Ode To Bo

I just want to take a minute and pay tribute to my awesome husband. He does so much for us and I don't think he realizes how great he is. Over the past month since we've had Naiya he has been on overdrive helping with the baby, taking care of Melia, cleaning the house, taking care of me, working, going to school, and on and on. Here is a small list of what he's done lately (in no particular order):
*Took care of Melia full time for the first two weeks after Naiya was born--got her up in the morning, put her to bed at night, read her stories, fed her, played with her, put her down for her naps, took her to the park and various other places, entertained her during the days, dealt with power struggles and fits, brushed her teeth, got her dressed, brushed her hair (even ponytails sometimes), danced with her, and the million other things that taking care of a three year old involves...
*Took care of me after my c-section full time for the first two weeks--lifted me up off of the couch, bed, chair or wherever I was because I couldn't move on my own yet, lifted my legs in and out of the car for me, brought Naiya to me every time she needed to nurse, changed her diaper every time she needed changing, got up at every night feeding with me to help with what I needed, brought countless things to me wherever I was (food, remotes, phone, etc.), made meals for us, took me to my daily doctor's appointments when my incision wasn't healing and watched the kids in the waiting room, loaded and unloaded all three of us in and out of the car countless times, cleaned and packed my incision with gauze twice a day (gross!), stayed up with Naiya when she wouldn't go back to sleep at night...
*Kept the house cleaner than it usually is--vacuumed, did dishes like 20 times a day (if there was a dish in the sink, it was only there for like 5 minutes), did countless loads of laundry, picked up the clutter frequently...
I could go on and on, but I just wanted to say how grateful I am to be married to my best friend who is so giving and loving and who never takes credit for all he does.
Thank you Bo!!! I love you!

What were we thinking?

Well, we're 3 1/2 weeks into this new adventure and we're definitely feeling the lack of sleep setting in. It's funny how you go through all of this before, but somehow you seem to forget how challenging it really is and then you do it all over again and then in the middle of it you remember why you said you didn't want to do this again last time. :) Don't get me wrong--it's definitely all worth it. Too bad they don't come automatically sleeping through the night though. Naiya was a really good eater and sleeper for about the first 3 weeks or so and then she developed this gassy problem that has driven us crazy during the nights for the past 4 nights now. I started having flashbacks to the seemingly endless gassy, fussy, colic filled nights with Melia that lasted the first 4 months of her life and started panicking a little at the thought that this might be the same thing all over again with Naiya. But I'm trying to just relax and go with the flow. It could just be a short phase, right? Anyway, God is really taking care of us and blessing us with all of the help we need. My mom came up and spent a week helping us and Grandma Adeline has been a big help too. On another note, my incision is almost closed now and the nurse was impressed with how fast it is healing now that we started the other way of treating it (leaving it open and packing it with gause twice a day--Bo has been my at home nurse.). "No one ever said that life is fair. Just eventful."--some guy on TV. :)

Cuteness

Oops!

We had a little parenting oops the other day. We were at the doctor's office and they had what looked like one of those old hand held cartoon things where you hold it up to your eye and wind the crank on the side to watch the cartoon. So Bo is watching Melia and Naiya while the doctor works on me and Melia is walking around watching the little movie thing. After the appointment, we walk out to the front and she's still holding it. The nurse sees it and says, "Whoa, let's play with something else!" and takes it away from her. Turns out this was not a child's toy, but an instructional video entitled "How to insert a diaphram".

Giant Q-tips or Torture Devices?

So I said that everything was going well--and it is--except for one slight problem. My incision has decided that it doesn't want to close. So I've had 3 doctors appointments this week alone (I like to call them my torture sessions) where my doctor rips off the steri-strips, pours tons of hydrogen peroxide all over my incision and then proceeds to dig around in the incision with giant Q-tips trying to get out all of the blood clots that seem to be keeping the incision from closing. She also uses tweezers sometimes too for a change of pace. So this goes on for anywhere from a half hour to an hour each time and leaves me completely drained and in pain. As of today, I now have all of the staples removed and it is just steri-strips now. I have to go back tomorrow to see if they can just leave them on and let it close, or if they have to rip them all off and dig around again. Depending on what they find tomorrow, I may have an appointment on Sunday and then I definitely have one on Monday. Man, I've never had so many doctor's appointments in my life!

She's Here!!!

Naiya Oliana Thompson is here! I really didn't want to have another C-section, but man does it make a difference to have one scheduled instead of having it after 30 hours of labor! We had to be at the hospital at 6am--don't ask me why they have to schedule them so early. I was awake during the surgery and even though I was numb from the waist down, I could still feel the pressure of them pulling and pushing on me, yanking out all of my organs to get to the baby and then putting them all back in. I couldn't stop shaking too--I guess because of the drugs or something. Anyway, one thing that helped me mentally through it was I kept picturing Melia's booty dance in my head. She does this thing where whenever she's naked, she sticks her booty out and slaps it chanting "Booty, booty!" I know it's silly, but it really helped me though. Anyway, Naiya came out beautifully and when I heard her cry and saw her for the first time, I knew I loved her right away. I had been wondering how it would be possible to love another little being as much as I love Melia--I mean I knew I would, but I just couldn't imagine how I would feel that. But I did, almost right away. She weighed 8 pounds 8 oz. and was 19 1/2 inches long. She has a full head of dark hair and looks so much like Melia did when she was born. We know she's definitely our baby. Bo brought Melia that evening to meet her new baby sister and she was so cute with her. So excited to have our new baby here finally. Anyway, the next few days in the hospital were good and all of the nurses were totally great. I felt a little better each day and Naiya took to nursing well right away. She also digests great and burps easily and sleeps easily. Basically the whole experience has been like night and day from the last time we did this. I can't believe how much better I feel and how much easier it is this time!
Coming home from the hospital was an experience. Funny story now, not so funny at the time. So Bo and Melia came straight to the hospital after church at about 4:30pm. It was right around that time that I knew Naiya would want to eat, so I was trying to decide if I wanted to take the time to feed her before we went or just wait until we got home. Well, Bo and Melia hadn't eaten anything and were starving and Bo was thinking he'd just pick us up "real quick" and then go home and eat dinner. Well, we now know that trying to do anything with a 3 year old, a new baby and a wife trying to recover from major surgery is anything but "real quick". Nevertheless, we foolishly tried. So I hadn't gotten a chance to pack anything really because I couldn't lift anything and I move around about as fast as a snail right now. So Bo gets Naiya strapped in the car seat in my hospital room and then she starts crying because she's hungry. Meanwhile, Melia is hungry too and therefore fussy and getting into everything--pushing buttons on my bed, playing with the breast pump, etc. The nurse is trying to cut the bands off of Naiya's ankles while she's screaming her head off and I'm standing in the middle of all of this not able to do much but start feeling pretty stressed out. So Bo and the nurse decide to take a load of stuff out to the car first before we try to load everyone in the car. Meanwhile, I'm left there with Naiya and Melia and I'm just trying to prop myself up on the edge of the bed and hold out until my help comes back. Luckily, Naiya stopped crying by then and fell asleep, which helped my stress level to lower a lot. But then, Melia says, "My panties are wet." Now normally, I would rush her to the bathroom before she had a full on accident, but needless to say, I couldn't do that this time. So I just watched helplessly as she fully emptied the contents in her bladder all over her legs, shoes and the floor. Then, she proceeded to start stomping in the puddle she had just created and bent down to use her hands to splash in it. So lovely. Luckily, Bo and the nurse came back in time to rescue us and get her cleaned up before she touched everything in the room with her pee hands. Unfortunately, we only had extra panties for her in the car. So with the nurse pushing me in the wheelchair and Bo with the baby in the car seat in one hand and holding our barefooted, barebutted daughter's hand on the other side, we took our little parade through the hospital and out to the parking lot. Once we reached the parking lot, Bo picked Melia up under his arm like a football because she didn't have any shoes on. This would have been fine, but she was wearing a dress and her little naked booty was sticking out from under her dress all the way across the parking lot. Then, trying to load us all in the car was a whole other story--let's just say, we finally made it home with everybody mostly intact. Success!

2 Weeks to Go!

Well, I'm definitely feeling it. My belly has become this huge thing in front of me that has a life of it's own...literally. By this time in 2 weeks our baby girl will be here! We still haven't agreed on a name, but I think Bo is softening to the one I like. He didn't admit it straight out, but he told me to go ahead and look up middle names that go with that name, so I'll take that as a good sign. This past weekend some people from church came over and helped us put up the walls for the two new rooms for Melia and the baby. They went up really fast and turned out way better than anything I had imagined. They are pretty much sound proof too which will make life a lot more livable. It's funny--all this time we had been praying for a 3 bedroom place to live and we had it set in our minds that that would mean moving out somewhere. And now all of a sudden, we have a 3 bedroom place to live in right where we are! Heavenly Father is so good to us. Also, we had a baby shower and people have been sending us money to help out and it is turning out to be exactly what we need to get ready for the baby. We are so blessed and I'm so grateful!