I believe in a God of new life!

For the past, I don’t even know how long emphysema has been slowing and ever more taking away my Grandma’s oxygen supply. She had stopped smoking but the damage had already been done and for the past years she has been living with less and less lung function and more and more tubed in oxygen.
I am so amazingly happy to announce this is not to be the case any longer.

On the night of Thanksgiving my grandma got a phone call that there was a lung awaiting her arrival. She drove to UCLA and the next afternoon received a new lung!!! After a 24 hour ordeal she is doing amazingly well! Apparently they will slowly wean her off the oxygen. After however many years she will not be reliant on a tube giving her her breath.

The whole concept of a lung transplant astonishes me….how could something so vital to life be taken from one and given to another. However it works it is miraculous and only a miraculous God could orchestrate such a thing!
This lung is a start of life anew from my Grandma and I believe that my God of love has given this gift to our whole family.

It amazes me that God created our bodies in such a way that our parts could be used in another’s body. But what an amazing gift given unto us!
With all the intricacies I do not understand how it is even possible, all the blood vessels and capillaries and such to fuse from one to the other!

I am in awe and so thankful for this gift! I can not wait to see my beautiful Grandma at Christmas breathing anew!

Living in twilight.

Laying in my bed after a middle of the night feeding, nestled up against my husband and listening to the sounds of my daughter attempting to put herself back to sleep. I cannot help but think of how in love I am with the man lying next to me. It is in these moments where my thoughts are completely my own. No one to interrupt or thoughts to overpower mine. Hearing Tatum’s quiet babbling and grunts remind me of how much I need to savor every moment, They are fleeting and the dishes and house cleaning can wait. My sweet baby girl can take her nap on my chest tomorrow if it so happens and I will savor every moment rather than worry about the dishes that sit undone. Listen to her breathing, smell her scent, and feel her warm little body snuggled close. My husbands snoring and loud breathing usually an obnoxious noise keeping me awake in these moments after a feeding make me love him all the more. He is the man of my dreams as cheesy as that is. He wakes up in the morning and lets me sleep while he and his beautiful daughter chat on the couch. He is hurrying home these days to spend time with us before the Munchkin goes to bed. He lets me squeeze up close to his warmness after I feed without complaint although I know I am cold next to him. He can cook when I don’t feel up to it. He works so hard so I can stay at home for now. He is wonderful and I am so in love with him. You think a tired mom would go to sleep as fast as possible after a night feeding but it is in these moment I lie awake and feel immense love for my small little family. Why this time I have no idea but every night, well early morning between 2 and 5 this is what I am thinking while snuggled up close to my husband with my sweet girl making precious grunt noises from her crib.

Feeding, Sleeping, Living

I love being a Mama to my amazing little girl!

I have such an amazing little one!

I really can't imagine my life having taking any other direction! And I already don't want to think about how hard it will be to go back to school!

I love me some Tatum Lee!

The Birth of Tatum Lee

As I hold Miss Tatum Lee and watch her sleep I cannot help but replay the last 24-48 hours in my head.

All the emotions, happenings, love, and prayers have been and are so overwhelming that I know I will not ever be fully able to express them to anyone.

Before I go on I will say to anyone who has had a really long and hard labor, don’t get too jealous while reading, my dues came at the end J

I had a crazy crazy labor my midwife was puzzled by it and I was even more at a loss to what the heck was going on. As crazy as it was, I was blessed by God at how things progressed throughout labor and for this I am truly grateful. As my midwife said I could consider myself having had an extremely long labor (over a week) or a short labor (2 hours or so).

I went in to an appointment on Wednesday the 8th and was 4cm dilated 50% effaced and started losing my mucous plug. I was not due until Monday but they were expecting me to most likely be back before then in labor…. Monday passed and not much. I had some contractions on Sunday during church but they decided to stop.

So we went back in for an appointment on Wednesday the 15^th and I was 6cm and 80% effaced and she was at a station 2 - still no contractions.My midwife proceeded to ask me "Are you sure you aren't in labor?" and I replied "I don't know you tell me." So my midwife sent us home and said to try the whole castor oil thing. I was hesitant since I have heard so many horror stories but since I was already so progressed I decided to give it a try. It went down fine with some sherbert and a shake but then the last sip sent me to the commode. It really was nice to get it out of my system and I felt better after that. I then proceeded to play cards with Gretchen and was having to focus on whether or not I was having contractions or not. They were so slight and very irregular. My midwife had said that morning to go in as soon as I felt anything so I called her and told her I could barely feel much of anything every once in awhile. She said to come back in so she could at least check me to see if I had progressed at all from that morning.

When we got back to the clinic I was 8 cm and 100% effaced! Still with barely feeling much of anything!

So even though my contractions were not screaming ‘labor’ she wanted us to stay because she expected when I did start feeling the contractions she would come fast and she would be born where ever we might be….little did we know it would still be over 7 hours before she would show her beautiful face to the world!

So we checked into the clinic at 5pm on the 15^th.

I still was not feeling much of anything. We watched “When Harry Met Sally” and Evan played his guitar for a while while I munched on some fruit. Tried to get things rolling by walking, lying down, sitting on the birth ball and all sorts of other things. Still when my midwife would ask me if I was having a contraction my famous line was “I don’t know…” Once I got to 9cm I finally felt them! They were pretty intense and the moaning began, my best guess was that that was at around 10:45pm.

In another hour or so I began pushing. I don’t think there is any way to describe the feeling. It was my most ‘painful’ (if I would even call it that) part of labor but it was incredible. It was amazing and perfect to have Evan beside me encouraging me through and my mom at the end of the bed smiling and encouraging me along as well. I will say that crowning was painful but nowhere near as painful as the rest of the evening’s crazy events. Feeling her make her way all the way out into this world and hearing her sweet cry was nothing less than miraculous! Instantly she was brought to my chest and she stayed there for quite a while. It was the best feeling ever to finally have her in my arms after all those months of growing to love her!

Evan cut the cord and then the craziness really began!

My placenta was apparently not as ready as Tatum was to be birthed and would not come out. As a Midwife outside of a hospital Vicky could not legally try and remove the placenta because I if I began to hemorrhage I needed to be at a hospital where they could take care of it in a timely manner. So an ambulance was called and I was taken to the hospital to hopefully birth my placenta. As all this was happening Evan was holding his beautiful daughter for the first time, he said it beautifully on the way home from the hospital. He said, “It was difficult and weird feeling to be starting to love this new life in front of you and being torn as you are worried about this other love you have known for awhile."

It was not necessarily an emergency yet but could turn into one quite quickly. The longer my placenta stayed in the more the cramping hurt. I really had to focus on my breathing so I was getting enough oxygen and didn’t pass out as they were getting me into the ambulance. Evan came with me to the hospital and my mom stayed with Tatum at the clinic as the rest of the grandparents arrived. It was hard to leave her so soon after meeting her, at this point I was kind of out of it but still the feeling of leaving her was not the best feeling ever.

We got to the hospital and thankfully I was able to push my placenta out my self (the other option if I couldn’t push it out was surgically removing it). I had started to bleed quite a bit at some point but after the placenta was out it stopped pretty quickly. I believe this was due all the prayers that were surrounding us. The Doctor at the hospital was actually quite relieved and impressed at how things turned out.

Anyways the 2 or so hours at the hospital before the placenta was out were awful! I was in a lot of pain and was so tired at that point that I was NOT handling it well. Finally I was able to see my baby again after everything went down…. it had been close to 3 hours with both of us away from her!!!!

The whole experience and now the first few days of being a mama are so surreal. Birthing this beautiful child and being able to feel everything my body would allow me to feel J was absolutely amazing. I am loving learning to be a mom and we are loving the first days of parenthood!

We are so in LOVE! And God is sooooo GOOD!

so with a week to go...

One week till due day and I finally felt like we were completely settled in. All thats left is a some bare walls that need some pictures. I am so blessed and I LOVE IT SO MUCH!

here it is!

~The Bathroom~

Notice the tin ceiling in the shower

~The Living Room~

The Bedroom~

Kitchen

So make sure to go back and look at the pictures (2 or 3 blogs ago) of the before picture of the kitchen. Quite a revamp eh?

Ta da!

Fiesta City!

Gotta love Ikea purchases :)

I am so in love with it!

Dining area

This is my husbands coffee spot

And were in!

So we have been in the house for 4 nights now. And I LOVE IT. I have the most beautiful little house ever in existence! The majority if the house is still a wreck as we still are moving things in but the kitchen is done and moved and ready for business. Actually Evan made a wonderful dinner in it last night and we even had guests :)

So I will post photos as we finish individual areas, the bathroom will probably be last because I just cant bring myself to get it organized.

There are some photos of the work being done and then in the next post of the finished kitchen!

Love you all!

Hanging the Cabinets!

Living Room

Bathroom

Progress & Patience

The house was stalled for awhile but is moving along now. It looks like we should be moving in next week :)

I am now 36 weeks and having weekly appointments...she will be here before we know it!!!!

I have not taken any recent photos of what is done in the house but I will take some today and in the mean time I found some before photos of what it looked like and some of us working away!

On the count down…

We are getting close, only 8 (or so) weeks to go!

In preparation for the coming of Miss Little Tate we are moving!

Evan’s parents own a rental and we will be moving into it as soon as

possible. In the meantime we are re-vamping it from top to bottom…

I am going to try and keep you all up to date on the progress of the work. I do not currently have any before photos but I will get some from Gene and post them for you as

soon as I do.

For now, I have posted pictures of what the little house looks like inside with everything torn down and out in preparation for all the exciting “new” that is to come!

We also just got back from Colorado and had a wonderful time!

We both love Colorado and love being able to leave and go…but of course coming back home is lots of work! Here are some highlights…

Violett Ingrid's Birth...

So this is not my birth story but it the story of my beautiful friend Heather and the birth of her even more beautiful daughter. I was so blessed and honored to be able to be part of such a miraculous experience and part of such a huge part of her life!

Thank you Heather!

Pregnancy and birth is the most amazing miracle of God! Every single detail is so perfectly pieced together by our creator. From the way Heather (a now new mom) who had never been through birth before knew exactly what she needed to do when it needed to be done to the way Violett also worked on making her entrance into the world (not as stubborn as expected)

I don’t think there is anyway to put into words the experience of being a part of it all. So I won’t try at this time…. I will leave that feat for my own birth.

The day after Violett was born I was driving to school (my think time) thinking about the amazing experience I had just had, going over the whole day in my mind. Besides the miraculous part of it all and the fact that every time I think about it I cant help but be in awe of and praise God, I also having been thinking a lot about another aspect of the day that I did not expect. Nursing (and the professional kind not the kind that is also called lactation or breastfeeding).

During the time I spent with Heather in the hospital I was very disappointed in the staff…except Nurse Nancy, blessings to her she was amazing. Nancy was Heathers labor nurse and she was incredible. But a lot of the other nurses that day I was not impressed with. The hospital is not the most enjoyable place and I feel that the staff can make it a pleasurable stay or an unpleasant one. Two nurses stick out in my mind- One who was a pediatric nurse and gave Violett her bath and so on. She was wonderful as far as getting what she was supposed to be doing done BUT she was very curt and I do not believe she learned the skill of discretion very well…and the other who was the first Nurse that Heather and Violett experienced when they were moved into the “Mother Baby Unit” was put simply a crab. It was the end of her shift and apparently she had had a bad day…. that is fine but I do not think it should follow you into a patients room, especially one that just went through labor and birthed a child. And actually any patient who ends up in the hospital is worse off that day than your day. Nursing should be about the patient and for these two nurses on this particular day it clearly wasn’t.

I have been struggling with I am in nursing and why I have chosen to do what I am doing and these two nurses made me think about this even more.

I want my nursing career to me more than a job that pays my bills. I want to it to be about each and every patient I interact with. I want to be the nurse that makes the worst day of someone’s life just a little bit better

And so why am I doing what I am doing?

I am learning the skills of a nurse in order to serve and add to the medical field at least one nurse who genuinely cares and is not just one who is experiencing another day on the job.

Enjoy where you’re at because you may never be there again….

I am so happy with where I am at right now. I mean yes it would be easier if I was done with school already and so on. But really as hard as school is at times and as hard as life can be on some days I am extremely happy with where I am at. I was thinking today that I really wish I had taken time to enjoy where I was at in life before now. I have learned to enjoy where I am at now (not daily necessarily I still have bad days but as a whole) and I wish I had learned it earlier on. Circumstance may not always be perfect but we must enjoy where we are at in life because we may never be there again. I have a friend ( I will not mention any names, she will know who she is J ) and she has said on multiple occasions that she is jealous of where I am at. I understand what she is saying as my life is exactly what I want it to be and a lot of people don’t get or have that, but I also want to shake her (love you). I wish I could go back and enjoy and be blissfully happy where she is at all over again. I didn’t appreciate my dorm life or the girls who were apart of it enough. I miss them all so much and I wish that I had taken time to enjoy every minute of it and not just the really great ones. Even highschool ( as much as I never would ever want to go back to that stage of my life) I wish I had taken time to enjoy more…not sweat the small stuff and have fun. My whole engagement to my wonderful husband….that is such a stressful time and I wish I had just had more fun and enjoyed the last months we had together as just daters and not old married people J Dating. Now that I wish I could go back to (just dating Evan of course), I wish I could go back and savor every minute so I could remember it better now.

All that said I am glad I am realizing this now because maybe just maybe I will have learned enough by now to enjoy every minute of this next phase of my life—nursing school, motherhood, and the continued wifehood. I hope that I savor every minute of these things (mostly motherhood) so that I can remember every detail and remember how much I enjoyed it instead of wishing I had taken the time to enjoy it more.

So a lesson to all - specifically you who are jealous of where I am at in life----Enjoy where you are at because you may never be there again.

On another note….

I am addicted to pickles at this particular time. I can’t get enough. Actually typing and thinking about them is currently making me think I need one.

I felt this little miracle move (for sure) last Saturday, I can’t wait until I can feel it more consistently!

I have less than 4 weeks left until this semester is over!

I usually love cooking but currently hate it, mostly because nothing appeals to me besides pickles so therefore I can’t think of what to cook……my poor Husband.

Our ultrasound is scheduled for May 11^th I think that is really far away and I might sneak into the free clinic and find out what gender this little one is before then, if Evan can get away from work.

I am pretty sure Roxi barked earlier and the baby jumped and now is quite active.

I think that’s all for now. Love you all!

A picture from the past for fun!

Crazy Spring!

So I was hoping to update this every week but with school I am having a heck of a time doing so! I apologize! Maybe when school gets out I will actually do so!

School: Crazy. I am ready to finish up this semester but enjoying it while it lasts...I gave my first injection! Insulin shot...I was sooo nervous but it was fine. What else??? I really need to buckle down on my schoolwork a bit more. I did not do as well as I would have liked to on my last two exams but the next ones I will do better!!!!

Evan: He is working like crazy and comes home dirty dirty dirty everyday as he is working under a house (trying to figure out a new laundry system now). He is working long days but loving it of course!

Baby, baby, baby: Nothing new really. We will be 4 months along on Monday...its crazy how time flies! Our next appointment is on the 5th of April and we will get to make our ultrasound appointment then! I am still trying to decide if I am feeling the little one moving yet and I will let you know when I decide on it being a yes.

Living: We are trying to figure out where we are going to be in September when the baby comes, we need to get out of the trailer but right now it is just a matter of when and where so please be praying that we figure out what to do and where to be as well as what is best for us at this time.

Photo: So I posted some photos and they are of I and my wonderful and beautiful friend Heather who is due to have her little girl April 21st. I am blessed to have been asked to be there when she gives birth and am so excited to be able to be a part of such a huge and amazing part of her life. It is also really fun that we are having our first babies in the same year!!!

Love you all!

12 weeks and counting....

So sorry I did not get a post exactly at 12 weeks, this lat week has been crazy!

Evan has been really busy with work :) and I had a busy school week. I had my first in hospital clinical experience with care of a patient! I gave medications for the first time and was able to watch a heart cath being done which was super neat!

Entering into week 13th I have had so much more energy which is soooo nice and helpful!

We have our next appointment a week from today and I can't wait to hear the fast little heartbeat again! In the last week my belly has seemed to pop out of nowhere...so for all to see here is a photo...

So there it is!

Miss and love you all so much!

times a changin'

I learned in life, especially during my time in Mercy Ships, that not much ever goes as planned. New plans then arise and you go from there. This new adventure that Evan and are about to be on is another reassurance that my “plans” are just that my own--- sometimes selfish and so simple. My plans are made to be changed by life, circumstance, blessings, and struggles. All that said our plans have been changed by a little blessing that is on its way…Yes we are pregnant!!!

Today the 11^th of February I am currently 9 weeks and 3 days

The little one is due to arrive on or most likely around the 13^th of September.

We are very excited and got to hear a little heartbeat on Monday which was SO very exciting!

I have been very lucky to not experience morning sickness too terribly. Just tired mostly and a little bit of nausea.

Love and miss you and all and I will try and post a picture of a bump when the time comes!