Adeline Ivy Wood

I’m finally getting around to posting Adeline’s birth story.  As I’ve mentioned in my earlier posts, all three of my other kids were pretty early.  I was not used to watching my due date go past and still no baby!  However, it really all worked out for the best.  If I would have had her early with all of the house stuff going on it would have been a nightmare.  She came at the perfect time (well for the circumstances) 3 days after we moved into our house.  Giving us just enough time to prepare at least a tiny bit for her arrival.  With Allie, I had contractions for 3 days before she finally decided to come, but with Adeline, I didn’t really have hardly any pre labor contractions.  I started having a few on Saturday morning, but nothing strong and definitely not regular.  By mid afternoon, I was still having them, but still not strong and not regular.  Around 9:30 pm they started becoming more regular, but still not that strong but still about 10 minutes apart.  Anyone who has had a baby knows you follow the 5:1:1 rule.  5 minutes apart, lasting 1 minute timed for 1 hour.  About 12:30 am they started coming about 5 minutes apart and were getting stronger so I began timing them.  By this point Justin had already gone to bed b/c he was “tired” even though I was in pain at this point.  I was not too happy with him, but whatever.  So I timed them myself.  I timed them for a little over an hour just like you are supposed to and then called the nurse.  But by that time they were getting really strong fast.  By the time the nurse actually called me back I was like “ look this is my fourth baby and I KNOW I am in labor and I am already going to the hospital now!”  I screamed at Justin to get out of bed and let’s go NOW!  Luckily the hospital is only about 10 minutes from our new house.  We checked into the hospital at 2:20 AM.  At this point I was in extreme pain.  I told them whatever you do, just get me started with my IV bag immediately so that I can get my epidural.  I hate that you have to finish that whole fluid bag before they will even call the anesthesiologist.  The nurse checked me and I was only 5 cm when we checked in.  She immediately started my IV bag and called my midwife and said I was definitely in labor.  At this point the contractions were coming on strong and I was losing it.  I was screaming for my epidural.  They said they needed to move me from Triage to my room and asked if I could walk and I said “No, I don’t want to do anything to speed this labor up!” so they wheeled me screaming down there.  I never even had time to have the contraction belt hooked up to me so I don’t think they believed me when I kept screaming to them that my contractions were not stopping!  Literally there was no break in between them.  Not even 30 seconds.  It was continuously one painful contraction, immediately followed by another.  I was a total mess screaming that I was not going to be able to get an epidural and all the nurses were like “Of Course you are!”  One nurse actually started squeezing my fluid bag trying to get it into my body faster.  The other nurse even said we have went ahead and called the anesthesiologist and He will be here soon.  Right after that I started feeling an intense pain and need to push.  I just start pushing and screaming.  I start screaming that I’m pushing and they check me and say “oh wow, she is already at 10 cm and the baby is coming.  I cried “oh no!  I’m not going to be able to get my epidural?” And the nurse said, no you are going to have to deliver this baby right now!” I went from 5 cm to 10 cm in only 30 minutes so that explains my nonstop contractions.  Within about 30 seconds, (or so my mom says, b/c at that point I was completely out of it) there were about 10 people in the room including my midwife who at that point I had not even met!  I pushed maybe two more times and the baby was out.  I didn’t get my legs up or anything.  They were trying to ask me to lift my legs and I was in so much pain that I couldn’t even move.  I basically just delivered Adeline while just sitting straight up in the bed with my legs straight out b/c I just could not even move.  Anyone who has had a natural birth, I’m sure understands, but it was by far the most horrible pain I have ever felt in my life.  I can’t even describe how horrible it was.  I think it maybe would not have been quite so bad if I was prepared for a natural birth, maybe had a water bath or something like that, but I was in complete shock that this was happening to me b/c I fully expected to get my epidural.  After Adeline was born, it actually is immediate relief.  I didn’t expect that.  The horrible pain immediately went away.  They tried to hand me Adeline, but I was still in a state of shock after it all.  I couldn’t even move or hold her. They asked me if I wanted them to just go ahead and assess her and I said yes b/c I didn't want to hold her b/c I was still so out of it.  They had me go ahead and deliver the afterbirth and that hurt a bit but not bad.   It was actually a relief feeling to have it all out of me.  Then the nurses look at me and are like did you have that on your face before?  They show me a mirror and I have what looks like hives all over the edge of my face and my neck and chest area.  They said they had never seen that before.  Turns out it was not hives, but ruptured blood vessels all over my neck and face from my instense straining from the pain.  It took about 4 days for them to go away.  Then after that, which apparently is normal, but never happened to me before, a little while after all the nurses had left my room, I got so cold.  I mean freezing.  My teeth were nonstop chattering, my whole body was shaking so bad that I couldn’t even talk.  I didn’t know what was happening to me.  My whole body was frozen and I couldn’t move.  I couldn't even move my legs or anything.  I thought I was losing too much blood or something and couldn’t even talk to tell anyone.  Justin and My mom were trying to warm me up and paged the nurse b/c they didn't know what was happening either.  She came in and said it was normal, just my body going into shock after the delivery.  They put warm blankets on me but nothing was helping.  It took about 30 minutes for me to finally stop and start warming back up, but I was still cold for a long time after that.  It was really weird and scary at the time.  After that things got much better.  Having a natural birth was awesome in the fact that I was up going to the bathroom all by myself within an hour of the birth and walking all around.  And of course not having the $4000 epidural bill is nice!  Plus it is cool  being able to say I experience natural childbirth, although I would never want to do it again.  

As usual, I wanted to leave the hospital as soon as possible.  They agreed to let me leave after 24 hours.  Adeline was 6lbs 2oz.  Same as Kaitlyn! She was 19” long and had a decent amount of hair for my babies.  She was born at 2:38 am.  Exactly 38 minutes after we checked into the hospital! I hate the hospital stay so much.  No one will leave you alone and all you want to do is sleep after such a tramatic thing done to your body but there is no nursery and they want you to be trying to feed them every 1-2 hours which is crazy.  I just could not wait to leave.  Before we could leave however, we had to decide on a name.  We were so confused.  Originally we had talked about her being either Charlotte or Hailey.  But after she was born, we both just could not decide on a name.  I didn’t really want either of them anymore.  Adeline was never even on the table.  In the hospital I googled some baby names and Adeline was on a list and I suggested it and Justin said fine and that was it!  So Adeline Ivy Wood was named!

Once we were home, things were better, although living conditions were not.  The house was an absolute wreck.  A few people from church brought us some meals the first 3 days and I think our house scared a couple of them! Haha!  It really was a disaster.  So that is Adeline’s birth story!  Very traumatic for me but I am so happy to have her here.  I really just love her so much!  My only regret is that since this is our last baby, I really wanted to enjoy cuddling her and enjoying those baby times.  But unfortunately I can’t do that as much as I would like.  Our house is still a disaster 2 months later and every free moment I have I try and spend working on the house!  Which is not very many, since I am back to pumping exclusively and Adeline eats every 3 hours and I pump 5 times a day, plus take care of everyone else.  I really don’t know when it will ever get done.  I guess one day it will be.  But in the mean time, I really am trying to enjoy my time with my last precious baby.

Sweet Adeline Ivy Wood

 My hives.  The picture doesn't do them justice, they were around the whole edge of my face and going down on my chest.  It looked like hickeys all over me.

 Meeting the new sibling

Mommy looking rough

 Heading Home!

Kaitlyn starts Kindergarten

So I already mentioned in my last post that Kaitlyn's first day of school was not only my due date for our baby, but also the day after we moved into our new house so things were very crazy.  She was very excited and nervous for her first day.  When I picked her up from school, she said she liked it, but then later on about her 4th day in, I find out that she has been crying at school every single day.  This continues for about 2 weeks.  She would cry at night before bed b/c she didn't want to go to school.  She asked how long she would have to keep going to school.  She also said she was very shy and still had not talked to any other kids during that whole time!  I kept trying to tell her that it would be so much better once she made some friends.  I came and ate lunch with her at school to try and help her talk to other kids.  I finally told her if she was too shy to talk to any of the kids to tell the teachers that she didn't have any friends.  She finally did and the teacher asked another kid to play with her.  After that it gradually started getting better.  She asked the teacher another day to help her find a friend again and eventually one outgoing girl latched on to Kaitlyn and now they are very good friends.  That has helped tremendously.  She finally stopped crying during school and now goes with no problems!  Now we just need to work on getting her to read!  I blame myself b/c I have been so slack about working with her.  She is doing pretty good now, able to read some BOB Books, but is basically just average for her grade.  I know we can do better than that b/c she is so smart!  Brayden on the other hand, I think I will have a lot of work to do to get him ready for Kindergarten!  He does not have much interest in that kind of stuff.  Here is my big girl on her first day of school!

Moving Day!

I have so much catch up to do!  Well Moving day finally arrived!  It was a very stressful time, since I was due at any day and we had no idea when our closing date was going to actually be.  They finally gave us a closing date and then 3 days prior to closing, we get an email telling us that our closing date has been postponed with no explanation.  I call around and find out that True Homes failed inspection and that the closing date was postponed but no definite date given.  I was livid.  We had already scheduled our pods to be delivered, our movers were booked and we were finally getting to move into our new home hopefully before the baby arrived only to find out it was all canceled.  So knowing me, I pitched a fit! haha!  I called everyone that I could get a hold of and basically told them it was unacceptable and that I wanted the new closing date scheduled ASAP.  My embarrassing (to Justin) arguing finally worked and I got our new closing date moved up 2 days prior to when they wanted it to be to the 19th.  We still had to rearrange our pod deliveries and reschedule our movers and they were not available until the 20th.  So after closing on our home, we had to go back to Mom's house to get the kids and then we started hauling all of our stuff that had been with us while we were living there.  One thing I have learned from all of this is that I never again want to move into a temporary situation.  It would have been so much easier to move straight from our old house to our new house.  We had to bring so much stuff over to my Mom's to live for almost 2 months and it was basically double the work.  We were grateful to be able to have stayed there though while our house was being finished.  We took over as much as we could on the 19th and had all these goals to get blinds hung, etc, etc.  Well pretty much nothing got accomplished b/c just moving all of our stuff took forever.  The next day, we left the kids with my mom and Justin and I headed back over to the house to meet the movers.  This time they only sent us two movers instead of 4 and they were only available for 2 hours since we had to book them so last minute so they were not able to finish unloading all of our pods.  They made sure that they unloaded all of the heavy furniture and boxes so that we would not be stuck with that.  After the movers left Justin and I had to just resort to unloading everything straight into the garage since we were so physically exhausted that we could not bear to keep loading into the house and especially upstairs.  After we finished with those Pods, I felt like I was about to die being 9 months pregnant but it still did not bring on the labor!  I couldn't believe it!  Both Kaitlyn and Allie were 8 days early and Brayden was 2 weeks early.  I thought for sure my fourth would be as well!  But no!  The rest of the day was spent going back to my mom's and bringing over all the rest of our stuff since that took many multiple trips.  We found a few mattresses and everyone just slept on that since we didn't have time to put together furniture.  The next day (Friday 21st) Justin went back to work.  He didn't want to waste his vacation days before the baby arrived.  It was also the day that Kaitlyn started Kindergarten and the baby's due date!  To say that I was a bit stressed during this whole process was an understatement.  I was basically a mess.  I was hormonal, exhausted, and stressed out.  I just wanted to lie down and sleep, but I couldn't since I still had to take care of the kids and start unpacking boxes.  I knew it would be a long process but really didn't think it would take so long.  It is now Mid October and we are still not even close to being finished with our house!  I joking made a goal of having it finished by New Year's, but now I don't even know it that will happen!  Taking care of a newborn, 3 other kids and Justin always working just doesn't leave me much time to do it all.  Then to top it off, I started doing a small bit of work for Shea Homes again.
Anyway, I realize this post probably sounded like I was complaining way too much! But looking back on it, it was definitely one of the hardest and most stressful times of my life!  I told Justin I am never moving again! haha!  I don't know how people do it so many times!  But We really do love our new location though!  The house is very much still a work in progress, but we love being in Indian Land and our location couldn't be better.  We are literally 5 minutes from Carolina Place mall and so close to so many things in Charlotte, but still have the benefits of SC taxes and schools.  We are finally starting to work on our yard.  We planted 8 blueberry bushes and are planting 5 fruit trees in hopes to have our own supply of fruit and berries in the years to come since we plan on being here for a while.

Here we are leaving our old home.  We were in such a rush to get everyone packed up and out of there, that I didn't even get to enjoy our last day in our old house!  I will miss our first home and all of the wonderful people we met there!  Unfortunately this is the best picture I could get of us as well!  The kids were not cooperative!

And  picture of our new house!  No insides as it is still a wreck!