching ourselves looking at her in such awe that God has blessed us with this little life… We love you Rae Rae!!!

 

Sadie’s Date Night!

TJ and I have always cherished and known the importance of dating each other even though we’re happily married. Since bringing little Sadie into the world, we have realized even more how much we need our date nights to reconnect with one another and be able to have an adult conversation after 24-7 baby, baby, baby!

Luckily, Nana & Papa have given us every Thursday night off  to do this! So, last night we went out to dinner and then to coffee. We watched the clock to make sure we would be back at the time we said as we knew Nana and Papa had both had long days.

As we walked up to the door, we heard music baring from the street. To our surprise, Sadie wasn’t sleeping but was all smiles in Nana’s arms dancing while good ‘ol Papa was singing his heart out to nothing other than…hold your breathe…Barry Manilow. Apparently Chattanooga-choo-choo is her personal fav.

Oh, Dad really ?!!! It wasn’t enough that three of your children had to overcome the horror?! Now you have to do it to your grandchildren?! I would have settled for the millionth time hearing you do your rendition of New York, New York! ;0)

Anyways, despite the horrible choice of music selection, Sadie had a ball while we were gone.

Thanks for letting TJ and I have a good time and most of all for letting little Sadie have a date night of her own dancing the night away!

 

Giggles

Today Sadie laughed for the first time! She’s been attempting to laugh for the past week or so, but only managing little airy grunts with her smiles. Today she was sitting in her little “lamby” and was smiling away. I turned to go sit across the room and out of nowhere I heard a real giggle! I turned around again to look at what she might be laughing at, and she was all gums! I know I’m the Mama, but she was too cute!

I love all the milestones she’s hitting!

 

One Month

I can’t believe it’s been a month already! Sadie is amazing! She is so alert, is full of smiles, and definitely has a lot to say. Just today I took her for a walk in the Ergo around the neighborhood and she grunted at every bird she could hear chirping. She loves to be held 24/7 and has a nack for peeing or pooping as soon as Daddy is switching out the old diaper for a new one. She also loves bath time. Just the other night she actually fell asleep…guess being pampered is much too relaxing. My personal favorite is what we like to call the “Sadie Sandwich.” Sadie lays on the bed in between us and all three of us snuggle. It’s only been 4 weeks, but there already have been so many moments with our baby girl where TJ and I are just bursting with love for her that we have never felt with anything/anyone else.

2 weeks old

3 weeks old

4 weeks old

 

Sadie Rae’s Labor Story

Sadie Rae Brown was born on Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 6:01 am weighing in at 7 pounds 8 ounces and 20 inches long.

Intro

The moral to our labor story with Sadie Rae is whatever plans you have go out the window! We were planning on having an all natural Bradley Method birth experience…no drugs, no epidural, lots of relaxation, walking, breathing, and going to the hospital at the last minute simply to deliver and go home. That’s not at all what ended up happening.

NST to L&D

November 6 started out routine in going to the hospital to do another non-stress test because my Dr. was watching my blood pressure for preeclampsia. Every other non-stress test had been non-eventful, so we didn’t think much of it. But when we were there this time, the nurse wasn’t happy with Sadie’s lack of movement and heart rate when I was experiencing contractions. I was sent down to Labor and Delivery for more monitoring.

Not much changed when I was moved to labor and delivery, so my Dr. was contacted. Everyone agreed that for Sadie’s sake, we needed to induce. I started out on my own at 3 centimeters dilated and 60% effaced. I was bummed about inducing because it wasn’t natural and my number one “no no” was pitocin. I just didn’t want to do it. But I knew we needed to get Sadie out healthy, and I surrendered myself to the process. By 1:30 pm I was officially admitted into the hospital and the Pitocin began it’s dripping.  Even though I had to be on Pitocin, I made up my mind to still go natural regardless of the horror stories of pain I would endure with the contractions often times going back to back.

Oh, the medication

The first hour or so I didn’t feel any contractions even though I was having them on my own on a regular basis. It wasn’t until about 3:45 pm that I began to feel some intense pain. By now I was doing a lot of moaning and holding on to TJ through contractions for dear life. TJ did such an awesome job as coach in helping me focus, giving me lots of counter pressure, and telling me when the worst was over so I had something to look forward to. We both thought given my prior medical emergencies (which are many) that I would be screaming obscenities despite me being a Godly woman because of the pain….flashback to my wonderful kidney stone experience of 2006. But TJ really did keep me grounded during the most horrible contractions. Plus, I knew I had an amazing end result to the pain to focus on.

My nurse would come in intermittently to check on my progress because she knew we wanted to go as natural as possible with the least amount of people and intervention. When she came in at 6:00 pm and I still hadn’t moved from 3 cm, she started to get concerned. Again, she checked with the Dr. on duty at 9:00 pm and still nothing had changed. What did happen was the Dr. pointed out how incredibly narrow my pelvic arch was. He explained how it might pose a problem in getting Sadie to move down, which would be the reason I hadn’t been progressing at all. Sadie’s heart rate was also starting to show signs of distress.

Making choices

My Dr. called TJ and gave us two options to talk through. Choice #1 was to take an epidural to relax the muscles and see if I could dilate fully to delivery vaginally. Choice #2, go straight to C-section and get her out. We all conferred that we wanted to try and get me fully dilated and went for the epidural. I was so disappointed about having to get that done too…I had already been through hours of endless pain and even though it was horrible, I knew it was how God designed my body to deal with birth. I was bummed that I wasn’t going to be able to feel much of anything anymore. But again, we knew it was the best choice given the situation and was in the best interest of Sadie’s safe arrival.

So by 12:30 am I had the epidural. Wow does that thing work! At 2:00 am my nurse checked my progress and I was fully dilated to 10 centimeters from my previous 3 centimeters. The prospect of a vaginal delivery was looking up. But Sadie’s head hadn’t descended. At 5:00 am, things were exactly the same. Despite me being ready to push, Sadie’s head was far to high. In addition to that, my urine had turned to bloody indicting that her head was butting up against my bladder in an effort to unsuccessfully move down. This was now not a good situation for me or for Sadie.

Showtime

By 5:15 am, it was decided that we tried every avenue possible to avoid a C-section, but we needed to get her out. By 5:45 am I was in the OR and getting prepped for delivery. TJ and I were both disappointed that labor did not go anything like we wanted, but by now, we were ready to have our baby out safely.

C-section was surreal. I laid there on the table thinking that in minutes all the hours of pain, months of waiting would be over and I would be a mom to this little girl. I honestly thought a lot about my mom who also went through C-sections with all of us, wondering if the same thoughts went through her head laying there. I thought about what Sadie would look like, and worried about her being ok and hoping this C-section would really end up being the best decision for us.

It went fast. TJ walked in the OR dressed in his scrubs and ready to go. He talked to me, watched the surgery, took pictures, and reassured me the whole way. And then at 6:01 am, our baby girl made her debut into the world.  Amazing. No words can describe.

Complications

Our trip home from the hospital on Wednesday did not end up being our first. That night I suddenly couldn’t breathe well. When I took a breath in, all there was was a rattling noise. We immediately thought I had post-operative pneumonia like I had developed with my last surgery. We had to get me to the hospital. I had to leave Sadie behind with Nana Kay. It was the most gut-wrenching thing I have had to do because I knew I wasn’t going to see her the rest of the night and she was only 3 days old. It killed me to have to leave her.

Long story short, I ended up on the stroke unit for congestive heart failure. During my last few weeks of pregnancy in having high blood pressure I accumulated fluid. I was also given lots of fluids because of my C-section. Because of my high bloody pressure, my body didn’t get rid of the extra fluid after delivery. As a result, my heart failed and dumped fluid into my lungs. Scary stuff. Within 2 days, they drained over 9 liters of fluid off my body. I went one night and half a day without Sadie. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever been through. I was so scared I wasn’t going to live to be her mom and that at age 25, I would be leaving TJ alone.

Luckily, I had great medical care by my Dr. and made a full recovery once all the extra fluid was drained off of me.

Back to my baby

Now we are making a slow, but full recovery and enjoying the amazing gift God has given us in our beautiful Sadie Rae. She is stubborn like her Mama, especially when it comes to nursing. She loves skin to skin time with Daddy and makes us laugh with all her little grunts and her amazing alertness at all hours of the night. We feel so lucky that God has entrusted us with her life and love being her parents.

 

Close Call!

This past Wednesday, we went into our normal weekly Dr. appointment to check on Baby Brown’s progress. As normal, they checked my blood pressure. It was high…very high. The nurse changed the cuff and checked again and it was still just as high. She waited a few minutes and repeated the process, and had the same results. Then she checked for protein in my sample, and sure enough, I had proteins.

My Dr. came in, quickly ran through the details of Preeclampsia, and sent us straight over to the hospital. She said we needed to prepare ourselves for an induction or possible emergency C-section that afternoon if nothing changed. Not what we were expecting. Luckily, my blood pressure came way down when I laid down in L&D for a while and they sent me home on bedrest, coming back to the hospital twice a week to check on me and baby until I deliver.

I’m glad I didn’t have to go through the long induction and that hopefully I will still be able to experience going into labor on my own and delivering naturally…hopefully. As scary as it was, TJ was thoroughly disappointed that we didn’t get to meet her Wednesday and ended up having to wait!

Any day now….any day!!!!

 

36 Weeks

Update: Weekly visits to the Dr. have commenced until her Birth Day! As of today, I am dilated 1 cm. so things are progressing and we’re moving in the right direction.  We can’t wait to see our little girl!

Here’s a sample of some pics the talented Uncle Dane took of us for our first “family” photo shoot!

 

Healthy Husband

I am so lucky to have a spiritually healthy, growing husband who keeps me accountable and encourages me through what is proving to be one of the most trying times of our marriage thus far. This is so difficult to write knowing that as I do, there is a small baby girl in my belly getting ready any day now to make her debut into the world….

We have officially hit the end of our savings. All of our money we worked so hard to save this past year despite a cut by half of our salary the year before  has gone toward paying my Cobra health insurance to make sure the baby and I are okay throughout the pregnancy. We don’t know where to go from here. Even though we don’t know what is next, I do know that I have the most resilant, faithful husband known to man.

Every day he gets up and repeats the same process he has for months. He spends hours sending out resumes and applications. He calls businesses near and far to see if they are hiring. He networks with anybody he can connect with who may have a lead. He goes on interviews only to be blown off and not even get a phone call to let him now they selected someone else a week ago.  He walks with his head up and a smile on his face into business after business straight to the manager and asks for a job so he can take care of his family. I don’t know how else he bears all of the stress on his shoulders other than the fact that he believes God can and will provide for our every need if he remains faithful.

As hard as it is to write our current reality down, I want to so our baby girl can know how hard her Daddy worked every day for not even a penny to try and bring her into a world where we could take care of her. Even though it hasn’t happened yet for us, we take comfort in knowing that despite worldly possesions and being able to spend money without a second thought, she is coming into a healthy marriage, a healthy home, and parents and extended family who couldn’t love her more.

TJ and I were sitting in church the other night at our weekly marriage seminar series we are going through and were feeling defeated. Then he whipped out the bible in front of us, turned to this passage, read it, and then gave it to me. This is the passage that keeps things in perspective for us:

Matthew 6:25-34

Do Not Be Anxious

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? [1] 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

 

The Brown Blues

Maybe it’s the wonderful pregnancy hormones. Maybe it’s grappling with the reality of our current situation.  It’s probably both, but I’ve got the blues. It has been really frustrating to apply to so many companies, and even to be strung along by one in particular for over 2 months with no answer still about a job for TJ when we both know we have a deadline to meet (Baby Brown’s arrival), and he is more than qualified for the positions he is applying for.

Last week, one of our pastors spoke about praying through something and sometimes not being able to have a cohesive thought to even speak to God,  yet He still understands. My prayers have been exactly that because of the sheer panic and disparity I feel like I have been in lately.

God hears something like this from me multiple times a day…

Baby.

Born.

Hospital.

Insurance.

Money.

Co-payments.

Necessity.

Scared.

How much longer?

Help.

When?

Diapers.

Food.

Want own home.

Discouraged.

Not us.

Nesting.

Baby crying, mom crying.

You’re in control.

Running out of time.

Poor TJ.

Not permanent…don’t worry. I’m worried.

Burnt out.

Clothes.

Trusting you.

Almost over?

I have no idea how much longer we will go without a job. I do know that for every job we apply for, there are an average of 500 people applying for the very same one. Only God can supply our needs. Only He can give us what is perfect for us in His time. It’s just difficult to hold on to the hope of His perfect timing when we don’t know the date it will all be over.

I pray it happens soon so we can bring our baby into the world without this big burden on our shoulders.

 

Another 3D/4D-30 weeks

We put in our DVD to watch our little Baby Brown do her thing, and the DVD froze! We freaked out, called the store to see if they saved the stuff or not so we could get another copy made, and they didn’t! What they did do was bring us in for another 3D/4D to make another video of her so we could have a record. So, at 30 weeks, we got to see our little one in action again.

She still loved her hands in her face, loved to suck on her toes as much as possible, gave us some good smiles, and in good Grandma Shara fashion, stuck out her tongue multiple times (probably because she was mad at me for overdoing it the day before)!

We were amazed to see how much she grew in 2 weeks…bigger cheeks, more defined lips, etc. She’s so beautiful! Here’s some snapshots: