London at Summer Camp 2009

London spent time with his girlfriend Syringa (well one of his girlfriends anyway) at summer camp while we were on vacation. Here is an awesome video that the "counselors" put together of his camp experience. Thanks Doug and Katie!

Lucky

Fogg and I are lucky. And we know it. And we knock on wood about it. We are lucky because things always seem to work out great for us. We don't know why and we certainly do not want to jinx it. We thank God for all the great things in our lives and hope that things continue for us as they have. There is no doubt, there have been some unlucky things and some sad things and some sucky things, but when we look around us, we realize that those things are not so bad and they don't happen too often. And all the good things are so great, that we deserve a few bad things to offset all of our good. Our hearts sink when bad things happen to good people and wish for good things to happen to them. We recognize when bad things happen to people and are so thankful that those things are not happening in our lives (not in the selfish way but in the thankful way). I don't write this to sound conceded or bragging, but more to share how lucky we feel. Here are some great things that have happened to us:

We have a FANTASTIC marriage and are so lucky to have each other. Fogg and I are best friends and truly love to do EVERYTHING together. I couldn't imagine finding someone more perfect to share my life with!

We have a great house in the perfect place. How the heck did we luck out to find this place? Typically we could not afford to live in this big or nice of a house in our perfect location.

We don't have much debt. Ok, we have two mortgages, and two car payments but really, other than that, we don't have debt. We pay off our credit cards each month and if we need to buy something (like a new roof - which is on the list for this summer), somehow it works out.

We have great jobs in a great industry. Seriously, I work for one of the biggest online outdoor gear retailers (backcountry.com) and Fogg works for one of the most well respected ski and climbing companies (Black Diamond Equipment). We love our jobs (even though we sometimes complain), and are fairly successful.

We have an amazing son. We were blessed with an uncomplicated pregnancy and birth and he is just about perfect. We wanted a son and got him!


We get to do really fun stuff. We love to dirt bike and climb and cycle and hike and play in the water and travel and camp and do all kinds of fun stuff. We are lucky to have the finances and live in the right place to do all kinds of fun stuff.

We have amazing friends and family. Both of our parents are still married and we have two great brothers. Our friends are so much fun and caring and just great people.



And the list goes on and on. So I take a moment to say "thank you" to everyone in our lives that have made it so great and thank my lucky stars that we live such a fortunate life. And in the words of Napoleon Dynamite - "lucky".

Rain

What's up with the rain? If you aren't here in Utah at the moment, than let me explain this weird weather to you. It's been raining for at least a month here. If you don't know, we live in the desert. It's a high desert, but still a desert. I think there has been 2 days in the last month that have been sunny and maybe a couple of mornings, but seriously, every single day it's rained! Sometimes it's dumping rain all day, and sometimes it's on and off drizzling. All of the plants and grass are growing huge and I feel like we live in a rainforest. The biggest annoyance with the rain is that it's hard to go outside with a new baby. I can't go for walks and running errands is difficult. Seriously, do we live in the pacific northwest? Fogg and I (and Reed) are going to Portland this weekend for a week. I hope it's sunnier there, I figure it's opposite world and sense it's rainy here, it must be sunny there! Well, anyway, surprisingly, it's raining right now, what to do today...

Time flies

Well, it's true, time really does fly. I can't believe that Reed is already 3 weeks old today! 3 weeks in pregnancy world is pretty much eternity and 3 weeks in mom world is like a blink of an eye. How is it that the day seemed so long when he was inside of me, a night lasted forever when you can't get comfortable, but now 2 hours of sleep is so fast and all the sudden a day is over?

I'm getting into my routine, trying to get him on one too. Learning to do everything with a baby, and realizing that a productive day to me in the past is twice as much as I can possibly do now. I've still got my OCD tendencies (people told me those would go away) but I'm learning that I can't clean the whole house, pay bills, run errands and do all the laundry in just one morning, it takes a full day, if I can even get it done in one day. Feeding takes up much more time than I realized.

My mom left on Sunday morning, I successfully made it through my first day alone (and Fogg didn't even get home until 7pm - so it was a LONG day...). I also successfully made my first solo trip out of the house this morning. It's not so bad - I can do it! But I do really miss my mom being around to help out, just holding him for a minute so I can do something, or helping out with dinner. It was nice to have someone to ask questions to and bounce ideas off of. But now I'm learning on my own. I think Reed really missed his LaLa yesterday, the first full day without her - he cried almost all day long! He's doing much better today.
I've decided to take a picture of Reed every Tuesday next to his sock monkey so we can see him grow. I'll try to do it for the first year, but I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up. I'll try anyway. Here are his first three weeks...

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Fogg is getting into the groove of having a kid too, he's been really helpful in the evenings and mornings and tries in the middle of the night, but you know how that goes. The other night, Reed pee'd on himself while I was changing him at like 2:30am and he doesn't like being cold and wet so he was absolutely screaming. I asked Fogg about it in the morning if he had heard him crying and he didn't even wake up!!! I guess that's the difference between Mom and Dad, mom hears every little peep and dad doesn't even notice when mom's out of the bed! Anyway, here is London laying on the floor with Reed and Fogg.


One day, my days won't be ruled by what time it is and when the next feeding is, but as of now, sorry, you have to endure my blogs about having a baby!

The short and long of it

Well, the short of it is that I had a baby. It was hard and painful but worth it, we love our little boy Reed.

The long of it is as follows:

As you might know I was scheduled to be induced at 7:30am on Tuesday, May 19^th due to the suspected size of the baby and my slightly elevated blood pressure. On Monday morning, May 18^th, I had another appointment to see if I had progressed at all on my own and to strip my membranes to help things going on their own. Stripping membranes means that the doctor separated the cervix from the uterus which will sometimes start labor without drugs. It was an unpleasant procedure but quick. Unfortunately, while I was at the appointment, my blood pressure had gone up a bit more. I bargained with my doctor to let me wait until Tuesday but all she gave me was to go pick up my parents from the airport then come back to check my BP again. So I left and drove down to pick up mom and dad. We met up with Fogg for a quick lunch (where I ate a ton, thinking this might be my last meal for a little while) then back up north. We also stopped and got some ice cream before going back to the hospital cause again, wasn’t sure if I’d be leaving the hospital that day. So back up to the doctors office where my blood pressure had gotten worse. So immediately I was admitted to the hospital and it seems like within minutes I was in a gown, in a bed, getting IV’s hooked up. They gave me a tiny bit of pitocin and a bag of fluids to keep me hydrated. I was admitted at 3:30pm. Fogg got there shortly after that and we hung out for a bit just waiting for things to happen. At my appointment in the morning, I had already dilated to a 3 so that was my starting point. Fogg and my dad went to get my bag from home and picked up dinner for everyone (except me of course).

So hours go by and by 6pm, I was still only 3 or 4 cm dilated. They upped my pitocin a little bit and I started to progress a bit more. By 9pm, they upped my pitocin again and shortly thereafter the baby’s heart rate dropped for about 5 minutes. They nurses and my doctor come running in, give me oxygen, move me around and my doctor taps the baby on the head. Things quickly turned around again and all was good. But they had to lower my pitocin back down again. But no worries cause I started to progress well enough on my own at that point. So we tried to sleep for a few hours but after the lights went out, I started to feel some stronger and more painful contractions. At 10:30, I was really feeling them. I labored a while on my own, unfortunately not able to get out of bed cause of the pitocin. When you are on it, they have to monitor you every minute (cause of things like what happened with the baby’s heart rate). Because I was progressing on my own, they were able to take me off the pitocin and I could get into the tub. I got in the tub around 2am and labored there for about a half hour. At that point I felt a big difference in the pain level. The nurse came in and checked me and I was already at an 8! So the drills went off, they called the doctor, they wheeled in the instrument cart and baby warmer, called the nursery to let them know and turned on the power lights. I was so proud of myself that I was going to do this all on my own!

But then I stalled. I stayed at an 8 for 4 hours!!! I was still able to handle the pain but was getting a little exhausted. They put me back on the pitocin to help kick start it again, broke my bag of waters and I got in the tub again, all things that should have helped me progress. Finally I got to a 9 but the pain level was magnified 10 fold from an 8 to a 9. Still, I was handling it and staying under control. But after another couple of hours at a 9, I was seriously fatiguing and losing control. My body started to freak out a bit and I was having these ab contractions on top of the uterus contractions that were causing me to involuntarily push, kinda like when you have diarrhea. My doctor told me that I could continue to labor without meds if I wanted and eventually, my abs would fatigue and I would finally get to a 10 but strongly encouraged me to get an epidural to help relax my body so it could progress. The ab contractions were making my pelvic floor contract, not letting my cervix fully dilate. I had already gotten a couple of shots of Demerol but they only made me sleepy in between contractions instead of taking any pain away. So at this point, I’m screaming every time the ab contractions hit and very much lost control of my own pain management. I was also so exhausted I couldn’t focus anymore. They sent in the anesthesiologist so Fogg could ask lots of questions and figure out if this was the right choice for us. Thankfully he was there and knew my wishes because I was so focused on getting through contractions that I couldn’t have participated in the conversation at all. After a bit of discussion and everyone watching me scream in pain, we decided to get the epidural. A few LONG minutes later, they came in to do it. Fogg was my support person but he quickly almost passed out from seeing the needles and what they were doing. He had to sit down and get some OJ and a snack. I didn’t even feel a pin prick when they did it. Anyway, immediately the ab contractions stopped and after a few minutes, my doctor checked me and already my pelvic floor was relaxing. They figured I’d progress to a 10 in no time. That did not prove to be true.

Three hours and multiple positions later, I finally got to a 10. So now it is 8:30 in the morning. The doctor asked me if I wanted to push now or if I wanted to wait a bit to recover a bit more. Because I had been sort of relaxing since I got the epidural, I figured that waiting wasn’t going to get me more energy, I wouldn’t sleep cause I was so anxious and still slightly uncomfortable. So we started pushing. The first hour was fine, I was energetic and anxious to meet our little baby. They gave me a little bit of juice and a popsicle while I was waiting to get to a 10 so I had restored a bit of my energy. But by the time we entered hour two, I was starting to get pretty tired. Poor Fogg was struggling as well, he hadn’t slept much (he got a couple of hours in after I got the epidural) and the concrete floor was starting to hurt his knees. So he would stand next to me while I was pushing and encourage me, then go sit down in between. By the time 10:15 rolled around, I knew I didn’t have much more in me to push. I was really starting to feel everything back again (the epidural wore off and I didn’t want to get another). But I was so close to getting our little guy out. All the sudden, my temperature went up and the baby started to show signs of distress. So they let me push a couple of more times before they put the suction cup on his head and two pushes later and his head was out! The doctor worked his shoulders out and he just slid the rest of the way out! It’s a boy! It felt like I had just had the biggest poop of my life! It was so overwhelming to finally have him out and see our little guy. He looked great and was huge. I just kept looking at Fogg and telling him that we had a boy!

He was taken over to the warmer where they weighed him at 8 pounds, 13 ounces and 21 inches long. He was officially born at 10:33am on May 19^th, 2009. Fogg went to take pictures of him while I was getting wrapped up with getting the placenta out and getting sewn up from an episiotomy. Soon, Fogg brought him over to me and the next few hours seemed like a blur – partly because I was drugged up for pain and partly because I now had a little baby boy.

So we were at the hospital for the next two days, leaving on Thursday morning. I kept Reed in the nursery at night time, having them bring him to me only when he needed to be fed. It was nice to have some sleep. He got circumcised on Thursday morning before we left. We have been adjusting well so far, just working on getting into a bit of a schedule. I’m still trying to recover, surprisingly it’s painful to give birth.

Some important things that I have learned in the past week and a half:

1. I love my husband more now than I ever have before.

2. I realize that this little person is his own and can’t wait to see what he becomes.

3. It REALLY is different when it’s your own kid.

4. Funny how he sleeps a lot but I sleep less (how does that work?)

5. Life as I knew it before is forever gone and what I thought this time would be like is very different, but I still love it.

Ok, well it took me days to write this, I’m finally going to post it for those who might care about the whole thing, if not, if you’ve made it this far, than nice work! I’m off to bed now, hopefully he sleeps a good night again!

Baby Reed

I'll post the long labor and delivery story later, but for those of you that want to see pics of our new little one, here they are! Reed Richard Fogg was born May 19th, 10:33am, 8 pounds, 13 ounces, 21 inches long. I was in labor for 18 hours, pushed for 2 of them. Reed is awesome and perfect and we are just getting used to life with a newborn!

Last Day

What do you do with what might be your very last day as a couple rather than as parents? We have a whole free day to do whatever we want. It's beautiful and sunny and the world is laid out in front of us. Tomorrow, it's to work and a few obligations and possibly into labor. So today we slept in, made a big breakfast and are doing a few things around the house that we'd like to finish up. It's weird to think that this is the last weekend that we will not be parents. Certainly, it's not the last day that we'll be without children (gosh I really hope we get several weekends/weeks to ourselves each year), but it will be the last that we aren't parents. Does that even mean anything? In a way, I mourn the lose of our relationship as we knew it, but am excited about what is to come. Obligations and activities are going to change for us and we wonder what that will be like. I wish I could do something like go for a dirt bike ride or a hike or ski, but with this big belly, all I can do is non-actively wait for tomorrow and this week and what is to come. What would you do today if you were me?