Just Pictures

Just some pictures we've taken over the last couple weeks.

Chloe grabbed a pair of Jillian's undies and put them on her head, then ran around the house screaming. Pretty entertaining.

Jillian on her first day of preschool. She has a blast!

Momma and son.

Chloe loves shoulder rides from her Dad.

Weeks One and Two

Elliot's first week of life was an uneventful one. He ate a lot, slept a lot, and pooped a lot. Pretty average for a newborn. Jillian loves to hold him in her lap. She will be a good babysitter one day.

The three kiddos in their chairs, although, Chloe is actually in Elliot's car seat.

He's ready for his close up.


Elliot began his second week of life at the hospital. He started breathing really fast and it looked a lot like how Chloe was breathing when she went in for RSV so I took a video of his chest and tried to send it to Sean to see if he thought I was overreacting or if it was something we should get him in to the doctor for. My video wouldn't e-mail for some reason so Sean came home from work and we took Elliot to the after-hours kids care. The doctor couldn't figure out what was going on but since Elliot turned gray during his weird breathing episode he didn't want to chance anything so he sent us to Primary Children's Medical Center.

To make a long story short we waited in the ER for 6 hours before they decided to put us into 24-hour observation where his oxygen saturation levels fell overnight so they put him on oxygen. Since the 24-hour observation area is just for observation they moved us up to a room the next morning. Basically from there they did lots of examinations and ran some tests and still couldn't figure it out. It was mostly 3 days of waiting and watching. Finally, after nothing really conclusive, they sent us home with, "Must've been a one time fluke." He's been fine since he's been home and I'd rather it be a fluke than something really wrong with the little man. I did get asked a lot while we were there whether or not I had worked there before because I knew so much terminology and routines at the hospital. Everytime I said, "No, it just comes from being here so much." I will have to say, the more I go the the hospital, the less stressful it becomes. A double edged sword I guess.

Now we are battling with Jillian having a bit of the flu. Can't catch a break, can I? The hardest part of that is keeping her away from her favorite baby brother. But really, who can blame her for wanting to snuggle the little guy?

Elliot is here

Elliot was born on September 1st at 6:46pm. He weighed 8 lbls 6 oz and was 20 1/2 inches long.

This is his first bath. He wasn't much of a fan.

One of the few times he had his eyes open at the hospital. I forget how much newborns sleep.

Ready to go home from the hospital.

If you just wanted pictures and don't want to know the labor/delivery story then you can stop reading now. Onto the story:

I'd been having contractions off and on starting on Tuesday (Aug 30th). I knew things were getting pretty close. On Wednesday night my contractions started to become regular so we hauled the girls over to my sister's house at 11:30pm and headed over to the hospital. I was still only dilated to 1 cm (which is what I was at my doctor's appointment the week before). They made me walk around for an hour and checked me again and I was dilated to 2 cm. I thought we were in business but the longer we were there the less regular my contractions came on although I was in a lot of pain. I got some drugs in me and the hospital finally told me to go home at 4:30am. I had my regular doctor's appointment at 9am so they told me to go to that. Sean and I went home and went to sleep. At 6:30 I woke up to use the bathroom and I started bleeding a lot so we went back into Labor and Delivery. They checked me again and things were the same and said the bleeding was nothing to worry about (I was freaked out because it was a lot of blood that I lost). They told me to go home and follow up at my doctor's appointment. We came home and I showered for my appointment and Sean drove me there. The doctor came in (luckily she was on-call the night before so was aware of my situation) and we went over my options. I was still in a lot of pain so I was ready to be done. After talking for a few minutes, she checked me and I was dilated to 4cm! I sat up and said, "Shut up!" Probably not the nicest thing to say but I was so surprised because the hospital kept sending me home saying that nothing was happening. The doctor asked if I felt like I was going crazy, which I did. She sent us straight back to the hospital and I got checked in to a room right away. This was at 10:30 am.

The rest of labor was fairly uneventful. I got an epidural and felt much better. My contractions never really got regular so they put me on pitocin and finally around 6:30pm I was fully dilated. I pushed a few times and out he came. If only delivery was that easy the first two times!

I am recovering really well since delivery was fairly easy. The girls love love love their new brother and we are trying to adjust to sleepless nights once again. Elliot is an easy going guy and mostly just sleeps and eats and poops (and boy ever does he poop!). We just love him!

Elliot Smiles

Sorry about the background noise.