Phoebe is one week old!

I guess it's time to post some more pics of the girl! She's officially one week old now and as I thought this morning about where we were last week at this time, I was overwhelmed with gratitude that it's THIS week!)

Josh's sister, Heidi and her family drove down from Greenville on Saturday for a short, but sweet visit with us! Heidi pulled out the camera and we took almost 250 pictures, so even though these are from Saturday, this is what we've got as the most recent!

MAD!

Sweet Phoebe in her cast-Seriously, with her, it's like it's not even there!

Her Nana bought her this dress the night before she was born!

You can't see it very well, but she has our wedding rings around her two fingers to show how small she is...

Her grandpa (my dad) bought her this shirt in the hospital...

All the Axelson granddaughters...Zoie, Abby, Madilyn and Silvia were saying, "Phoebe!" and Heidi says Phoebe was saying, "WAAAHHH!"-By the way, we can't wait to get ALL the grandSONS in the pic too!

The new and improved Axelsons...

Phoebe's aunt, uncle and cousins signed her cast while they were here...

Isn't life sweet? More to come soon...

The story...

Okay, so here's the short version of the story...

Last Monday afternoon, Josh and I headed to the doctor, hoping for some good news;o) We got it! Dr. Browning did an ultrasound and said the baby looked to be about 9 lbs (1.5 lbs more than Abby was) and that he saw no reason to wait any longer, because she would just get bigger, so he scheduled me to be induced the next morning at 5:30. I was already 1 day overdue. We immediately called Josh's parents, who were ready to come at a moment's notice from 3 hours away, and they set out, arriving just in time for us to get home from a yummy steak dinner at my parent's house, where I had contractions 5 minutes apart for the entire time we were there! At that point I was like, "I will NOT go to the hospital and miss my 'last meal', to have them say I'm not ready and have to either come back home or stay there and not have the baby til the next day anyway!" (I was getting pretty tired of the "teasing" contractions I had been having over the past two weeks...) So after a last minute trip to Target with Josh's mom to get snacks and such (thanks mom!), we played some cards and I went to bed.

Just got to the hospital...my camera date was 12 hours off...

I guess i said this was the short version, but now I'm on a roll...We got there around 5:15 and headed straight our room. The nurse was someone to talk about! She was a large woman, with large squatty fingers which were not fun when she checked me to see how much I was dilated-OWWW is all I have to say! (TMI?;) I was at a 3 at that point. I wasn't sure after that how great an experience this would be, but it did get better! So, by 6:00 they had me on fluids, 6:15 on pitocin and by 8:00, I was a 4 and the doctor came in and broke my water. After that it went pretty fast for awhile-contractions got hard, but due to the fact that I was already a 5 and the anesthesiologist had to be in the OR for 2 c-sections in a row by 9:00, I got my epidural at 8:45! And it's a good thing too, because by the time she could have come back to give me one, it would have been way too late! We were joined by my mom at that point and I rested for awhile, and then the nurse came to check me-an 8 within a 2-hour period! By the way, my nurse during the entire labor and delivery was FABULOUS-Shannon Anderson! Both she and my doctor were of the mindset that I shouldn't start pushing too early for fear I'd get tired out, and the baby was still pretty high, so they sat me up and said, let's let Mother Nature do her thing for awhile, even after I was fully dilated. It was pretty quickly then that I started feeling the pressure to push and unfortunately, even with the epidural, it was starting to get painful. VERY painful! I eventually convinced them to get me more epidural meds and once that took effect, the baby finally dropped enough that it was time to push! It was about 1:00 when the pushing began! Hooray!

Our last moments alone as the parents of one child...

My popsicle;o)...

Pushing wasn't the most fun experience for me this time. Not that it was when I had Abby, but the epidural had worked differently and I had felt NO pain when I had her! They had to give me oxygen because I wasn't breathing deep enough and it took just over an hour-and-a-half, but Phoebe finally arrived at 2:39 pm! I guess I took the nurses by surprise at my progress near the end there, because her head was half way out before they paged the doctor to come in and deliver...it took him AT LEAST 5-8 minutes to get in the room, and that entire time, the nurses were saying, "DON'T PUSH!" as half told me to pant through the pain and the other half told me to breathe deeply-Make up your mind, women! So, I've never been very vocal about things during this whole process, but if that doctor had taken ONE MORE SECOND than he did to get in place, he would have gotten the worst tongue-lashing of his life-Seriously, I may have even hit him! But he had the benefit of being far enough away in a situation where I was VERY distracted with my baby's head being where it was, as well as my desire to get the baby out ASAP that I could only murmur with no energy "Where is he?"-and then things got really crazy once she was out and I was crying from relief and pain and everything else!

So she's here! And she's beautiful! They informed me pretty quickly of a few things that were of a little concern with her. She was born with a club foot on her right side and her right hand and fingers seemed to be a little underdeveloped and she held them up against her body in an angled position. We've seen the pediatric orthopedist since then and she already has a cast on her foot to help correct that and he thinks her hand and arm will fix themselves pretty quickly with a little bit of TLC! So, all is well so far!

Phoebe's sweet right arm...

And her sweet little feet!

We had many visitors in the hospital, which we loved, and we were able to go home just over 24 hours later! Things have been crazy since then, of course, but we are loving having two sweet girls! I know there is more to tell, but I will split it up into some other posts in the near future!Love to you all!

She's here-FINALLY!

Okay, so I will be more detailed in the next post, but Phoebe Jane Axelson was born Tuesday, Oct 14 at 2:39 pm. 8 lbs 4 oz, 20 inches long and she's a beauty! Here are a few pics to tide you all over until I can think straighter-hopefully tomorrow, but who knows?!0)

The LIP!

Abby with "Baby stister Phoebe"-Her shirt says "I'm a McLeod Big Sister" (McLeod was the hospital)

More to come...with stories and other miscellaneous info...

Ugh...

This will be short...still no baby. I know I should just chill and I'm trying-I'm not even due until Sunday, right?!
As of Monday, I'm pretty much fully effaced and the baby is way down, but I was only dilated to a 2. I've had some pretty intense contractions and some have been close together, but not close enough for long enough. I thought it could be happening last night when they were just over 5 minutes apart for over an hour, but they slowed down...Maybe this weekend...

Not yet!

I figure if you're reading this then you're really interested to know whether we've had the baby yet and the answer is no. As of Monday, I was dilated to a 1-2, not effaced and the baby had dropped some. Lots of nice, uncomfortable contractions, but none really closer than 10 minutes, so the wait continues...I still have 10 days left til my due date, so I know I shouldn't complain, but I guess I was spoiled with Abby-my water broke 2 weeks early. I'll just keep pluggin' away, taking walks and pushing myself to do more than just sit and pout all day;0) We'll keep you updated-I'll send an email to check the blog when it happens...By the way, if you don't receive fairly regular emails from me to check the blog, I don't have you on my list, so let me know your email address in a comment or send it to erinluax@gmail.com, so I can put you on the list-I don't forward things, so no worries...

Am I crazy or what?

So, this past Friday afternoon, Josh was off work and I asked him if Abby and I could go to the Stake Youth Volleyball Tournament in Myrtle Beach with him the next day. It's just over an hour away and I just did not want to stay home all day again, just Abby and me. Of course, he was thrilled, because I am so not a spur-of-the-moment gal, especially being 37 weeks pregnant!He didn't stop at being thrilled, though. He let me know that the tournament was to be at the State Park, which also had CAMPING! And that we should go and spend the night! Whoa! I wasn't too sure about that-sleeping in a tent? Right now? I told him he was crazy, but as I thought more about it and realized how nice the weather was and how SHORT the camping part would be and how I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway....I finally agreed! Besides, Abby LOVES camping and tents, so how could I say no? Can you believe it, girls?

Josh says I am the woman...he was soooo happy!

So we go there around 6:30 pm, after dinner on the way and some yummy ice cream, and set the tent up! We played cards until about 10-I was trying to stay up as late as possible, so the night of trying to sleep wouldn't seem so long, but I was exhausted, so we were on the air mattress in the tent by 10:30. (This next part especially for those of you have ever been pregnant!) I was surprisingly comfortable on the air mattress, but sleep did not come for me until around midnight and then at 12:30, of course, I awoke to the irresistable urge to go to the bathroom. I debated for 20 minutes whether I had to go bad enough to make the "trip" worth it at that particular moment, the "trip" consisting of ROLLING off of the air mattress onto my hands and knees, STANDING UP with nothing to hang on to, PULLING my pj pants on, SLIDING into my flip flops, unzipping the tent quietly and climbing out without tripping over anything, all with so much pressure on my bladder, I thought I'd wet myself-(Is this too personal?) Of course, then I had to actually get to the bathroom, which was only a short 3 or 4 campsite walk, but felt like a mile!

I'd like to say that I am NOT complaining! I KNEW it would be this way, but I did choose only to make the "trip" twice that night, though I could have gone 5 or 6 times. I actually did get rest, in spite of these things and the next morning, we packed up, went to a pancake house for breakfast and headed back to the park for Volleyball on the beach!

Abby and I sat and watched and played in the sand-she still has sand in her hair by the way, and just had an all around good time. It was overcast and cool, so WE didn't go in the water, but a lot of the youth did and of course, so did Josh. We had a blast, even when I realized my arms and face had gotten burnt to a crisp! 4 hours at the beach with no sunblock on a cloudy day with already sensitive skin, plus pregnant? BAD! Those things do NOT mix!

It was GREAT! I still can't believe I ever agreed to it, but there you go! I DID! CRAZY!

Here I am at the camp site with Abby-37 weeks that day!

Mommy and Abby!

I guess I'm getting a little bit sentimental, because our family is about to change forever and it will never be just Abby again, but this picture is of my sweet Abby in my arms. She has been hugging and clinging a lot lately. This is the scene from the pew behind us in church every Sunday as well. She just wants to lay on me. I think she can sense that my lap will no longer be just hers and only hers! We laugh a lot because when she leans on my tummy this way, I lean over and tell her in her ear that her baby sister just kicked her. She really does kick every time-in fact, that's really the only way Abby has ever felt her kick, because whenever I try to let someone feel her with their hand, she won't move a muscle! Stubborn little thing!

So anyway..here's my Abby in her sweetest, most serene moment!

Love her so much!