*Confession: Keeping the blog updated stresses me out. Not because I worry about the 5 people who actually read it, eagerly waiting for the next post, haha, but because I really like to have it as a documentation of our family life, and the farther behind I get, the less details I remember, and the harder it is to get motivated/the more stressful it feels to bring it back up to date. Life with five kids has rocked my world (probably has something to do with covid being thrown into the mix there too...), so I've been doing some soul-searching, trying to figure out what things I can get rid of to help simplify my life and help me be less stressed out overall so I can be a better mom. And the blog is always on the fence--it takes a fair amount of time to keep up and adds a good amount of stress in my brain...but I LOVE having it to look back on and to document our life as a family. And when I finally get in the groove of posting, I really enjoy having an outlet to write a few of my feelings. So I keep pushing forward with it, and it's forever on my to-do list of things to get done. Maybe someday if the boys go back to school full time (instead of having early outs every day--where I pick them up right after I put Hudson & Hallie down for naps/quiet time--then maybe I'll have some more regular time to be on the computer again...maybe someday. I really, really miss having some time to myself. Life is exhausting right now, and by the time I finally get all the kids to bed at night, I have zero motivation to do anything productive. Maybe someday when the kids are older then I can have more personal time/computer time...fingers crossed!!
Anyway, so even though this is a month-and-a-half late, I'm determined to finish Hallie's last 3 monthly posts! We're so close...!! (which also makes me so sad that she's almost a year old already...!)
Hallie at 10 Months:
Compared to 9 Months:
I have my notes from when she was 10 months, so these are hopefully pretty accurate details. ;)
BIGGEST DEVELOPMENTS IN THE LAST MONTH:
- Got two new teeth (#4 and #5)
- Started occasionally sleeping 11 hours straight
- Spunky personality started coming out
- Pretty much done with baby food
New top tooth (and the bottom one you can't see):
SLEEPING:
- Still taking two naps at 9:00 AM and 1:00 PM
- Officially done taking a third nap
- Goes to bed at 7:30 pm and usually wakes up once to eat around 4 or 5 am to eat, and then goes back to sleep, but started occasionally sleeping all the way through until 6:00 am
- Sometimes wakes up at 5:30 and just sucks her blanket happily (not going back to sleep) until I get her out of bed for the morning
EATING:
- Still nurses 4 times during the day, but her interest is waning, and I'm getting ready to drop one
- Burps bigger and louder and more consistently than any of the boys, haha!!
- Started thinking it was funny to spit out baby food...so she pretty much eats solid foods exclusively
- Favorite foods are: oatmeal blend with bananas & strawberries, bread in any form (toast, rolls, etc), pretty much any fruit but especially blueberries, broccoli, canned green beans, string cheese, and water in her new weighted straw cup (greatest cup EVER!)
MOBILITY:
- Still not crawling, but gets anywhere she wants by rolling around
- Sits up like a pro
She rolled under the dresser and got stuck, haha:
TEMPERAMENT:
- Has a little spunky personality that's coming through, and it's so fun to see! She thinks things are funny and does things to get our attention or to make us laugh (like spitting out baby food, dropping things off her highchair tray, or pulling down her bows, haha)
- Loves to slap anything and everything (her highchair tray, our shoulders when we're holding her, the floor, etc)
Pulling down her bow:
Not very lady-like, haha, but so cute!
OTHER:
- Babbles a lot more
- Started taking baths sitting up
- Started shaking her head "no" occasionally--mostly when I was trying to put her to bed haha
- Wears 6-9 and 9 month tops, and 3-6 and 6 month bottoms
- Weighed 14 lbs 13 oz when I weighed her on on our scale Nov 24th
Jumping in her new jumperoo:
Saying "mama"--she says it as she babbles, but doesn't associate it with me yet:
This little blog here is starting to give me some serious anxiety as I just keep getting more and more behind. I know hardly anyone looks at it anymore, but I LOVE to have it as our little family history/journal, and I want to remember and preserve these precious memories we're making right now with sweet Hallie. So I'm going to keep doing my best to catch up in the next few weeks. And I'll probably do things out of order, just because I want to get some things done (like these monthly posts) before I forget how things were at certain times...since Hallie changes every day!
Here is Hallie at one month:
(such a teeny little thing!)
We weighed her on our home scale on the morning of her one-month birthday (is that what you'd call it?), and she weighed 6 lbs even. Which might not seem like much (because it's not, haha), but it brought tears of gratitude to my eyes because it meant that she had gained 5 oz in 4 days, which meant that all the hours and hours (and hours...) of sitting on the couch nursing (and pumping, and sometimes supplementing) were working. I talked in my last post about how she was struggling to gain weight, and it was pretty stressful. So seeing that she was growing and gaining weight was such a tender mercy, and so, so good for my emotions.
I'm not going to lie--that one month mark was rough. (The first two weeks were great, but when that third week hit and she still wasn't gaining enough weight, that's when things started feeling really hard and overwhelming.) With all the boys, I remember being kind of sad when their one month mark hit because it meant they were growing up, and I was sad at how fast the time was moving. But with Hallie, I was almost willing the time to move forward. I was so stressed and worried about her weight, and the terrible cough/cold she had caught from the boys a few days before (that lasted almost two weeks...!), and I was just not in as good of a place mentally. I wasn't depressed, per se, but I was completely overwhelmed with it all. Five kids is a LOT! And having never had a less-than-two-year-old when having a new baby (we love Hudson to death, but he requires so much time and attention himself, in addition to Hallie!)...it was/has been one of the hardest adjustments to having a new baby that I've gone through.
So as much as I loved Hallie at one month, it was hard. And my thoughts/emotions were more overcome with how hard/stressful everything was, than with how much I loved her. And I felt bad that I wasn't loving the newborn stage as much as I "should" have. And because of all of this, I felt like I had kind of a hard time bonding with her at first--for whatever reason, I started worrying about our future mother/daughter relationship, and I started worrying about what if she was hard for the rest of her life, and our relationship was never strong? I'd never had a daughter before--what if we didn't have as close or good of a relationship as we should?! (Clearly I was sleep deprived and overwhelmed and too stressed out, haha) Thankfully, things started easing up and those overwhelming feelings of love started gushing a few weeks later...and now I just love her SO much and can't get enough of her!!!
Anyway, so back to one month:
- She ate every 2-3 hours during the day (and I had to wake her up almost every single time, to make sure I fed her often enough), and about every 3 hours at night (with an occasional 4 hour stretch every once in awhile)
- She slept most of the time, and I was always worried that she was sick or too lethargic to eat (but really, I think it was just because she was a preemie)
- She caught a nasty cough/cold from the boys, and it was so sad and scary; we called the Dr office multiple times to talk with nurses, but never ended up taking her in; I slept with her propped up in my arms for over a week so that she could breathe better, and I had to suction out her nose at night quite often; her hacking cough was just the saddest little thing, and it made me want to cry every time I heard it (I felt SO bad that we hadn't been able to prevent her from getting sick--it was Hudson who finally gave it to her after it had gone through all the other boys)
- She only fit in preemie-sized clothes, and newborn-sized diapers were still so big on her
- She rarely spit up
- She slept in a little bassinet in our bed at night, and occasionally in my arms (besides those two-ish weeks she was sick, when she slept in my arms every night so I could keep her propped up)
- Didn't take a pacifier (partly because she didn't seem to like it, and partly because I didn't try it very often)
- Besides the stress of her not gaining weight and being sick, she seemed to have a sweet temperament, and we and the boys all adored her
And some other random, cute pictures from the first month:
Love these faces
So cute & teeny on the couch!
This picture looks really weird, haha, but I want to have it to look back at. These weren't "rolls" on her legs--they were baggy skin bunched up, haha. And I never took a picture (for obvious reasons), but I want to remember how her bum started out as just a flat hole--she didn't have any bum cheeks or anything, and it looked so crazy! (but it makes me love her little chubby bum even more now haha)
Flipping the bird--and of course Curt had to snap a picture to send to Cory & Collin ;)
First bath--she was definitely not a fan!
(And the poor thing only gets a bath about once a week...poor girl #fifthchildproblems...)
Oh Hallie, we love you so much! This post makes it sound like it was all negative (I just want to remember my true feelings), but we still loved our time with her and LOVED having her in our family!! And remembering the harder times makes me so grateful for how much better/easier things feel now. :)
Curt had gone home an hour or two after Hallie was born, to relieve my mom & Denex who had graciously come to sit with the boys in the middle of the night. (And also to be at home as he dealt with his stomach bug and threw up some more...poor guy!) When the boys woke up that morning, they asked where I was, and they legit didn’t believe Curt when he told them I had had the baby—since there had been no sign of her being born the night before when they went to bed. Curt showed Tucker some pictures from his phone of the baby, and he thought Curt was playing a joke on him and that the pictures were of Hudson or something; it wasn’t until Curt showed him the time stamp on the pictures that Tucker finally believed him, haha. I still can’t believe how crazy it all was, haha! And apparently Hudson LOVED seeing the pictures and kept walking around with Curt’s phone looking at the pictures, saying “Sister!” over and over again. :)
Also funny is that Curt didn’t get a hold of his parents until about 8:30 am, and they answered the phone like it was like any other day. When Curt told them they were hard to get a hold of, his mom didn’t understand until he told her to look at her phone at all the missed calls from the middle of the night, and then he told them they had a new granddaughter. ;) They were completely surprised and mortified to find out they had missed the birth! (Come to find out, Chris’s phone was broken and had somehow changed to the silent mode without her realizing it, which is why they missed all our calls.) They were so kind to quickly get ready and come over to watch the boys for the rest of the day.
HOSPITAL
Like I mentioned in Hallie’s birth story, my recovery without an epidural (and no tearing!) was AMAZING! I seriously can’t talk enough about how wonderful it was. I was up and walking within an hour of her being born, and going to the bathroom was a breeze. After the first time of going to the bathroom when you have to have a nurse with you, I was able to get up and walk on my own no problem every time after that. I think my pain level was at a “2” one time, and after that I didn’t have any pain at all. (I still took ibuprofen around the clock though.) It was seriously amazing. And Hallie was such a little miracle baby! Being born before 37 weeks (even though it was only by 5 days), she was classified as a “preemie” and had to have extra tests and precautions. They had to test her blood sugars for the first 24 hours, and she passed every single one without any problems! She had to do a car seat test to make sure she could tolerate the car seat without her oxygen saturation going down, and she stayed at 98% and above the entire time. What a good girl! And preemies typically have a hard time latching on and sucking with nursing, but she did great right from the start and only lost 3 oz before coming home. She really did SO well with everything, and because she did so well, my Dr let us go home after less than 36 hours! (Originally we were going to have to stay as close to 48 hours as possible because we didn’t know my results from my group B strep test, and because she came so fast she didn’t receive any antibiotics in case I had been positive. But because she was doing so well with everything, my Dr wasn’t concerned. And it turns out we found out later that I had tested negative anyway, so we were in the clear!)
Curt’s parents were so kind to watch the boys for us all day Friday (she was born early Friday morning), and Curt was able to spend a good majority of the day with me at the hospital, which was so nice. (Even if he did end up sleeping for a lot of the time, trying recover from the stomach bug he had.) I got the clear to go home on Saturday morning, so Curt came late morning and helped me pack everything up, and we got home just after lunch.
Cute little video--I wish we would have taken more!
VISITORS
Curt had texted our family in the middle of the night after she had been born, and when my dad woke up and saw it, he drove to the airport and hopped on the first flight over, haha. #pilotprivileges And because Curt's parents were watching the boys and my mom was stuck at home with her foot recovering from surgery and couldn't drive herself, it turned out that my dad was the first one to meet her! And yet he's the only one that doesn't live in Utah, haha.
Curt's parents were able to stop by a little later to see her:
And then later that night Curt was able to drive my mom over to meet her, and Zach and Brooke came by too...I just forgot to get pictures.
This was Hallie and I FaceTiming with Curt and the boys Saturday morning--our first family picture haha!
COMING HOME AND THE BOYS MEETING HALLIE
I was so sad that the boys had all been sick and that they weren't able to come to the hospital and have a big "come and meet your new sister" moment. But it worked well for us to just come home and have them meet her then. They were SO in love, right from the start. They all swooned over her and fought over who could hold her next, etc. Hudson had just gone down for a nap when we got home, so he had his own personal little meeting time after his nap, and it was so sweet. With him having a connection with her name and always looking up to heaven when we talked about her, then we were all so excited to see his reaction when he met her for the first time. It wasn't anything life shattering, but he was so sweet with her and loved her SO much.
Video of Hudson meeting Hallie:
Two funny comments that were made that afternoon.
(Hallie was starting to cry)
Me: She's starting to get hungry, so I need to feed her.
Bronco: Okay. What food should I go get for her?
(such a sweet big brother! Apparently he had forgotten--or blocked from his memory--that I had to nurse her haha)
(As we were starting to change her diaper for the first time after coming home)
Tucker: It's crazy that she'll poop & pee from the same hole!
(Face palm--we thought we had explained that pretty well with him at one point, but apparently we didn't do a good enough job. We then had an impromptu anatomy lesson, haha)
That first night home with everyone was INSANE. The boys were all finally starting to feel better from their sicknesses, so they had extra energy, and then the change/tension of having a new baby in the house just added to it. Chad & Lisa stopped by, as well as my mom & Denex, and our house was SO loud and crazy (from the boys, not the visitors haha)! We went to bed that night seriously questioning the decision to have five kids, and very concerned about the future, haha.
JAUNDICE
Hallie's bilirubin levels tested at a low-intermediate level in the hospital (I think she was at an 8 or right around there), so we had to follow up with another blood draw on Monday. Her levels were at a 12 or something like that, so we had to follow up again on Wednesday. Unfortunately on Wednesday she had gone up to 17.5, which was bordering high risk, so she had to go on phototherapy lights later that afternoon. She had been pooping and peeing so much that we were hoping she’d be in the clear...but I guess not. It was sad that she had to go on the lights, but we had experienced this before with Bronco, and I was determined to keep her under the lights as much as possible to help her numbers go down as quickly as possible. (Unlike Bronco, who we struggled to keep under the lights, which prolonged his time needing to have them...) We were super diligent to keep her on the lights at all times, except for no longer than 30 minutes when she was feeding, during which time she wore the portable back lights. She cried for a few hours later that night, but other than that she really did SO well with the lights and just slept. Such a sweet girl! We tested her levels 24 hours after starting the lights, and she had gone down to 11! What a miracle! So she was able to go off the lights at midnight the next day (Thursday night) and then we tested again on Friday and she was continuing to go down, so she got to stay off the lights for good. Hallelujah!!
The first time we noticed Hallie looked pretty yellow...
Under the lights:
This is one of our very favorite pictures of Hallie--
the back light looks like a halter top, and her pose is priceless, haha!
2 WEEK STATS
Weight: 5 lbs 4 oz (6% on the preemie curve)
Length: 19" (37%)
Head circumference: 32 cm (13%)
MILK SUPPLY/WEIGHT GAIN STRESS
At Hallie’s 2 week appointment, she only weighed 5 lbs 4 oz...which is how much she weighed when she came home from the hospital, and 3 oz less than her birth weight. My Dr wasn’t super concerned, because I told her that it seemed that Hallie was really tired when she had jaundice and didn’t eat as much, so we figured she would catch up pretty quickly. She told me to come back a week later for a weight check, and when we came back, Hallie weighed 5 lbs 8.5 oz...which was more than her birth weight, but bumped her down a percentile on her growth curve (from 6% to 5% on the preemie curve). Because she went down on the growth curve, that was a cause for concern, so they told me I had to “prove my milk supply”—meaning I had to pump exclusively for 24 hours to measure how much milk I was producing, and then I could feed it to Hallie in a bottle afterwards.
I left the dr office on the brink of tears and lost it when I told Curt about it. Ever since all the drama/stress we had to deal with when Tucker was born (he was in the NICU for three weeks & I had to bring in my milk with a pump, and he had to come home on oxygen, and we had to do weight checks every few days and fortify half his feedings, and he had nipple confusion and struggled a ton with nursing, etc)—I have had a traumatic relationship with pumping & bottle feeding. So the thought of having to pump around the clock and feed Hallie a bottle about threw me into a tailspin. But we did it and made it work. (I slept on the couch that night and set an alarm to wake me up before Hallie would need to eat each time—since Curt had to be at work early the next morning.)
It was hard and no fun, but I learned a lot about my supply and that I have two letdowns. I only produced 1-2 oz each feeding, but I felt like the pump wasn’t able to completely drain me (and I was super stressed out), so I don’t think I produced as much as I could have/would have otherwise. But Hallie was still hungry after I would fed her what I had pumped, so I ended up supplementing with 1-2 oz of formula afterwards. (There was a point when I first started pumping in the afternoon, and Hallie was still hungry and crying after I fed her what I had pumped, and Hudson was napping, and I was freaking out about what to do because I didn’t have any formula on hand and I couldn’t pump anything more out, and she wanted/needed more. Thankfully the boys got home from school at about that time, so I left Hallie in Tucker’s arms—crying the whole time—and I ran to the store to buy some formula really quick. It was a sad and terrifying feeling to not have anything for her to eat when she needed it, so having formula on hand after that felt much better.)
In some ways, it was really nice to feed her a bottle and be able to know exactly how much she was getting. And it was a little liberating to think that she could eat without it having to be from me. And there was a part of me that wanted to just give up nursing right then and switch to formula just for the ease of it all, and because then I wouldn’t have to stress out about my supply and feel like I was failing if she wasn’t gaining enough weight. But then a bigger part of me felt guilty for thinking that way because I know breast milk is best, and formula is SO expensive! So it was a battle of emotions inside of me that whole time.
After the 24 hours of pumping and bottle feeding, I went back to nursing like normal, but I supplemented with formula whenever she still seemed hungry (which ended up being like 2-3 times a day for a little while), and pumped after finishing nursing when I could, to try to increase my supply. I woke her up to feed her every 2-2.5 hours around the clock, I drank fenugreek herbal tea to help my supply as well, and I did my best to not stress out about it, to help my mindset. (Easier said that done.) I had a few good talks with Lisa and Nora, which helped me feel better about everything and remember that I wasn’t a failure (even though it felt like that sometimes), and that it was okay to give her formula if needed. The dr office finally called me back a few days later (after I had left a message about how much milk I had produced), and they said I wasn’t producing enough and needed to supplement with formula at every feeding...but by that point I felt like my supply was getting better, so I just continued to do what I was doing and tried not to stress out.
I spent hours researching and reading about supply and weight gain and preemies, and somewhere I read the idea to offer both sides multiple times—instead of just feeding once on each side. So I started feeding her twice on each side, which allowed her to get that second letdown that I discovered I had while I was pumping (it happens a lot later, but it seems to be the more fat-rich part), and I think that’s what started making a big difference. (it helped her gain weight because it was more fatty, and it helped my supply increase because then she was completely emptying me.) The only problem with offering both sides twice is that it took (and still takes) f-o-r-e-v-e-r to feed her...like it legitimately takes a full hour from the start to finish of one feeding. And because she was eating every 2-2.5 hours (counting from start to start), it left me only about an hour between feedings, and meant I was on the couch ALL.DAY.LONG. So that was really hard. And I had to try to pay attention closely at each feeding to make sure I felt each letdown and could see/hear her sucking. But she eventually started gaining more weight (we weighed her on our little food scale), and on her one month birthday she weighed 6 lbs even—which meant she had gained 5 oz in 4 days, which was a miracle! After that, I slowly started feeling much better about nursing, and I hardly had to supplement with formula anymore. We still weigh her about once a week to keep tabs on it, and I still stress out about it every once in awhile, but for the most part I don't worry about it too much anymore.
BABY SHOWER
My mom & Allie & Rachel had planned to throw me a baby shower on Jan 25...the day after she ended up being born, haha. So they postponed the shower to Feb 8th, and then Hallie was able to come with! It was at my mom’s house, and it was nice and low key. And it was so fun to see friends from my old ward! And Hallie got SO many CUTE clothes!!
PATERNITY
Something we had been looking forward to for a long time (pretty much ever since he got his job at Xactware and we found out about the benefits, haha) was his FIVE week paid paternity leave. Five weeks, fully paid?!! It seemed almost too good to be true!! Hallie was born three weeks before he had his big marketing conference that his team was in charge of, so he took a few days off work right when she was born (the Friday & Monday after she was born, and then the Thursday when she was on lights for jaundice and I was in need of some emotional support), and then he worked normal up until (and crazy hours during) his conference, and then he was able to start his paternity right after the conference ended—starting Feb 18th. When we first found out we were pregnant, we thought for sure the shop would be underway and that he’d be able to devote most of his time to building it. But then as things have d-r-a-g-g-e-d on with the city in just getting the permit (and we still haven’t even gotten it fully approved yet!), we thought he could get all kinds of home projects done during paternity. And then when Hallie was born and reality hit with how crazy five kids is and how long it took me to feed her...we realized paternity would have to mostly be used to just help us get through normal life!! It was kind of a bummer that his paternity couldn’t be used for something more productive like we’d hoped, but it was a HUGE blessing having him home to be able to help with everything. Paternity started right during the stress of Hallie not gaining weight and all the boys’ birthdays, so the timing was perfect. Such a blessing.
Curt was pretending to eat her like a burrito because she was so small, haha:
I admire people who are able to wait to find out the gender and make it a surprise at the birth--I think that would be such a neat experience to do that! However, I am too much of a planner and couldn't handle it. It can either be a surprise at 16 weeks, or it can be a surprise at the birth--either way it's a surprise...and if it's a surprise at 16 weeks, then I just have more time to plan and prepare. ;)
Anyway, so we planned to find out the gender at 16 weeks from the beginning. And from the very beginning when we started even talking about the idea of maybe having another baby, we assumed it would be another boy. We both have always felt like we would be a family of boys, and we've been okay with that--we even prefer it! Boys are crazy, but they are fun, and there's a lot of things we don't have to worry about (immodest clothes, periods, crazy hormones, etc). :)
So leading up to getting pregnant, and once we were pregnant, we talked about and planned on it being another boy. When we were trying to figure out a name for Hudson, we had narrowed it down to two names--Hudson (my favorite), and Porter (Curt's favorite). And then after getting pregnant again, we both still liked the name Porter and decided we would name the baby that. And it was such a nice feeling to have that already decided so we didn't have to worry about it! ;)
I knew that whenever we started telling people we were pregnant, that we would get lots of comments about how fun and exciting that would be if it ended up being a girl--and of course we did. I expected it, and I was okay with those comments, and inside I would just think to myself, "But it's going to be a boy, and that's okay. We really do want another boy!" Every once in awhile Curt and I would talk about how crazy that would be if it did end up being a girl, but we both agreed that a girl would just "mess things up," haha, and that we really would prefer a boy. And we figured it WOULD be a boy--we just didn't even consider anything different.
As we got closer to the date of the gender ultrasound, I would have a few slight feelings of, "But wait--what if it IS a girl??!" And because we were going to the same place & the same ultrasound tech that we had used to find out the gender of all the other boys (except Calvin), I could picture the room and visualize seeing the image and having her tell us what it was...except that I started visualizing it being a girl! With both Bronco & Hudson I had thought more about the possibility of it being a girl, so I figured that's what I was doing this time. A last-second hope, if you may. But I still was planning on a boy, and in my heart of hearts, I really did hope it was a boy--if just for ease and comfort, since that's what we have and know. ;)
Anyway, so Curt met me at the Dr. office for the last appointment of the day on Wednesday, Sept 4th. We had a quick 15 minute window to do the ultrasound before we had to immediately head off in separate directions for soccer games--Tucker had a game up in Lehi that Curt was coaching, and Calvin had a game in Provo that I was taking him to. We had left the older boys home and only had Hudson with us, and more than anything, I was just hoping to see a healthy baby with a heartbeat.
With literally every other gender ultrasound we've had, both Curt & I have seen the little weiner right away. With this one, however, we didn't see anything. The ultrasound tech started by looking around, giving us a good profile shot and getting oriented. And after seeing all the appropriate body parts (arms, legs, heart, etc), she just kept looking around in lots of different directions--not saying anything about the gender. We had told her at the beginning that we had four boys and were expecting another boy, and she finally said that she didn't want to get us excited or give us any false hope, but she wasn't seeing any boy parts. (WHAT???!!!) She kept looking and looking (and so did we), and she took lots of shots from every angle possible, and then she finally called it and typed in the letters G-I-R-L on the screen.......and we were in complete shock. I just kept saying, "No way. There is NO way! I CAN'T believe it!!! NO WAY!!!!" Curt was less vocal, but he just smiled and kept saying, "That's crazy!" The tech said she got all the perfect shots and saw the three little lines that indicate a girl, and she was pretty darn confident in that diagnosis. And in that quick 15 minute ultrasound, our lives changed forever....!!
I don't usually post the gender pictures (for modesty purposes, haha),
but I still to this day have to keep looking at this to remember that it really is a girl...!!
So we walked out of the Dr. office, and I felt like our world had just been turned upside down! It was a GIRL???!!! How could it be a girl??? What would we do with a girl??? How would she fit into our crazy boy family?????!!!!
It was hard that Curt & I couldn't talk much about it--we had to leave in our separate cars right away and pick up the boys and go straight to the soccer games. And I was freaking out inside because I couldn't talk to the boys about it or anything either!! (We were surprising them later) I ended up texting my friend Nora just because I was freaking out so much, and she called me right away, and I talked with her for just a few quick minutes in a whisper (while Calvin was getting his things gathered up in the other room). I was too in shock to be excited--I was almost upset! This was not what we had planned on!! A girl doesn't belong in our family!! I didn't even know what to think!
At the soccer game two other close friends texted (they knew I was going to be having the ultrasound that day and were wondering how it went)--and I ended up telling them it was a girl and that I was freaking out about it, haha. But they were obviously super excited for us, and telling them helped me get a little more excited about it too.
After the soccer games, we had planned to have family over to do a simple little gender reveal. I had done a little bigger reveal for Hudson, but we were assuming this would be another boy, so we decided just to keep it simple. No decorations or treats--just two cannons for the boys to shoot outside for everyone to see. I had bought the cannons the day before at Hobby Lobby, and since we didn't know the gender yet, I bought one set of each (both blue and pink). I seriously almost only bought the blue and didn't bother buying the pink, because I figured it was for sure a boy and we wouldn't need the pink one. But I ended up buying both, just in case, and I guess it's a good thing I did. ;)
We had our whole family line up in front of our garage, while my mom, Curt's parents, and Chad & Lisa & the girls looked on. (And Allie and Rachel were on FaceTime with my mom & Karli holding the phones for them to see.) We had Tucker & Calvin shoot the cannons, and it worked out perfectly! .....And everyone was SO surprised.....!!
Video of the initial reaction:
The aftermath:
The boys were set on it being a boy, so they were SUPER surprised and not very excited, haha. The grandmas, however, were EXTREMELY excited!! I love how both my mom & Curt's mom ran up and were jumping with excitement, haha. I love to watch these videos, because I still can't believe it. I still can't believe there's pink confetti that comes out--I can't believe we're going to have a GIRL!!!!!
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To be honest, it has been a harder adjustment than I thought it would be--getting used to the idea of it being a girl. I was fully prepared and planning on having another boy, and this surprise completely threw me off! I feel like I've had to go through some grieving--grieving the loss of my "boy mom" title, and the idea of our "all boy family." I'm obviously very excited to have a girl, but I've realized that the way I've come to define myself and our family is by the fact that we have all boys...and I just have no idea how a little girl is going to fit in! I look at families with all boys--the people I used to identify myself with--and I'm almost sad at times to think that that won't be us anymore.
However, with all of that being said, knowing that it's a girl also brings me a lot of peace. Before, the thought of having another baby--and thinking that it would probably just be another boy--almost felt like we'd just be adding flame to the fire of craziness in our family. I struggled with wondering why we felt so prompted to have another baby, when our family was already wild enough and I felt maxed out as it was. But now that we know it's a girl seems to make everything make more sense. The Lord knew that we needed a little girl in our family--and we were so far from thinking that would ever happen, that we needed some strong promptings to get us to get pregnant again. And I feel like it's kind of a tender mercy--to be blessed with a little girl after having four amazing--but crazy--boys. (Not that we expect her to be calm and quiet...we fully expect her to still just add to the craziness haha.)
I had a fleeting, but sweet moment one day a few weeks after the ultrasound. I walked past the ultrasound pictures on our refrigerator, and just like I had done a million times, I stopped to look at them and wondered, "is it REALLY a girl? is this really going to happen?" And after those thoughts went through my mind, I immediately had a sweet, peaceful feeling wash over me, with the thought that YES, it really is a girl, and it's how the Lord intends it to be. And that she will be a blessing to our family.
So even though I'm nervous to see how everything works out, and nervous to see how she fits in and how we'll handle raising a girl, I'm so grateful for the opportunity we have to add a little girl to our family. I'm grateful that I will have a DAUGHTER. Writing that out brings tears to my eyes. I never thought I would have a daughter of my own. What a blessing. I'm so grateful we took a leap of faith and followed those promptings to get pregnant again.
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The boys are still not crazy about the idea of it being a girl, but they're getting used to it. And I'm sure as soon as she's born she will have them all wrapped around her little finger. Bronco said he had a dream about her the other night and that she was really, really cute. And ever since that dream, he has been really excited about having a sister and says he can't wait to meet her. Love that kid.
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Now we just need to figure out what on earth we're going to name her. I've always gravitated towards boy names--I've never really had any favorite girl names. And the girl names Curt has occasionally mentioned/had in mind just don't feel right. We've pretty much only ever talked about boy names, since we figured we would always be just a family of boys. So we're basically starting from square one.
Since this is our one and only girl (this BETTER be our last baby!! I sure hope the Lord doesn't have any other crazy plans in store for us...!), this is our one shot at a girl name, and I feel like it has to be perfect. Beautiful and unique, but not over the top. Easy to spell and pronounce, classic and timeless. And all the rest of our boys' names are six letters and two syllables, and each start with a different letter...and so I feel some pressure (from myself, haha) to stick to that same pattern. I've read every name list available, multiple times. And Curt & I talk about it quite often, but nothing has "stuck" yet. We're starting to come up with a few favorites, but we'll see what happens. I seem to really like a name for a few days, and then get over it and find something different. So we'll see. Sometimes I wish babies just came with names so we didn't have to be the one to decide. ;)
I still can't believe it--but there really is a little girl inside of me,
