Back at the Hospital

Wednesday night Penelope was making all sorts of grunting noises when I tried to put her down for bed. Instead of thinking something was wrong I felt frustrated because I was so tired. So in frustration I gave her to Tyler (who was up doing work for R&K) and went to bed. At 2am, when it was time to nurse her again, I realized she was super hot. So after nursing her, I took her temp and it was 101.4. Of course I turned to the all wise Google to see what to do with a newborn that had a fever and every single source said take the baby to the hospital immediately. A fever could just be a virus but it can also be a sign of a serious condition. Not very comforting news. 

Thank heavens my parents were still here so we were able to leave immediately to the hospital. Upon arrival, she was admitted fairly quickly since her temp was still at a 101.4 and she was breathing very rapidly (hence the grunting). Then tons of tests commenced, it was so awful to watch her go through them all. They gave her a catheter so they could get a urine sample, they pricked her heel for a blood sample, they did a spinal tap, they put an IV in her little arm so they could give her antibiotics in case it was a bacterial infection and they took an x-ray of her chest. 

After all that complete torture they took us up to a room where we were basically to wait 2 days for all the test results to come back. At this point we were pretty hopeful it was just viral since all of our other kids had gotten a fever within the last couple weeks. And as the first day progressed and her fever continued despite antibiotics, the doctors were pretty sure it was a virus as well since she wasn't reacting to the antibiotics. Here are some pictures of our poor little Sweet P on Thursday. She was miserable:

Finally late Friday morning she began to break the fever and was showing improvements. She was breathing better and nursing better by that night:

And by Saturday at noon, all the test results came back clear. Excellent news! She was doing so great and the most alert I have seen her since she was born:

We were so happy to leave the hospital late Saturday afternoon. I did not love being in there AGAIN! It was so hard nursing Penny when she was connected to an IV and a heart monitor. Plus Tyler went to work Friday and Saturday he took my parents to Greenfield Village, so it was pretty lonely being there. And I got pretty stinky for awhile since it took time for Tyler to get clothes to me and my room didn't have a shower. It wasn't until Friday night that I was told there was a shower on the floor that I could use. Wish I would have known that earlier. But regardless, we are so grateful Penny is doing well now and so grateful to be home. Not a pleasant experience at all. 

Penelope at Home

So far having 4 kids hasn't been too difficult of a transition, of course I've had Tyler here to help out. (My parents took off on their own little vacation for the weekend but will be back Sunday night) I feel like we got right back into the swing of things Saturday as I wrote my thank you notes for the baby shower, took a grocery trip to Walmart, washed dishes and laundry and did all those other normal daily tasks that need to be done. I am still a little sore at the incision but grateful that I really do heal quickly. So even though the surgery itself is super traumatic, the recovery is definitely bearable. I can't walk a ton but I can certainly get around just fine at this point.

Saturday afternoon, Steven and Ben went to play at the neighbors house (goodness I feel blessed to have such a sweet, helpful neighbor!). When they came back from the neighbors, however, Steven came down with a fever. He must have got whatever Lucy had the previous weekend. He had a headache and was miserable. Thankfully, like Lucy, he recovered quickly and come Sunday morning he was just fine.

Here some pictures from Saturday:

I find it really hard to be productive because I really just want to snuggle with Penelope...

Sunday morning, Tyler and the kids ditched church too because we didn't want to risk spreading any germs that Steven might still have. And Tyler was sweet enough to bring me up breakfast:

Penelope had spent the first half of the night nursing every hour and then after midnight she started nursing every 3 hours. So it was nice to sleep in a bit, have some breakfast in bed and take a long uninterrupted shower.

The rest of Sunday has pretty much been spent blogging and enjoying this view:

Hospital Days

Our second day in the hospital, Thursday, was full of me attempting to walk around more, nurses torturing me by pulling of band aids, some tests and shots for Penelope and other such fun things. Penelope did fail her hearing test the first time she took it but she managed to pass it the next day. She also lost some weight. She went down to 7lb 6oz when they weighed her.

The day was also full of mini naps and nursing Penelope. We had this lactation consultant who came in and proclaimed that Penelope must have done this before because she was latched on and gulping so perfectly. The consultant also went on and on about how much Penelope had grown since the last time she had seen her (ummm...it had just been one day). This lady was pretty funny.

And an interesting fact about our hospital, it didn't provide wet wipes. It had these little towelettes that you had to moisten yourself in the sink. Lame right? They were also anti-pacifiers so we had to have my parents bring us in wet wipes and a pacifier. We were grateful for the contraband. They also brought these hooligans back in: 

Lucy absolutely adores Penelope, crying out "Baby! Baby!" when she sees her and smothering her with kisses. She also thinks of her as a doll and when she is done, she simply "tosses" her away. Hence why Tyler has to be so close by.

Grandma had to fight with Steven for time to hold her. That boy wants to hold her constantly and got jealous of "all the time" Grandma was taking. I had to explain to him that Grandma has to go back to AZ and won't get Penelope forever like we do. But he still is one persistent little stinker:

The next day, Friday, was spent with Lucy and I getting our last check ups so that we could be cleared to go home. As nice as it was having just one child to take care of, the hospital bed is just not comfy and there are always nurses disturbing our sleep at night so I was ready to leave. Mid afternoon my staples were taken out (ouch!) and then we were free to go:

Penelope Paige Hatch

At 6:30am Wednesday, August 20th we made our journey to Providence Hospital so we could meet Penelope. To be perfectly honest, I was not looking forward to the whole process of getting Penelope out. I do not have fond memories of any of my c-sections and I had developed this huge paranoia that I was going to feel the entire cutting process.

As the nurse got us prepared, I tried to make jokes and Tyler tried to keep things light and it worked mostly. But once the IV was in and all the information they needed taken care of, and they were wheeling me into the operating room...I began my normal shaking. I shook the entire time they were administering the spinal block. The nurses were really sweet and worked hard to calm me down but my head gets away with me...

Then came the pinch test, to make sure I was numb. And my fears were semi-realized. I could feel some sharpness. No, I didn't feel the entire pain of having a metal clamp pinch me but it did hurt. SO they waited longer and eventually determined I was good and numb and started cutting in. The nurses continued to chat with me, trying to distract me with questions about my kids but ugh, it did not feel good! And they took forever to get Tyler to come join me. I didn't like that :(

After uncomfortable tugging, pushing and some painful feelings out came my Penelope at 9:47am. These nurses were great and they took over the camera and took some pictures of Penelope fresh out of my womb. She is our smallest baby yet at 7lbs 13oz, 21 inches long, and her head measured 35cm:

Then the sweet nurses brought her over so we could admire her cuteness and they even put her by my hand so I could touch her sweet, soft skin:

After that, though, was an intense amount of pain and uncomfortableness as they put me back together again. It was awful and the anesthesiologist could tell I was not doing well so he offered to put some drugs in my IV that would help but might make me sleepy. Holy crap, "might make me sleepy" was the understatement of a century. Next thing I know I am drifting in and out of consciousness as they wheel me back into my room. Honestly though, I am so thankful for those drugs, because I don't think I could have survived the whole process awake. I really don't think I have it in me emotionally to have another baby. I feel so traumatized by c-sections.

The rest of the day was a sleepy blur, mixed with Penelope cuteness. I was in some pain again shortly after returning to the room so they gave me more drugs that once again made me extremely sleepy.But thankfully, Penelope was a great nurser and I didn't need to be super alert. 

Around 6pm that night my parents brought the kids to visit and our photographer came as well to do the hospital photo shoot. I was feeling pretty gross, I was super hot and sweaty, tired and swollen and I am really not excited to see the pictures that include me BUT the kids were all really excellent photo subjects. They were so excited to see and hold Penelope. They all smothered her with kisses and love and those are the pictures I can NOT wait to see! Here's the preview shot she put online:

I was a little nervous about our first night in the hospital. This hospital doesn't have a nursery and all our previous children had been terrible sleepers that first night but that night was rather painless. Maybe because I had slept so much that day but regardless, the night went rather smoothly. I was even able to get up and walk to the bathroom all by myself. That first walk is always painful BUT it always feels so good to get out of the bed.

Flies, a bat and a rat

Oh, last week...First there were flies. Our house felt like it was under attack by flies. I was killing up to 20 a day and feeling quite powerful but also quite annoyed. I started to refer to them as "freakin' flies" and when Steven started referring to them in the same manner, I knew we had problems. So one night I asked Tyler to investigate the basement to see if something was rotting down there. I heard him go down and moments later I heard him running at full speed back up the stairs. 

Which leads me to our second fun moment last week, a bat. Yes, Tyler had his first encounter with a bat and it nearly scared him to death. Thankfully it seems to have made its way back out and does not seem to be roosting there. However, I am a bit concerned that a bat was able to fly in and out of our basement. How on Earth did it do that!?

And our fourth fun moment, the rat. When we went to check and make sure the bat was still gone we did indeed find something rotting. A nasty rat in one of our sticky traps. So nauseating but at least it can't attack our food anymore.

Not all of last week was awful though. On Saturday my friend in the ward, Bethany, threw me a baby shower ("A baby girl is about to hatch"). I kept telling her no one would come but she insisted on doing it and thankfully some people showed up. There were about 6 people from our Ward there and it was a nice low key event. Delicious food (ham sliders, cupcakes, fruit & veggies), good company and I got some cute things for little Penny and some diapers as well. 

And the other great thing, Grandma and Grandpa Brady arrived Sunday!

The kids are so excited to have them here and I am so glad to have their help! Especially because Lucy decided to get a stomach bug when they arrived here. She threw up that night at dinner time and was up all night with a fever. Apparently I'm not to get any rest at night before this baby gets here. But like I said, so glad my parents have been here. Poppy has been so good at keeping the boys entertained and my mom has been a big help with sick Lucy. And tomorrow, that's right I said tomorrow, I will become a mom of 4!

Shopping & Things

With baby Penny being due in a week in a half and school starting up shortly after I have her, I decided to take Steven out on a date to do some early back to school shopping. We got some school supplies, a backpack, clothes and shoes.He is a tricky one to take shopping because he doesn't have much of an opinion and I am super indecisive so it took us FOREVER to pick things out (and by forever I mean almost 4 hours!). But we got the things that we had set out for and mostly everything we got was on sale (we found a monster backpack for $5!) so we celebrated our shopping success with: A&W Root Beer Floats! He claims the ice cream tastes like marshmallows:

On my birthday I decided I deserved a nap and while I was napping this happened:

And you can't even see what he did to his tummy and legs...Steven didn't let me take his picture but he was equally colored. Thank heavens it was washable markers!

When Tyler came home from work we went shopping for my birthday presents (we are getting pretty lame about birthdays here in Michigan). I got an outfit for after I have the baby (not as fat as pregnancy clothes but still fat clothes). And a new "diaper" backpack and watch:

After shopping we had Qdoba (it's similar to Chipolte) for dinner and then picked up some Oreo pie for my birthday cake (apparently we are becoming pie people here as well). My math husband decided to top my pie with 2(5+3+1):

Lucy REALLY liked the pie:

And today, we spent the morning at Milford Memories. It's a special festival they have in town every summer (literally 2 blocks away from us so we don't even have to worry about parking). It consists of lots of vendors selling cute crafty things, lots of carnival food, a kids craft tent, concerts, athletic competitions (basketball, fishing, running) and BEER! Hey, what's with the looks? Did you really think we entered the Beer tent, especially with my prego belly?? Sheesh! It also had a little play house with fake fires in the windows that the kids could put out with a genuine fire hose. Steven loved it! Ben started crying when asked if he wanted to do it. I don't understand that kid sometimes...

Here are the kids enjoying their snow cones:

Tyler got himself a mug because he has an obsession with buying soda cups:

And I used my birthday money that Tyler's grandparents gave me to get this awesome board for our kitchen. I could probably have made it for less but...I still love it!:

Maternity Pictures

Here are the results from my first ever maternity shoot and from my first photo shoot not done by Tara. Not all of them are the greatest because getting 3 kids to cooperate in pictures is difficult and frankly I'm not always the most photogenic with my lazy eyes BUT there are definitely some real gems in here. Thanks Bella Jean Photography!: 

Here the boys are reading the Benny & Penny book. I am still 98% certain that we're going to name this baby Penelope. Lucy evidently did not feel like doing any reading, maybe she is against the name choice?:

Here they were supposed to be spelling out LOVE (my belly being the 'O') but Lucy was once again not the most cooperative:

Gotta love the expressions on Steven's face in these:

Framing my popping belly button. I'm bummed that I was trying to direct Ben's head towards the camera on the second shot, could've been so much cuter without my hand on his head!:

Holy Batman! Tyler's hands look like they belong to an 80 year old man!

This would have been a super cute shot if we had worn shoes that were a little less white trashy. Bad planning on my part!

Tyler was really excited about the attention his butt would be getting in these photographs:

Love these silly shots with Lucy:

These shots were pretty spontaneous. Lucy started to show off her belly (as you can see above) and then the boys wanted to join in, it was pretty fun times:

All in all some pretty fun memories were captured that day!