First Oatmeal

Madison had her first taste of baby oatmeal today.  She wasn't entirely impressed...

And we're ROLLING...

Although Maddi rolled from her tummy to her back for the first time at 4 weeks, it's still hard to believe she's growing so fast.  She rolled from her back to her tummy for the first time today.  I'm sure the milestones don't slow down from this point on.  Let's brace ourselves!

She absolutely knew she accomplished something different.  She had the proudest look on her face.

Maddi and her Daddy

Pt. Reyes Lighthouse

During one of our "Besties Weekend" visit we drove out to the Pt. Reyes Lighthouse to check it out.

"There are more than 300 stairs between the observation platform at the lighthouse station and the actual lighthouse below. Walking back up again is equivalent to walking up the stairs of a 30-story building."

Luckily Chris carried Maddi the whole way down and most importantly, up. I think I would have died.  It was quite a workout.

Maddi and her Mommy

So happy!

I love this picture of Maddi!  It just captures what a happy little baby she is.

Cattlemen's For Dinner...

Don't mind the fact that Maddi is mid-sneeze. <3

P.S. I really wish I hadn't cut my hair. It was SO long in this picture.

Maddi's Many Faces

Daddy's Little Helper

Maddi is so helpful.  Here she is keeping Daddy company while he washes the Honda.

Family Picture!!

We took this the day before I was due back to work.

This was also the first night Maddi slept through the night. What a considerate little baby.

2 Months Old

Sleepyhead

<3

Chris' first birthday as a Poppa...

Aside from Dr. appointments for Maddi, this was her first outing.  She was 6 days old.  We took the brand new daddy to Gohan, one of our favorite Japanese restaurants, for sushi.  It was a nice dinner.  We were both clearly tired. Having a newborn is definitely a lot of work. It's well worth it though. 

She's here and she's beautiful!!!

I started pushing at 8pm. I know that because COPS was just starting =]

The nurse had me push a couple times just to see how I'd do. Apparently I'm quite the pusher. She had me stop pretty quickly because she and Chris could already see her head and my midwife hadn't even been called yet. As soon as my midwife arrived we were ready to roll. They let me know that because of the Meconium previously found I wouldn't be able to hold Maddi right away. Nonetheless, it was time to push…

At 9:55pm on Saturday April 26th, 2008 Madison Mae was born.

She weighed 8lbs. 15oz. and was 20 and a half inches long.

She is perfectly healthy and completely unaffected by the Meconium scare.

We are so deeply in love that there are no words to even begin to express our adoration.

It's TIME!!

At my last appointment I was told to be at the hospital on Thursday April 24th to begin the induction process. Little did we know what was in store for us.

Here we go…

We get to the hospital and get all checked into our private room.  So far so good. I was started on Pitocin in order to increase contractions and help me dilate. After hours and hours not much progress was made. The idea was I’d have Ms. Madison Mae in my arms on the 25th (my actual due date). She had other plans.

Friday morning comes and goes with still not much of a change. I still wasn’t dilating and all I had to show were harder, stronger contractions. I was pretty tired and not to mention starving. Toward the end of the day they decided to take me off Pitocin. I was able to finally eat something and was told we’d try a different method to help move things along. They inserted Cervidil and we waited some more. Hours came and went and I had dialted to 3. The nurses weren’t impressed and my midwife thought it a good idea to put be BACK on Pitocin. While little was happening as far as dilating was concerned, my contractions were making their presence very well known. I was exhausted.

Shouldn’t I have a baby now? It’s SATURDAY!

My midwife came in to check me out and decided it was time to break my water. She did so and found Meconium in the fluid. They hooked me up to another IV in an attempt to flush out all the Meconium to make sure baby was safe upon arrival. Being that my contractions were so intense and I was not advancing like they would have preferred she mentioned the “E” word. Epidural. As tired as I was, I still wanted to try and avoid going that route. She mentioned another pain reducing method that would alleviate some of the discomfort, for a few hours at least. I opted to try it. It seemed to help, but the contractions were still pretty bad. I think the intent was to allow me to get some rest if I was really going to have to push a baby out in the next few hours.

2 o’clock. 3 o’clock…Then some action. I jumped to 6 centimeters. We were finally getting somewhere and I‘m too exhausted to think straight. On that note, so much for my epidural-less delivery. As much as I wanted to make it happen without the epidural, once I got it all I could think was “Why did I wait this long?!?!” It was just about instant relief. I am officially ready to have a baby.

2 Whole Years of Wedded Bliss

To celebrate our 2 year wedding anniversary we decided to rent a cabin a couple hours North of where we live. The town was called Leggett and we had a great time.

I was 37 weeks and 4 days pregnant. We managed to take a short walk down to the Eel River which to me felt like an eternity. I made it back in one piece and spared Chris the agony of having to carry me on his back. I so desperately could have used a "piggy back" ride, but now that I think about it I'm not too sure that would have worked out anyhow with my big belly and all.

We had our own cabin fully equipped with a private fire pit. Chris made a fire and we had strawberry s'mores. It was my first s'more experience and my hubby did a fantastic job. They were delicious.

I can't wait to see what year number 3 has in store for us.

Our trip to labor and delivery...

was, to say the least, INTERESTING.

We signed up for a tour of the maternity ward so that we would have an idea of what to expect and where to go when Madison decides to make her grand entrance into the world.

I think we got a little more than we bargained for in this "free tour".

My plan up until about 42 minutes ago was to deliver Maddi au naturel... Well the lady screaming bloody murder down the hall made that thought a little hard to keep sight of. It REALLY freaked me out. I had no doubts about avoiding the epidural, but this freakin' lady, according to Chris, sounded like she was in a torture chamber. I'd consider that a pretty accurate analogy. I don't think I've ever seen his eyes widen that much.

We were in one of the delivery rooms w/ the door shut, she was down the hall with her door shut and her blood curdling screams penetrated the walls without difficulty. I've watched plenty of episodes of "A Baby Story" on TLC and in many of them I've seen the women scream in agonizing pain, but when you hear it in real life there's just no comparison.

The nurses assured our group that it doesn't happen that way often at all and she was having what they call a "rocket baby". I guess that means she just progressed really quickly.

I'm still going to try to do things naturally, but man was that an eye opening experience. I know there's no trophy or certificate for having a natural delivery, but it's just something that I've felt strongly about this entire pregnancy. We'll leave it in God's hands and see how things progress.

I'M HAVING A BABY...SOON!

Please tell me it will all be okay and I won't feel a thing...okay at least tell me it will all be okay!

I want my Mommy!

-Marlene-

.MaddiShower.

When talk of a baby shower started floating around, March 8th seemed ages away. I'm not sure where the time went and before we knew it, it was the 8th.

It was a great day. My parents did such an amazing job and they were great hosts. They definitely outdid themselves. The food was delicious and the games were hilarious. I don't think I could have planned a better shower.

We got SO many gifts. I definitely don't think there's too much Maddi will need that she doesn't already have. Everyone was beyond generous.

We appreciate everyone for celebrating our soon-to-be new arrival with us.

We love you all!

33 Weeks and counting...

I wanted to wait for my belly to have a significant growth spurt before we took more pictures. I'd say I waited long enough. Little Maddi is definitely growing by leaps and bounds.

We are lucky enough to have a friend in the "field" and paid her a visit to Sears Portrait Studio. We think she did such a great job with this shoot and couldn't wait to show everyone. We decided to have a picture blown up to an 8x10 and have it framed for our baby shower guests to sign. It'll make a great keepsake later on.

<3

.Maddi in 4D.

As soon as we found out I was pregnant I knew I wanted to have a 4D ultrasound. We made no hesitation and scheduled one for the most opportune time... 28 weeks and 4 days. Now, I'm not sure if that was indeed the best time, but I did some research and found out that there is a period of time when people are encouraged to have the ultrasound done in order to produce the best results. The date we picked happened to fall right in between somewhere.

The timing couldn't have been better. My mom's birthday was coming up so my parents decided to rent a car and drive up to visit. They were able to go to the ultrasound with us. It was amazing! We got some great pictures of our little girl and were very please with the entire process.

It makes everything so much more real and doubles the anticipation we feel to see her.

Look at that face! I'm already in LOVE...