Doing Swell

We are all doing great. Randy went on the father and sons campout trip this past weekend and had a great time, he said the only thing that would make it better would be if he had his own son to take with him. Maybe this baby will be a boy and they will be able to go together in a few years. Boy or girl, I just want a healthy baby. Only 3 more months to go and I my belly is swelling up already. I tried to give a sister at church a hug today and it was pretty funny to see, everyone around us got a good giggle because we were unable to reach each other around our pregnant bellies. Jolee now thinks that there are babies inside of every stomach and will say "hi baby" and pat just about any belly, including her own belly. We have a bunch of books on a new sibling that we have been reading to her. I doubt she really understands, but I am hoping it will help to prep her for her new sibling in August. I only have 3 more night shifts, then I will be switching over to day shift for a while (not sure how long). I am excited to sleep on a normal schedule soon. This switching back and forth while pregnant and being a mommy to a toddler is a bit taxing. Somedays I just sit around and read books with Jolee and do about nothing around the house. Which means that other days I get to clean clean clean. Oh, I hated having Randy gone overnight while he was camping. Now I know how he feels, with every creak of the house sounding threatening. I woke up in the middle of the night and had the hardest time falling asleep. I am so glad that he is home, although neither of us slept much last night as Jolee's molars are getting closer and closer to breaking through meaning no sleep. Still going crazy without having a fence. Most of our projects are on hold until we can get a fence up, so our spare room is still a bit packed with random boxes. I still haven't found everything we need, so I end up just doing without so random things, like the web cam. (sorry Mom I still haven't found it, but I know it is somewhere.) Jolee's potty training is starting to go a bit better. She has fallen in love with panties and hates having to put a diaper or pull ups on. I also started to reward dryness more than using the potty, so she is a bit quicker to get to the bathroom. One jelly bean if she uses the toilet and had a little accident in the panties and three jelly beans if she uses the toilet and is dry. She really doesn't like getting just one jelly bean, so we went almost the entire day without any accidents. She actually went to church in panties and was accident free (horray!). She didn't have any accidents until she got home and she only had one because she was playing a little too much and put it off too long. I make her clean up her messes ("no, mommy do it" is her usual comment) so I think that is helping to encourage her to be accident free. I feel like I think about potty time all the time. I would love her to be completely potty trained soon so that we can be diaper free for a least a few months before baby is born. I am so excited to meet our little cygnet and have just a little bit bigger of a family.

Walking!!

Jolee decided that she wanted to be walking before her first birthday. She went from taking only a few steps here and there to walking across the room in one day. She is now attempting to speed things up and is trying out running. She has become a fast little walker.

This is as she started out walking full-time...

This is her as a more veteran walker, 1 week....

I'm Done!!

Jolee loves to take a bath. We try to giver a bath each night, but it does not always work. She usually does not want to get out and screams and screams if you do take her out. I was giving her a bath last night, she was in there for maybe 5 minutes and then grabs the side of the tub, stands up, and starts to holler, "I'm done, I'm done, I'm done." I told her that she was not done, after all I had not actually bathed her yet. I had let her play first so that she did not try to drink the soapy, dirty water from the tub. Jolee proceeds to grab my arm, lift her leg on to the edge of the tub and kind of rolled the rest of the way out right into my lap. I guess she really was done! I put her back in the tub and quickly scrubbed her down before taking her out for good.

On Saturday night, Jolee was having so much fun in the tub. She grabbed the cup that we use to wet and rinse her head off. Filled it full of water and then held it over the edge. Just as she was about to let go, I grabbed it and put it back in the tub. She attempted to do this two or three times before I decided that she was done and quickly scrubbed her down. She actually screamed that night when I took her out.

My Little Princess

Jolee is so much fun. I love to hear her squeel with joy and coo and laugh. Tonight I layed on the floor next to her and she looked over with this huge grin. The next thing I know she is attempting to crawl on top of me!! I helped her up and she had a ball on top of Dad. She soon discovered that she could get on to the couch from me and found the remote and started pushing buttons. I took that one away and she found the TV remote, then a Christmas card, then another Christmas card. It was soooo much fun.

Jolee's Birth Story

Just to prepare you, this is going to be a very long post containing a few of the more gory details.

This story has a bit of back ground details, so be prepared. During nursing school, I had a labor and delivery rotation where I got to go to TMC and shadow L&D nurses and help deliver babies. You'd think that this would be a wonderful experience, full of joy and excitement, but it wasn't. To be perfectly honest, I was horrified by how laboring mothers were treated. It reminded me of a medieval torture room. In my eyes, the nurses and OBs would tie the women to their beds and force them to try to push uphill to get their baby out. The women had next to no say about how their delivery would go. Often, medical treatments were done that were not required just for the comfort of the medical staff, not of the mom or baby. After the baby was born, it was taken from its mother and sent to a room where it would be scrubbed down. The mothers were all very uncomfortable and pain was mentioned over and over again. This was definitely not the "hooray I am having a baby" experience that I had always dreamed of having when I had a baby. In fact, I was terrified at the idea of having a baby in the hospital.

Thankfully, part of my L&D rotation required that I go to the Birth Center to see an alternative way of doing things. Night and day difference in the treatment of the mothers. The most amazing difference was how the midwives acted. Shadowing the midwives helped me to see that having a baby could be that joyous experience that I always wanted. I also found out the the Birth Center does GYN care also, so I signed up to be a patient. I have been a patient at the birth center for going on 4 years and have had wonderful experiences. (Honestly, who can say that having an annual well women's visit is wonderful?) I knew that when Randy and I had a baby, I wanted to have him or her at the birth center.

This is how we ended up choosing the Birth Center as the location.

Another piece to Jolee's birth that was started by school was the use of a doula. One of the lectures for the L&D class was done by a doula. After hearing about what a doula is and what she does, I decided that a doula would be a perfect addition to our baby's birth, but now I had to find a doula. I was extremely blessed in that a wonderful lady in my old ward just happened to be a super doula. I had decided that when I got pregnant that I would ask her to be my doula and when we asked, she accepted. Anita also happens to be HypnoBabies trained and she introduced us to this form of birthing. We took our classes and did our homework and worked and worked on training me in self-hypnosis (I know some of you may be skeptical when thinking of hypnosis, but it works, believe me). The theory behind hypno babies is that the mother chooses not have pain but to have pressure and chooses to be relaxed for the baby's birth. I realized that I never knew how powerful the mind is in how I experience pain, etc. Through my training with hypno babies, I was prepared for Jolee's birth.

The weeks prior to her birth, I had had many many preppies (braxton-hicks), but none of them were regular and they didn't really cause me pain, occasional discomfort but not enough to stop me from working. The Tuesday night before I had Jolee, I had tons of preppies, in fact, I was a little nervous that I was going into the birthing time (labor). This was a bad thing because Anita was in Hawaii. I ended up working Wednesday (I was super cranky, my poor coworkers), and luckily, the preppies stopped halfway through the day. I ended up taking the following day off to rest because of how icky Wednesday was with all of the preppies. I slept all day Thursday and most of the day Friday and then went back to work on Saturday. Saturday was uneventful at work and I hardly had any preppies. So I left working, completely expecting to be going back to work on Monday. I got home, showered, ate dinner, and then went to bed. I actually wrote in my journal that night "I feel like it is getting closer and closer to time for baby." I never knew how right I was.

Sunday at 1230am I got up for my usual midnight bathroom break (poor tiny squished bladder). As I am washing my hands, I feel the need to go again (very weird) and water gushed out of me. I was wondering if my water had broken or not. So in my half asleep state, I decided it hadn't and I went back to bed. The moment I laid down, I felt the need to go again and had water gush from me again. This time, I really thought about it and realized that it had to be my water breaking. So, I climb into bed and shake Randy to wake him up. As soon as I get him semi alert, i tell him that I think my water broke. He was pretty confused. I asked him "what do we do know?" He looked at me and said "I don't know." We sat there for about a minute and then he told me to call Anita. So I call Anita, then I call my midwife. The midwife on call, just happened to be our favorite midwife, Cece. We absolutely love her. So Cece told us to met her at the birth center. I took a quick shower while Randy packed the car. When I got out and dressed, Randy was doing some last minute car loading, by this time I was having some pretty strong pressure waves (contractions). I told Randy that we had to leave right now, no more packing, time to go. We got to the birth center around 2:30am. I was already 4 cm dilated and 100% effaced. The pressure waves were now 3-4 minutes apart and were really strong. I couldn't get myself under my hypnosis because of how quickly everything started, I didn't get to get under control before I got rammed into active labor. I was started to panic because of how intense the pain was and I was shaking like crazy. Randy was doing everything he could think of to help me use my hypnosis, but to no avail. At this time, super Anita arrive and came to our rescue. She hopped up on the bed with me and quickly help both Randy and I to calm down and I was able to get back in charge/control and I was able to use my hypnosis. The relief was amazing. After some time (no clue how long), I started to get back labor and I decided that I wanted to try laboring in the shower while sitting on a birthing ball. Our nurse was concerned I might slip and suggested that I use the birthing stool instead. I tried it and it was hurting my poor bum, so I chucked it out of the shower and Anita ran and got the birthing ball for me. I used Randy to support me and I went completely under using my hypnosis and I was super calm and labor was actually (okay don't hate me) easy. My back labor started again, so I used a technique from the book "Back Labor No More" call the belly lift technique and my back labor stopped instantly which helped me to be so much more comfortable and sped my labor. In no time, I started to feel like I needed to push. My nurse got the tub ready and check me. I was full dilated but had a small lip (a tiny part of the cervix that just doesn't want to dilate). So I headed to the birthing tub to start pushing. The water felt so nice, in fact, I think I fell asleep between some of the pushes. Around 4:50am, I started pushing. Anita climbed behind me and sat on the edge of the tub and supported me while I pushed away. After pushing for a while and not getting much progress, we tried a few different positions. And I ended up on my hands and knees. This position was the key and I was able to push much more easily. With the baby's head out, her face came out of the water and she started to breath and then her face went back under (not good). With Cece and the nurse's quick care, they quickly held the baby out of the water and emptied the tub so that the baby's head would stay out of the water and I quickly pushed her the rest of the way out. Randy was able to catch her and as he handed her to me, he said "you were right" and something about that the baby was a girl, our little Jolee. I was such an amazing, powerful, and emotional experience. As I held her, I just cried and cried. Pushing her out was very hard work, but oh so worth it. After the umbilical cord stopped pulsating, Randy cut the cord and he took Jolee while Cece, Anita, and the nurse helped me to the bed where I delivered the placenta (a huge placenta at 1 lb 13 oz). At this point, I started to bleed and earned a shot of pitocin to help stop the bleeding. I stopped bleeding right away. Randy, Jolee and I laid in bed together and snuggled and bonded for over an hour before we asked for her to be weighed and measured. The three of use spent the day lounging at the Birth Center. It was joyous experience that I had always wanted. I was able to do exactly as I had planned, deliver my baby without the use of pain medications or epidural, at the birth center, all natural, and in the water. Randy was the best birth partner ever. He was constantly reminded me of his love for me and doing anything and everything that I asked of him. He also told me how proud he was of me and what an amazing job I was doing. His support was definitely perfect. I am so grateful for him! We are so blessed to have been able to have this opportunity and for our darling daughter!

When Jolee was born she was a little fussy for about two days. We could not lay her on her back, achange her diaper or clothes, or put her in her bed. We could tell that her breathing was labored and painful.Our Dula came over to check up on us and see how breast feeding was giong and suggested that we see a chiropractor. It turns out that we have some wonderful friends who happen to own a chiropractor office, we gave them a call and they came over that night and looked Jolee over. It turns out that her C1 vertabrea and a rib was out of place. Once he got those back into place, she was immediately a different baby. She is happy and quite mellow and a joy to have. Thanks to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and some wonderful friends.

FYI: this post and the previous post were both typed via chicken pecking. I happen to be holding Jolee at the time ;)

here are somemore pictures for everyone to enjoy. They are all random pictures of her being absolutley adorable! It is not hard for her to do. She loves to lay on her side and will often wriggle around until she is on her side. We love our little wiggle worm!




Jolee will often smile at us with an occasional gummy grin joined with a tiny giggle.

absolutely adorable in purple

Sarah, GrammE, and I went to Babies R us looking for girly dresses. We did not find any that we liked but this super cute head band caught my eye.

this the first dress that Jolee wore, thanks GrammE!

One Day Old

Here is our princess at 24 hours old with Daddy. I think he is in love!

Jolee with Mommy. Sorry that the video is sideways.

Just rocking happily

How much does she weigh?

Here is when we found out how much she weighs. Listen carefully and you can hear the nurse telling us how much the placenta weighed. The midwife and nurse were curious because it was so big.

{oops, last video and explanation were switched her she is being weighed. Lack of sleep can cause goofs:)}

How long is she?

Length and head circumfrance.

Right verses Wrong

Thanks everyone for playing along and voting on what you thought the gender was going to be. But now it is time to tally the results and find out how many people were wrong. The results are in...
Boy
22 (59%)

Girl
15 (40%)

Now I do have to admit that these results have been rigged and jeopardised. We have received word that a certain someone, not me or Sarah, would place a vote for boy everytime that he would visit the blog. Thus, 22 people were not realy wrong. In all honesty Girls were probably in the lead the whole time. Good job, those that chose Girls.

Our little bundle of joy is a Girl.

It's a Girl!!!

Our beautiful baby girl was born on Sunday May 31st at 5:52 am. The water broke at 12:30 and labor started at 1:00, which is when we knew for sure that the water had broken. We got to the Birth Center at 2:30. At about 5am Sarah started pushing. She pushed for an hour! Our little girl was born happy and healthy. She weighed 9.5 lbs and was 20.5 inches long. Her head was 35 cm in circumfrance and she had a body to match. We had a 100% natural child birth (water birth using hypno babies) and Sarah had no tearing. Momma and Baby are fine. Daddy is doing pretty good as well. Her name is Jolee Sarah Swann. We did not get any sleep for about 24 hours. We took a few short naps while at the Birth Center but did not get to drift blissfully into sleep. Jolee finally settled down and slept for three hours at about 12:30 this morning. It was a long day. Sarah tested positive for group b strep and thus had to have antibiotics before baby came during labor. The labor and delivery was so fast that she did not get to have her second round of antibiotics. Thus, we got to stay at the Birth Center for twelve hours. It was alright and we were pretty much left alone, one of the things that we LOVE about the Birth Center.

Our Little Jolee just seconds old


A few short hours old


Some time during the day

Princess Jolee dressed and ready to go home.

There will be more pictures and even some video in posts to come. The digital camera ended up going for a swim not once but twice, it does not turn on anymore. Luckily we had gotten a camcorder the Friday before and it has the option of doing stills or video. Hopefully we will be able to salvage the pictures from the digital camera.

Family Photo

We went to JCPenny earlier this week and got some pictures taken together. I had realized that we had very few pictures of us with me being great with child. Here are a few of my favorites.

Baby Dreams

As a part of the pregnancy package, strange and crazy dreams become the norm. Lately though, the strange/craziness has started to fade and I am dreaming constantly about the baby. Last night I had a dream that we were at the midwife getting a check up and they told us the sex of the baby. We were so upset. I think I started to cry because I wanted so badly to wait until the baby was born to find out the sex of our little one. I was still upset when I woke up, but go figure, I can't remember what sex they said that the baby was.

I have had so many dreams of holding and feeding the baby, but never in the dreams do I know what the sex is. I am so horribly curious as to whether the baby I am carrying is JD or Jolee. Baby is technically at term, so anytime in the next four weeks we will be celebrating the birth of our miracle. It still hasn't really sunk in. I know I am pregnant (all I have to do is look down) and that pregnancy leads to a baby, but it still seems very surreal.

Baby Shower 2

Special thanks to everyone at the ICU for taking such great care of me throughout the pregnancy. You-all are definately my second family and home away from home.

I definately have some of the bestest co-workers around. Without all of their help and support, there is no way I would be still working. Love you all!

Baby Shower 1

Thanks to Samantha for such a great baby shower. Sorry it has taken me forever to get these up, but hey, I have all sorts of excuses :). Here is a video from the pictures that were taken. PS Randy made the video, he is such a sweet heart.

The shower was a blast! Everyone drew a picture of a baby face on a paper plate, while the plate was on her head, it was hilarious. Then we did the whole guess how big Sarah's baby belly is. Just if you were wondering, my belly was 48inches (4 ft, YIKES!!!) around. We also competed to see who could hang baby clothing on a line the fastest while holding a baby doll. Here are everyone's times in seconds:

Aubrey 25. Anna Jo 45. Autumn 50. GramE (my mom) 27. Auntie Em (my sister) 31. Janeen 28. Annette 38. Nora 42. Melanie 26. Christy 27. April 27. Natalie 25. Leann 39. Emma 41. Abbey 51. Me 26.

It was so funny to watch all of the different techniques used to speed the process. It made for some good ideas for me as we are planning to cloth diaper and cloth diapers do best drying on the line rather than in a dryer.

Thank-you also to Samantha for the suprize birthday cake for me!

Semester's End

Tis the end of Semester, YEA!!! That means that there are only three semester's left, YIPPEE!! I am so ready to be done. Do I really want to get my masters? I will but it is something that I should be able to do at a slower pace. Today is my last final and the rest of the week is my practicum ending on Thursday. Then it is all about getting things ready for baby (Cygnet).
I am starting to get more excited, the time has gone by so fast. It seems as though it was just yesterday when we found out. I am so proud of Sarah. She has done an excellent job and dealt well with the whole pregnancy. She is so awesome and I love her so much.

Hammock and Birthing Ball

Our baby's hammock. Here are the promised pictures of our Amby Baby Hammock.


I am so excited. I already talked about how I have been practicing with George, well I am not the only one. The other day I caught Randy practicing. It was so cute. Too bad I didn't have the camera on me. Randy is going to be such a wonderful father. I was thinking that we had some time to get started on prepping for the big day, but not my sweet hubby. He was too excited, so he went and got Dreft (just in case baby's skin is sensitive like it's father) and he washed and folded all of the baby's clothes while I was at work. He was still working on getting them put away when I got home and he had that "I'm going to be a Daddy" glow to him. Randy is already so head-over-heels for this baby.



Many people have been asking me how we are decorating the baby's room. Answer: we are not. Baby Swann isn't going to get a room, Baby will get a corner. The baby's corner...

Don't worry, we are not that naive. We know that as soon as the baby comes, baby's corner will turn into baby's room (that we just happen to be sleeping in too) which will turn into baby's house.

In other cute Randy and baby related news, Anita (my friend and dula) suggested that I get a birthing ball. The very next day, Randy ran to the store and purchased a birthing ball for me and to keep himself in the game, one for him.

Randy using our balls to exercise.

What we've been up to

Because it is late (hey I get up between 4 and 4:30am), this will be quick. I will post again soon with pictures okay:). Last weekend was our baby shower and it was a blast! One of the biggest and bestest surprises was my mom and sister driving down from Utah to surprise me and spend the day with me. I nearly cried I was so happy. I love my family!
Lately Randy and I have been spending a lot of time on Ebay buying cloth diapers. A surprisingly large group of people make all in one (meaning no cover or pins needed) diapers and sell them on Ebay. I have already purchased about 38 diapers (roughly 3-5 days worth). I am getting more used to and okay with the idea of cloth knowing that we will be using the all in ones rather than having to figure out how to fit a squirming baby into a folded diaper, secure the diaper and get a cover on.
In other baby news, the Amby Baby Hammock arrived today! It is what we are using for the baby to sleep for the first 9 months to year. Here is a link to the Amby Baby site if you don't know what it is.. http://www.ambybaby.com/. I put it together as soon as it got here. It only took me 15 minutes including the time to find the stupid wrench. Randy really needs to organize his shed (well it is partially my fault because I more or less threw all his tools out of the house because they were EVERYWHERE, okay so it is all my fault. Definately playing the hormonal because of pregnancy card to get out of that one). I love this hammock. I even practiced putting a baby in and getting a baby out of the hammock with George (my baby doll from when I was a two-year-old). Pictures to come.
Randy has been up to school school school. He only has 2 weeks left of this semester, whoo-hoo! Today he got the last of his homework, etc. done. All he has left to do is keep studying for and then take his finals.
Okay, I'm off to bed. Maybe Randy will get pictures up tomorrow.

More on the big belly brigade

To start with, I better show everyone what they really want to see. Here is the baby at 27 weeks. Click on the picture for a bigger view. I wrote in explanations for you because it is kinda hard to tell what everything is. And no, we still don't know if it is a boy or a girl. The ultrasound tech stayed away from the nether regions for us. Only 9 more weeks until the due date, so you onlyl have to wait a little longer :)

Here is me and the belly at 28 weeks.

The belly and me at 31 weeks (aka today)