Memorial Day Weekend

Fight night was fun for everyone involved (except for poor Royce Gracie who lost the fight), we had tons of food and Cooper got passed around like a collection plate. He loves being held and cuddled and loved. The fight was a little disappointing as Matt Hughes beat Gracie without much of a fight. But we enjoyed the friends and family. And as you can see by this photo, some of us were more into the fight than others.

Cooper had his first "camp out" this weekend when we went up to Pine Valley and stayed in the cabin. We wanted to stay outside in a tent so we could "camp" but it was too cold outside and we didn't want to chance it with our little guy breathing cold air so we slept inside. We had lots of fun with Nikki, the Berry's, and the Chandler's and Mom and Dad, and, of course, the twins. We stayed up late playing games (me and Annie dominated at Disney Trivial Pursuit), and in the morning those that were motivated (pretty much everyone but me and Cooper) went hiking up Pine Valley mountain. We went 4-wheeling during the day--Jesse let me drive :) while Cooper was left at the cabin with Grandma Wendy with a few ounces of milk in a bottle to tide him over till I got back. He did pretty well! Mom missed him like crazy though.

I can't believe Cooper is already almost a month old! He's gained several pounds and he holds his head up and smiles. I still can't believe that he's here and alive--a living, breathing little guy that is the spitting image of his daddy. I was there for the whole thing, but I still can't believe what a miracle he is.

Jesse is having a blast being a daddy, in fact, a lady came up to me in relief society last week and told me that she's never seen a dad so involved. Whenever he's holding Cooper (pretty much whenever he's home) he's always giving him little lectures and teaching him. Like when he walks him in the halls at church he holds Cooper up to the pictures of Jesus and Moroni and tells him all about them. Jesse is still taking care of me too, I've had an easy time recovering because Jesse has cooked and cleaned, he's even done the laundry! On the weekends he takes Cooper in the mornings so I can have a few extra hours of sleep. Yep, our little family is functioning great, and we're all slipping into our new rolls of Mommy, Daddy, and Son, just fine.

All the stuff I never knew

These past few weeks have been amazing as we have gotten to know our little guy. I thought I knew his personality and preferences from him being in my tummy for 9 mos., but that is nothing compared to all we've learned in the past little while.

I've never been happier in my entire life, or felt so complete. These few thoughts that Caci sent me via e-mail almost hit it on the head:

1. You look at your baby in the mirror instead of yourself.

2. You finally stop to smell the roses, because your baby is in your arms.

3. Where you once believed you were fearless, you now find yourself afraid.

4. You're less self-involved and more self-motivated.

5. The sacrifices you thought you made to have a child no longer seem like sacrifices.

6. You respect your body ... finally. (Hooray for baby-making!)

7. You have stronger opinions and are stronger willed.

8. You respect your parents and love them in a new way. (Hooray for grandparents!)

9. You find that your baby's pain feels much worse than your own.

10. You believe once again in the things you believed in as a child. (Hooray for the tooth fairy!)

11. You lose touch with the people in your life that you should have banished years ago.

12. Your heart breaks much more easily.

13. You think of your baby 234,836,178,976 times a day. In fact, you're so busy with this that you forget everything else.

14. Every day is a surprise.

15. Bodily functions are no longer repulsive. In fact, they please you. (Hooray for poop!)

16. You think before you speak.

17. You become a morning person. (Hooray for watching the sun rise!)

18. If you have a son, you no longer curse men. (Hooray for all men!)

19. If you have a daughter, you hope she won't endure your same heartaches.

20. Your love becomes limitless, a superhuman power.

Me and Jesse have never laughed so hard at all his little grunts and squeaks. He's such a good baby and doesn't cry very often, and when he does it's not very loud. But he still doesn't have a sleeping schedule down yet, so I only sleep 2 hours at a time (Caci enjoy your sleep now!). We're planning on taking him camping in a few weeks (Wahoo!) , so hopefully he's got some sort of pattern by then.

On a side note, Jesse is super super excited for FIGHT NIGHT tonight. He's been counting down for several weeks the fight between UFC fighters Matt Hughes and Royce Gracie. He invited some people over and bought double stuffed oreos, so I think it should be pretty eventful. He's just afraid one will knock the other one out in the first round and it'll be a 30 second fight. For Jesse's sake I hope it's long, and not to gory.

It's about time!

It's about time for a lot of things! First of all, COOPER! Nine months is a flipping long time! Second, time for this blog (Caci's been nudging me along for quite a while now, guess it's time to present our little family to the web for all to see). Third, family, after all - isn't it about...Time?

I really want to just gush about how much we love Cooper and how cute and perfect he is, but I guess first things first - I better set the story straight about how he got here.

On Saturday the 6th of May, me and Jesse went shopping to gather up the last few things that we needed to get Cooper's room complete. We spent the whole day washing clothes and setting up a bed, hanging up cute froggy decorations and cleaning or house. We knew that Cooper was going to be here soon. We even packed a few things in the car just in case my water broke. That night Annie and Dave came over to set up our new computer so we would have somewhere to download all of our cute baby pictures once Cooper came.

Jesse and Dave ran to the store to pick up a few miscellaneous items and me and Annie stayed and watched Top Chef (Love that show!). We started timing my contractions just for fun (they had been coming all week basically) and they started getting stronger and coming about 15 minutes apart. When Jesse and Dave got back I told Annie she might get a call in the middle of the night, so be prepared! Me and Jesse stayed up timing contractions and they started getting pretty serious around 10:30ish and about 7 minutes apart.

We had previously decided that we were going to try to handle them at home for as long as we could so we wouldn't just be sitting at the hospital for hours (riiiiight). So for the next 7 hours till about 5:oo AM Sunday morning we took walks around our apartments and I had 3 baths (hey, they helped with the pain), sat on the couch, then the bed, then the couch, then bed, just trying to get through contractions and relax.

At 5:00 I decided that if they got any worse I wouldn't want to be driving in a car, so we better head off to the hospital. When we got there they checked me and I was only dialated to 2 cm (10 is the goal). They kept me for an hour for observation to see how far I would progress and at the end of that I was at about 3+ cm. So we settled into our delivery room and met our new nurse Lynette (an angel I swear). The next 2 hours took me to 4 cm (I was completely efaced at this time... must have been all the walking!) and that's when the trouble began.

At 4 cm my contractions started to decline in intensity and come less frequently. So, we started walking the halls, Lynette ran me a bath (and picked me flowers!) and they broke my water. After about 2 hours we were about to head out on an hour long walk to take us around the whole hospital to try and get things going, so Lynette was doing routine check on the baby's heartbeat and it plummeted pretty low. She said "I wish I wouldn't have seen that, now I have to keep you in bed." With me in bed, my contractions petering off, and the baby's heartbeat unstable, we had one alternative: Pitocin.

Pitocin is a drug that speeds up contractions and makes them unnaturally painful, but it does bring the baby quicker, which was our goal at this point so we decided to start the drip. *usually this is when you would also begin an epidural to avoid the painful effects of Pitocin, but since we were trying to go naturally, we decided to see how far we could go with the added "boost"*.

I did surprisingly well, I have to say, I am quite proud of myself and my wonderful coach Jesse. The pain got pretty intense, but we had practiced long and hard and it paid off for several hours. In the space of about 3 or 4 hours I progressed from 4 cm to 7cm - we were doing awesome! Even with Pitocin I was handling the pain relatively well. That is the point where we hit yet another road block (somewhere between 12:00 and 2:00 in the afternoon).

Up to that point, the pain had been almost unbearable, but we had been progressing smoothly, so it made it seem worth it. It was then that the progression stopped and I stayed at 7 cm for 3 or 4 hours. To be going through so much pain, only to be told after hours of this you are no closer to your goal than before is pretty depressing. I started losing my grip mentally and crying through contractions, yelling at Jesse and starting to be unreasonable ( I think I bit him a couple of times too). My mom and Annie kicked it in high gear at that point and their sweet voices are really the only things that kept me going just a little while longer (after all, you can't bite your mom).

Annie, and my mom decided me and Jesse had some decisions to make about pain medication so they left the room so we could decide what to do. Jesse had been wonderfully trained to handle my unreasonable state, so it was in that manner, just us two, that we made it through one more painful hour. Jesse crying and pleading just as much as I was that this would be over. At the end of that we decided to take a drug, I can't quite remember the name ( could ya blame me?) that took the edge off and made me kind of loopy. We made this decision in hopes that it would relax my body enough to help it progress and dilate further. It worked! An hour later I was at 8 cm! But that's as far as that pain medication could take me.

At the same time I hit 8cm is where the medication started wearing off. I had a dilemma, 2 more cm to go, and the pain was worse than it had ever been. Also a problem was that even though I was at an 8, the baby wasn't dropping into the birth canal. Jesse tried coaching me through one more hour, but it turned out I just bawled and pleaded for about half the hour and then the nurse came in and said she had spoken with the doctor, and he decided that after 20 hours of labor, and the baby's heartbeat unstable as it was, the only thing to do was an epidural because the baby wasn't dropping. Which either meant he was too big, or my body wasn't relaxing and opening up enough for him to drop. It was then that she scared the crap out of me and mentioned a c-section in the case that the baby didn't drop in next little while.

We readily agreed to an epidural and in 5 minutes the guy was there and prepping me. After all those hours of pain a needle in my back was NOTHING! and a few minutes after that, I was pain free! For the next 2 hours me and Jesse dozed in and out of sleep and at the end of 2 hours the baby was right there! ready for me to push! I pushed through about 5 contractions and Cooper was here! All 7lbs. 11oz., 20 3/4 inches long. We couldn't be any happier, we love this little guy to death.