Crazy Week

So, since I recently had a baby and all..........I have to make sure I finish out my project LIFE for the year so that I remember the details of the last few weeks of 2010. Tatum is sleeping pretty well but she does get me up in the night to eat so I'm running on less sleep than usual. But, I am finding time in each day to relax since my parents are still here. Next week after they leave Chris is off of work so I will have him around but then the real test comes the week after that :-)

Here is Project LIFE Week 51 (the week Tatum was born):

Sunday Dec. 12 - Jack's thing of the day was supposed to be shopping with the teenagers for our adopted families. However, that got canceled due to lots of snow fall that afternoon. So, we had family movie night to watch Elf instead! It's a yearly tradition that we watch Elf and that movie always cracks me up! As Jack has gotten a little older, he is definitely a fan of the movie and laughed at a lot of the parts.

Monday Dec. 13 - Happy Birthday Chris AND Landry!!! Today our new nephew was born to my brother Brian and his wife Kym. The proud big brother and sister are Sawyer and Addie Grace! After I worked in the morning we picked up Jack from school and headed to the north side of town where Landry was born. We were so excited to meet Landry and hold him and snuggle with him. I have to admit I was a little bit jealous that they already had their baby and I still had about 3 weeks to go. I was so ready to meet our little girl......

Anyways, after our time at the hospital we had dinner at Outback (Chris's choice) to Chris's birthday! Then, came home and had an amazing carrot cake made by yours truly :-)

Tuesday Dec. 14 - Jack's Christmas Program at School with lunch of his choice afterward:
I didn't get any pictures of the actual program but it was very nice. Jack actually sang this year but he did keep his hands in his back pockets the whole time. Actually, I did take some pictures but they turned out really dark in the auditorium. Here are a couple from after the program of Jack with his daddy and then Jack with his friend, Sydney...Oh, and Jack chose to eat at a Mexican Restaurant with mommy and daddy after the program. So, we let him skip out on the rest of the school day!

Wed. Dec. 15 - Jingle Rails
Jingle Rails is a really cool train exhibit going on right now at our Eiteljorg Museum downtown. It is a model that takes you on a journey from Indianapolis through the old west with very good replicas of many of the western state parks. It was very impressive. There is no way my pictures could do it justice. Jack absolutely loved this and it is something he had been looking forward to ever since he saw the advertisement for it in the newspaper.However, we almost didn't get to go! Our plan for the day was that after my doctor's appointment I would come home (around 10) and then the 3 of us would head downtown to see Jingle Rails and eat lunch and then Chris would head to the office for the rest of the day until church time that night. At my doctor's appointment, my blood pressure was up. It was 140/90 which in the grand scheme of blood pressure is not THAT high but mine had been running MUCH lower than that for my entire pregnancy so my doctor was concerned. He told me he wanted me to have lab work and an ultrasound to check on the baby and we needed to have these tests done to determine if the baby needed to come out today. WHAT??? Today??? I was totally not ready for that. So, I called Chris and thankfully my parents had not left to go home to Knoxville yet so they stayed at home with Jack while Chris came over to the doctor's office. We had an ultrasound that was to check for 5 different things: fetal movement, lung development, amniotic fluid level, heart beat, and something else that I can't remember right now. Anyways, we passed each part except fetal movement. Our baby was sleeping and would not move on the ultrasound. We knew she was fine because of everything else but then......they wanted to send me to the hospital for a non stress test just to be sure. So, we headed over to the hospital and had a non-stress test which showed my BP was back down a little and everything was okay. When I left the hospital I was told that my doctor would be calling to schedule to induce me into labor in the next few days but I didn't have to have the baby today. Whew!

So, we went home and got Jack and said good-bye to my parents who drove home to Knoxville. We went to see Jingle Rails and then went to church that night. I never heard from my doctor's office Wed. afternoon so we assumed that the earliest he would induce me would be Friday or the following Monday. So.....Thursday I went to work as usual knowing that it would probably be my last day. I called my doctor's office that morning and left them my pager number to reach me during the day. I hadn't heard from them so at 2:00 I called back and spoke with Jamie (my doctor's medical assistant). She was so happy I called back because somehow she had missed that it was a pager number and couldn't get me. That's when I got a BIG SHOCK. Dr. Salazar had scheduled me to be induced THAT night at 8:00!!!!!! WHAT????

Crazy mode set in. We had to make arrangements for Jack (he went to Brian and Kym's who had just come home from the hospital from having Landry). A huge thank you to them! We called my parents who almost immediately packed and loaded up again to head back up here. Chris had driven me to work that day because of snow so he had to come back and get me. Once we got home we had to pack for the hospital, get out the car seat and wash the cover, pack a bag for Jack to go to Brian and Kym's, eat dinner, and somehow wrap our heads around the fact that we were going to have a baby now instead of after Christmas! It was a whirlwind few hours.

We got to the hospital and finally settled down around midnight. They started me on a slow pitocin drip overnight (I was already dilated on my own to 2 cm). At one point in the night my contractions got pretty strong but then relaxed a little. Dr. Salazar came in the morning and broke my water suspecting I would progress pretty quickly once they increased the pitocin more. Well, I continued to labor through the day but did not progress too quickly. At 5:45 I was 6-7 cm dilated and starting to feel a little more pressure. Dr. Salazar told me he would be back in an hour and I would probably be ready. At 6:30 I looked at my nurse and said, "I'm having this baby NOW!" She paged Dr. Salazar and he was there right away and confirmed my feelings. I was 10 cm dilated and ready to push. Seriously, I pushed 2 or 3 times and Tatum was out of me! Whew!!!! 6:45 pm Friday Dec. 17! And, we became a family of four!

Sat. Dec 18 - We came home from the hospital! What a week! 2 new grandkids for my parents, a new nephew and a new daughter for us, and a new cousin and a new sister for Jack. We are BEYOND blessed!!!!