The New Parents

Grandma Ronda

We are so blessed that my mom was able to fly right out as soon as we found out we were coming in to the hospital. She has been such a wonderful help and a lot of fun to keep me entertained and happy while cooped up here for a week. We love her and are very grateful for her. (I think we're also wearing her out!)

Liam Love

Liam was so blessed that he had so many people here to meet when he arrived. Grandma Ronda flew in on Friday from Utah and Grandpa Bill and Grandma Marie drove up from Pennsylvania early Friday morning. Uncle Dave flew in to be here for Will's graduation and got to be here for Liam's big day as well!

Liam's Birth

Thursday evening at 7:00 we checked in to Women and Infants' Hospital. We met with an in-house midwife who informed me that they were going to start "ripening" me to be induced right away. Starting at about 9:00 on Thursday night until Sunday morning, they did exactly that. I will spare you all the gory details, but it was not a fun 60+ hours. They did all they could to get labor going. Unfortunately, my body and the baby were well-informed and knew that this pregnancy still had at least three weeks left to go and did all they could to reduce the induction. Baby Liam was not ready to come out and my body was doing all it could to keep him in there.

As a bit of history, Will and I had been working very hard the past nine months preparing to have this baby with as little intervention as possible. We were planning on birthing in the alternative birthing center at the hospital and took classes to prepare us for a wonderful natural birth. When we came into the hospital on Thursday we still thought that could happen, for a few days (!!).

After all of the trying including an entire day of extremely painful induced labor on Saturday and a night of a really strange reaction to morphine, I was exhausted beyond my ability to cope. About 4:30 on Sunday morning, Will gave me a beautiful Priesthood blessing and I was finally able to sleep. Will got up early Sunday morning and went to his graduation from Brown (Yay!!!) and when he came back, together with an amazing midwife and surgeon, we decided that my body was just not going to give us this baby and that it was urgent enough to get him out that a c-section was probably the best option. Once we had made that decision, everything came together very quickly. We told the midwife our decision right around 2:00 and Liam was born at 4:11. The operation went super-smoothly and there were quite a few confirmations that we made the right choice for him to come to the world the way he did.

Here are some pictures:

This is the view from our room (nice sunsets saved my sanity more than once).
Heading in to the OR.
Also heading in to the OR.

Just a few minutes later. Baby Liam's first photo.

Dr. Bowling giving me a peak at our little guy. Note how unhappy he is that we found a way to get him out despite his strong resistance for several days.

First family photo.

Mom and Liam in recovery.
Dad and Liam a couple days later - the first time we were able to catch him with his eyes open.

Itchy Feet

About a week and half ago, my feet started to itch a lot at night. At first I just added it to my list of pregnancy conditions that inhibit sleep and encourage restlessness, but they continued to itch more and more each night. At my appointment with our midwife last Tuesday, I decided to ask her if it was normal for my feet to be so itchy. She said that it might just be something random happening but that there was a very small chance that I had developed a condition with my liver. She decided that we should run the test for the liver problem just in case, but assured me that it was very rare and that I didn't have any other symptoms so we weren't worried. As we were leaving, she mentioned that I should call the office if any other body parts started to itch...

Talk about power of suggestion - as soon as we got home I was convinced that my whole body itched. I had a very itchy night and while it calmed down a little Wednesday morning, it was clear that the palms of my hands were itching from something other than just paranoia. I called the midwife's office and they asked me to come in Thursday morning to have a non-stress test and ultrasound to check on the baby. (Meanwhile, Wednesday night we went to Boston to a club to see my cousin sing, which was very fun!)

Thursday we went into the office and they did the non-stress test (listened to the baby's heart for twenty minutes while monitoring his movements) and the ultrasound and he looked great! They also decided to do some other tests on my liver because the results from the initial test would take at least a week. The midwife assured us that the possibility of any abnormalities in the tests was very rare - even more rare than the other test.

Then, about 5:00 on Thursday afternoon, the midwife called. She said that the liver function tests had come back with some really elevated results and that they felt they could diagnose me with intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (google it if you want to know more but basically the pregnancy hormones affect gallbladder and the liver and cause a build up of bile acids in the liver which can spill into the bloodstream). Because cholestasis can cause stillbirth and is harmful to both the mother and the baby, they don't like to let moms with cholestasis go beyond 37 weeks in their pregnancies. Since I was going to be 37 weeks on Friday, they had booked a room for me at the hospital to come in Thursday night and be induced as soon as possible to make sure we had a healthy delivery and baby.

So, that's how we got to the hospital Thursday night, much much earlier than we had planned. I can't believe we've been here almost a week.

Fenway Park - Opening Day

April 7, 2009 -- Red Sox vs. Tampa Bay

Not long after we moved into our ward, we found out that our Bishop and his wife have season tickets to the Red Sox. We secretly were hoping that they would invite us to a game sometime this season but were blown away when they invited us to opening day! It was supposed to be on a Monday but was rained out so we went on Tuesday with Sister K and her sister. We had a fabulous time and are so grateful for such generous friends.

From the pictures below you can see that seats were pretty amazing. We were behind home plate, probably 25 rows back. We had a great view and luckily, it was a great game. Fenway Park really can't be beat, Senator Kennedy threw out the opening pitch, there was a flyover, the Easter bunny was there, we didn't freeze or get rained on, and the Red Sox won!

I've even found myself becoming a bit of a Red Sox fan. It's nice to live somewhere where the team wins at least some of their games (sorry Nationals). I'm sure if we live here very long, the baby will grow up being a Sox fan. We've even bought him his first Red Sox clothing. And, speaking of clothing, I must say that the shirt my mom and I found for me to wear to the game was quite cute! Another pregnant woman sitting near us told me she had looked everywhere for a maternity shirt but didn't find one. (If you can't see it in the top picture, it has a cute baseball on the belly that says "Future Fan.")

My bump, my bump, my little baby bump...

I've had mixed feelings about posting pregnancy pictures on the blog. (Maybe I've had mixed feelings about blog posting in general.) Pregnancy has been pretty good to me. After 22 or so weeks of throwing up almost every day, that finally stopped and I've felt pretty good the last half of my pregnancy. I'm learning to adjust to getting up to use the bathroom in the night and I suppose I'm being prepared for not sleeping much when the little one arrives. Luckily I have a pretty flexible schedule and can sleep in most mornings.

Another reason pregnancy has been pretty good to me is that I haven't gained much weight. In addition to throwing up, being disgusted by anything sweet or rich led to some weight loss the first of my pregnancy and even now, I've only gained six pounds. Unless something crazy happens in the next few weeks, I will probably weigh less when he's born than I did when I got pregnant. However, as a result of being overweight when I got pregnant and losing weight, I haven't really felt like I've looked very pregnant. Even now, people think I'm not nearly as far along as I am and friends think I look smaller each time I see them instead of bigger. Not complaining about that, just saying...

February 2009 (5 months)

March 2009 (6 months)

April 2009 (7 months)

May 2009 (8 months)

Nephews

This past month, we were able to spend time with both of our nephews and it was so fun! Alecia and Brett flew out to visit Bill and Marie in New Hope, PA so we drove down for a weekend and hung out. We had a great time being entertained by Brett and playing with all of the new toys that Grandma Marie had at her house. We rode a carousel, went to the park, ate great food (Brett got to try jello jigglers for the first time), and spent a lot of time laughing together. Hopefully we didn't traumatize Brett by throwing (foam) blocks at him and convincing him it was a fun game. I'm sure he'll repay the favor in a few months when he can play with his new cousin. We'll just have to remember to have foam blocks on hand and not wooden ones.

We also got to spend time with Sam while we were in Utah. I was able to spend an entire week at my parents' house with Sam and Becca and had such a fun time spoiling Sam. I'm not sure what he'll think when the baby is here and he no longer has my undivided attention. It will be good practice for his younger sibling in the fall. Highlights of the week include daily four-wheeler rides to the barnyard, visits to Grandma Rudd for loves and crackers, talking on the phone to Uncle Will a lot (he doesn't ever talk to me on the phone but loves to talk to Will endlessly), several car rides, and eating lots of good food (seems to be a common theme when I'm around). I was amazed at how much more he is talking now than last time I saw him (in March).

Hopefully all this quality time with our nephews is helping us prepare for parenthood in a few short weeks. Luckily we have a while before he'll be running around and talking up a storm like our nephews are now.

Cowboy Up!

When we were making plans to go to Utah a while back, my Grandpa Rudd said to be sure to tell Will to bring his boots so he could get them dirty. Get them dirty he did. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of him helping my grandpa and cousins move two bulls and a cow from the pens at the barnyard to the pasture which involved a lot of manure and two fairly stubborn bulls.

What I do have pictures of is the less dirty part of being a cowboy. Will rode my grandpa's horses for the first time, as did my nephew Sam. Watching Will ride was fun, but it was much more fun to watch Sam explore and enjoy the horses for the first time. I actually have some video, but left my new video camera in Utah so I decided not to wait for it. The whole week we were there, Sam was infatuated with the dogs and horses and we spend many hours walking around outside looking at the animals. On Easter, Ross was kind enough to go out in the pasture and lift up all of the kids to sit on the horses' backs, but we didn't have bridles or saddles so they couldn't ride. That was all it took for Sam to be hooked.

Later in the week, Ross came over and caught and saddled the horses and Sam had his first ride. I led him around the pasture and he was awesome, no fear at all. It was also a fun moment to spend with Grandpa Rudd - he was thrilled that someone was riding the horses and it was fun to see him and Sam interact. Friday, we talked my dad into catching and saddling the horse so he could ride again. It was fun, I think everyone except me ended up riding for at least a few minutes. I thought about trotting around a little to see if we couldn't have a Utah-born baby, but decided that 35 weeks was a little early for him to arrive. I must say I'm pretty impressed with my dad's and Ross' cowboy skills - and my sisters and mom as well. My dad even did some real cowboying and helped round up the bulls to take them to pasture.

I look forward to taking our son home to experience cowboy country sometime soon.

May 2009 - Ross' USU Graduation

Will and I were blessed to be able to travel to Utah to watch Ross graduate from USU and to be at Brynley's baby blessing. I don't have any pictures from the baby blessing, but we did take quite a few pictures of Ross' graduation. It's pretty amazing that my immediate family (parents and siblings) all now have at least one degree from Utah State. Go Aggies!

Stomping around

For quite some time now Sara has been feeling our baby move around, and tried to get me to feel him move, but I couldn't. But just this last week while we were sitting on the couch watching TV (Lost I think, since we'd been watching seasons 3 and 4 on DVD to catch up to this season) our baby boy started kicking again and Sara showed me where to put my hand and I felt him kick it, as if telling me to stop intruding on his space. Since then I've felt him kick several more times, each time in response to something pressing lightly Sara's tummy. Our boy's quite the kicker, he's always kicking around in there, so when Sara mentioned that she wanted to refer to him as something other than baby I suggested Pele, after the great soccer star. I don't think she likes it, but as nicknames go, I think it fits perfectly for now.


Speaking of confined spaces, Sara and I went to see Stomp at the Providence Performing Arts Center. The theater was very ornate and beautiful, but the seats not all that comfortable, especially for Sara, she kept shifting around trying to find a comfortable spot, so that Pele would settle down and let her watch the show. The people next to us probably thought she had some kind of ADHD or restless everything syndrome. The show itself was awesome, the noises they get out of every day things, rubber hoses, brooms, dirt on the ground, and their ability to each keep their own rhythm to weave a wonderful musical experience was amazing. For the next couple hours I found myself drumming out little beats on whatever my hands were resting on, and of course when that happened to be Sara's tummy, little Pele kicked back.

Seattle

Dec. 13th, 2008

Upon landing in Seattle, we headed downtown to see the Space Needle and the famous fish market. The town was all lit up for the holidays, and the sun was just setting, but we quickly realized that neither of us had a camera, so there are no pictures to show from our Space Needle adventure, and the fish market was already closed so we don't have any fish tossing pictures either, but here's one from the Internet.
But some restaurants were open and so we had dinner at place called the Sound View cafe. We sat by the window, 3 or 4 stories above the street below (due to the hillside) with a view of, you guessed it, the Sound, and the first few flakes of their Seattle's first big snow of the year. The food was good and it was great to relax a bit together.

After the dinner and the Space Needle, we went to our hotel and used our GPS to pull up Best Buy to buy a suitable camera for our vacationing. We ended up getting a digital SLR, figuring if we'd ever buy one, we should buy it before going to Alaska, Hawaii, and Guam.

We ate the wonderful breakfast buffet the next day at the hotel and then I took Sara to the airport before driving around to take photos with the camera. I took this one from a big hill in a neighborhood along the freeway.


And this one I took a little closer to downtown (I'm a little blurry because I moved a smidgen while the shutter was open forever to take the shot):


The interviews on Monday were interesting, but very technical and I didn't spend any significant amount of time preparing for them due to school, so I didn't do too well and did not receive a job offer.

But the trip to Seattle was fun. Sara and I saw the space needle, we ate some good meals and spend some good time together. I also got to catch up with an old mission friend who works for Microsoft. And just about all of it was covered by Microsoft. So buy Windows and Office and stuff, yay!

Stopped the insanity

I don't really feel like blogging about the new stuff that's going on until I get you all caught up on the old stuff that's gone down, so rewind the calendar two months to Friday, December 12th.

Early last semester I tried to figure out the earliest date that I could be done with school, I emailed professors and checked the official calendars and deduced that the 12th of December would be the last day I had anything due, so when Sara had meetings in Juneau on Monday, the 15th and I was invited to interview for a job openning with Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, we decided to combine the two and fly to Seattle on Saturday the 13th.

Around the first week of December some of my classes were starting to move from being done on the 12th to not being done till a week later, in fact 4 of my 5 classes ended up pushing due dates till after we were already scheduled to leave and I found myself in a never-before-experienced situation of whining about having more time to complete stuff because I didn't actually have any more time because I was still leaving Saturday morning, at 8 a.m. for the airport.

My database final was on Monday, I finished the work for my group (of just me) distributed computing project Tuesday night (but didn't present it to the professor till Friday), fought with my Computer Vision project for most of Wednesday and Thursday before giving up and moving on to my Computational Molecular Biology final Thursday night. Friday night a little after 9 in time to go pick up Sara at the airport. I spent a couple minutes with her before returning to school to write a technical paper on how my non-functional Computer Vision project turned out through the night till I around 7 a.m. (I never did get it working correctly, but I thought that the write-up was pretty good, considering the project didn't work - one of my friends read it and asked me if I was being too pessimistic and said that I was pretty much saying "I suck, I suck, I suck" in the paper. I didn't think I wrote that or even intoned that, but I thought it was funny that he got that message from the paper.) Got home about 7:15, cleaned, showered, and got packed in time for our awesome landlord Bob, and his wife Sheila to pick us up and take us to the airport at 8 with 4 classes completed and 1 project left to go.

That last project was a group project and it hung around for an entire week as I tried to make time to work on it in Seattle and Juneau, while one group member worked from Massachusetts and the other one worked in Ankara, Turkey. The distance and the time difference definitely didn't make it any easier, but after a couple very, very, very late nights by the imitation fireplace of our bed-and-breakfast in Juneau, Alaska while Sara watched over me (read slept snorring-ly nearby) I finished my second write-up of a project that didn't fully function and my first semester at Brown was done.

Everything turned out even better than I expected, and so I'm now 5/8ths of the way through my Master's program, and it's really hard to get going this semester. Luckily, I get to spend lots of time with Sara and so far I've put in short days, but I'm sure that'll end soon.

In the end it was definately worth the extra work to be a little farther done with the baby on the way, even if several late nights at my computer had me feeling like this poor guy:

Getting rid of that spam...

So, I just told my wife that her little, comment and I'll make you something was terrible spam that offered no insight at all into who we are or what we've been doing. She responded by saying that it's better than all my posts the past month or so, and she's right, like she always is, that spam at least proves that she's alive, my zero posts do not.

So this post is to push that stupid post down the page a little bit.

Thought I'd post more? Well, ha ha, fooled you!

Mystery Gift...From Me to You!

A friend of mine posted this on her blog, and I made one of the 5, so now it's my turn. It's always fun to give and receive! :)

The first 5 people to comment on this post will receive something made by me for you....my choice...made especially for you.

Of course there are some restrictions and limitations:

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It will be done sometime this year.
4. You have no clue what it will be... it may be a story; it may be poetry or an article on organizing your closet or home office. I may draw or paint something; I may bake something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure.
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on their blog (only if you really want to - I will still make you something if you don't). The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did will win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me!!

As Promised - Baby's First Pictures

Like I said in my last post, he really wanted to moon the camera, so that's what we got the most of...

(I like the label with the arrow - otherwise we might not have found it.)

And, last, but definitely not least, the profile picture that they were able to get when we went back fora second round. He was still in a "jack-knife" position and wanted his hands on his ears, but he was much more cooperative than the week before.

It's a Boy

Our ultrasound last week was really neat - it was fun to see the baby and see him move around while I was feeling it. He is definitely a boy and wanted to show us his "boy parts" as much as he could. Even if we had asked the technician not to tell us the gender, I think we would have known. It was as if he was attempting to moon the camera the first half of it (we may have our hands full). He was very cute and at first was hiding his face and basically holding on to his nose, then he decided to grab his ears instead.

Then, he began to take after his mom and be a little impatient. When the technician pushed down on him to try to get him to move around, he pushed back with his head, hard enough that she and I both saw the pushing on the outside and I definitely felt it on the inside. After that, he was not very cooperative at all so she couldn't get all the shots she needed. So, we are going back tomorrow and hopefully he'll be in a better position and a little more cooperative. The only things we have clear pictures of right now are his boy parts and I didn't really want to post those without at least a profile shot or something that shows that he does have other parts, so we'll see what we get tomorrow morning!

Welcome Brynley Belle

We have a niece (our first)! Brynley Belle was born on January 15th in Denver. Taylor and Marisha are having fun being parents and we can't wait to meet her!

Excuses, Excuses

So, it's been three months since I last blogged. I've been taken on numerous guilt trips by friends and family, been put on notice, and composed many a blog in my head. But, this is the first I'm getting around to it. Here are a few reasons why:

• On October 2, the last time I posted, I was on the first of many business trips. Let's just say that between September 29, 2008 and January 19, 2009, I was only home for two complete weeks. During the month of December I think I spent three nights in my own bed. Sure, it's been fun to go to so many places (especially the last five weeks when I had Will along), but logging almost 70,000 flying miles in less than four months was a little time-consuming and exhausting.

• If it wouldn't have been exhausting on its own, I became a little disenchanted with flying when, starting mid-October, I started utilizing air-sickness bags or (when lucky) the airport lavatory on every flight. Prior to that, I had only thrown up once on an airplane. Don't worry, this lasted well into December. However, of my last five flights (in the last three weeks) I only tossed my cookies on one!!

• Oh yeah, the nausea wasn't limited to in-flight. On October 4th, two days after the last time I posted, I flew home from Eugene, OR, Will picked me up at the airport, we stopped at CVS, and came home and took a home pregnancy test. I took a couple more in the next couple of days to make sure it was real and it was. We are expecting a baby, due on June 12th. You can be expecting many more blog posts on that and my take on "morning" sickness.

• On that same week, two days after my last post, my camera died, unintentional homicide. I was cramming my very full carry-on into a very small overhead compartment and didn't realize until I took it out to take the above picture that I had somehow cracked the screen. I loved that camera. It's been all over with me and then us - Poland, Russia, Will and I's first outings, our wedding, our honeymoon, the White House, numerous road trips with friends... Basically it's lived in my purse for almost five years and it's taken some fabulous photos (it especially loved candid shots of friends). I was planned to pay a lot of money to get it fixed, but turns out Sony no longer makes that model and won't fix it. No photos = boring blog, right? So, that became a good excuse not to blog.

• Then, I bought a new camera on a whim, at Wal-Mart, on the way to Delaware in October. Nothing fancy, but it worked. We took a few photos with that - NYC with Curtis, Becca and Sam, some scout pictures (scouting deserves its own bullet here as well), etc. But, by the time I thought to use them to blog it was December and time was getting short... We were packing for our marathon December/January trip and we couldn't find the camera. We hope it's still at the church somewhere, but after six weeks, are starting to doubt it. Hopefully we'll find it.

• (Maybe this story should have been its own post, it is using far too may bullets.) Since we arrived in Seattle in December without a camera, we went to Best Buy and bought one. Okay, we bought two. A point-and-shoot and a DSLR, which I have (not-so-secretly) been lusting after for a while now. I guess the point of this story is that you can look forward to some good pictures being posted soon. Will took some great ones on our trip.

• (Back to the excuses.) After we found out we were pregnant, that was really thought-consuming. And, I'm really bad at keeping secrets. I had a hard time thinking of anything to blog about other than being pregnant, hearing the baby's heartbeat the first time (amazing), seeing the baby, etc. I'm glad we're through that phase and it's no longer a secret. (I wasn't nearly as good at keeping it secret as I thought I could be.)
  

• I thought about blogging over the holidays, when I did take some free time (even though I should have been working during a lot of it). But, the magnitude of starting blogging again when I haven't for so long was a little overwhelming. I thought about a New Years blogging resolution but couldn't do it. I'm sure in about five months the pressure will be on even more to post cute pictures of and stories about our child for family and friends who live far away so I can't pressure myself now.

All said, I am back and I am planning on posting more often. No promises because work is still busy for now (but I am cutting way back after the last few months of non-stop travel), but we do have a lot of fun things to write about that are going on in our lives and have been lately, so I'll do my best.

Better to be heard than to be seen

I'm in the middle of the most insane school week I've ever witnessed or even heard of, but I wanted to take a moment to thank my Mom and Dad who equipped Sara and me with several gifts to be opened before Christmas, all wrapped nice and pretty while we were at their house for Thanksgiving.

Thanks Mom and Dad!

The best thing about being able to open them now, is that we won't have to truck them along with us on our 5 state and 1 territory Winter vacation jaunt that starts this Saturday and contributes to this week being so insane for me. For those of you who don't know the details yet, we're off to Seattle, Washington where I have a job interview with Microsoft, while Sara visits Juneau, Alaska for work. I meet her up there and then we'll fly to Utah for Christmas, then to Los Angeles for a friends wedding, then back to Utah, then to Hawaii for another of Sara's business trips and then on to the U.S. territory of Guam on the other side of the date line before coming back for hopefully a more relaxing semester at Brown.

Some of the fun presents included some candy treats and cookies, a cute little pillow, and a magazine for Sara to read on her business flights, really fun and thoughtful gifts. But one of the presents we opened yesterday was a DVD of the forgotten carols. Since we were cleaning up our house, we popped it into the DVD player and started playing it while we were in other rooms cleaning up.

Now, I like listening to the forgotten carols, well, some of them I love, others I don't mind and still others make me want to torture kittens (more than normal) - if you "cry every time you take the tree down" then maybe you should leave the darn thing up all year round, or buy another house to live in during the non Christmas months or something. I would rather listen to this dog bark out an endless stream of Jingle Bells than hear that song every again.

Like I said, I like listening to the forgotten carols CD, but I'm fairly certain that my parents have never watched this DVD. It is ridiculous, the silly costumes, the sappy looking audience shots, and worst of all the inability to skip through every Afterglow song and the aforementioned tree mourning song. So, I recommend that you stick with the CD, because sometimes seeing people trying to perform a song distracts from the beauty of just hearing it.

Now, back to trying not to have 3 months of work flushed down the toilet by not getting final projects done in the next 4 days.