Random Stuff from Today

As much as my exhausted mind and fingers can handle right now.

Kids got to see mom and the baby again today, Analise twice. Once with grandma and grandpa, and once when the boys got home from school. They were all excited to go and see her again. Kelson was the most excited since he overheard someone say that she looks like him. Makes him proud. He held her the most...would have held her longer if we let him, but the other kids were bugging to hold her (although they were tired of holding her after about 2 minutes). Kelson never did say "I'm done." He was just a nice brother and shared.

Got visits from my business partner, Jim & his wife Edna. Also got a quick visit from our family friend Teresa Slack. She used us to hold the baby. I don't think she really likes us, she just wants to be able to hold the baby and play with her.

Shena never did get any sleep during the day, so as I was leaving, I dropped Addie off at the nursery and asked them to keep her all night and just feed her bottles. The nurse was going to give her a strong dose of ambian to just let her sleep.

The kids went with Tia Lettie to buy a "bring home" outfit for Addelyn. Sounds like they had fun.

The kids and I stopped in at Party City and got Addelyn a big pink bottle mylar baloon, and then stopped at the flower shop to get mom a dozen roses (I'm a terrible husband...it's about the only time she gets flowers...when we have kids. She was lamenting the fact and was saying since we are done she will never get flowers again...I understand I will now take abuse from all of the female readers out there, but I had to be honest...I'm not the most romantic).

Baby & mom will be coming home tomorrow (Tuesday).

I'm losing it...can barely read the screen. Ta, ta.

Sleep Deprived

They finally brought Shena back from surgery at 1:00 am. She was feeling pretty sore, worse pain from the surgery vs. having the baby. After I got her settled, we decided I would get more rest if I went home, plus we felt bad having my mom get up with the kids to get them ready for school. So I came home and tried to sleep. It didn't work. I finally fell asleep about 3:00 and was up at 6:15.
I'm having a hard time putting together a sentence right now, so I won't say much more.

Oh, here is the Holiday Inn Express Commercial I mentioned in the long post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7kQkGDprzw&eurl

Surgery Update

Doctor just poked his head in and told me that the surgery went fine. They were hoping to use the epidural line for the surgery, but it didn't work well enough and they wound up putting her to sleep. They will be bringing her in after she recovers. I'm not sure what that means for my plans the rest of the night. I had planned on hanging around here only until she had had something to eat and was comfortable. Since they gassed her up, it might be a bit before she is able to eat. Might be a long night (expect to hear plenty of that for the next 5 months!).

No more kids for us...

They just took Shena to surgery to tie her tubes. We have thought and prayed long and hard about this, and we are done. No way to reverse this, it will be permanent when they are finished. We feel our family is complete, so there is no remorse. It's still a hard decision, though.

Another Story

As I remember things, I will add them. Long post is below the pictures, this is an addition to it. Excuse my unorganizedness.

Just before the doctor told Shena to push, I tried to move the little remote thingie on the bed (you know, it controls the bed position, the tv, and has a nurse call button). When I grabbed it I accidentally hit the nurse call button. They came over the speaker and said "Can I help you?" And I told them it was an accident, but about 3 seconds later four nurses came pouring into the room. I had to apologize because they obviously thought something bad was happening during the delivery, but it was just the idiot father who hit the wrong button.

One of those four nurses decided to hang around to help our regular nurse. At that point, the doctor announced to the nurses that we didn't know the sex of the baby so we were all in for a surprise. He then said, "When the baby gets here, I'll let you call out the sex, ok?" As he pulled her out I looked down and didn't see anything obvious in the crotch region so I blurted out "You had your little girl!" As soon as I said it I realized that I hadn't got a good look. The umbilical cord was kind of in the way...so I was thinking "Oh, crap, I hope I'm right. This would not be good for Shena's emotions if it isn't."

I also didn't mention just how good Shena did. I know the drugs helped (I can't begin to describe the difference between this delivery and the last one, when the epidural wasn't working), but she didn't complain for one second. It was a nice, smooth, relatively clean delivery.

Funny Kid Quote of the Day

Details on Delivery, Etc.

This post may ramble, so forgive me...it's for posterity's sake (in other word's I'm not writing for you), you are just invited to peek in if you want to...this post was not proof-read, please excuse typos and poor grammar.

As I'm writing this, Shena is posting pictures on her computer. If you are reading this note on Facebook and can't see the pictures, click on the link on my profile page to get to the blog, which will have the pictures on it.

A quick summary...Panthers won, we had a baby girl, then the Steelers won. Awesome.

Couldn't ask for a much better day. The labor went fine...very little pain (from what I could tell). The drugs worked, so she wasn't in much pain at all. She started shaking when it was time to deliver the baby, but the nurse said that was because her body was working hard and was getting worn out, even though she couldn't feel it. Shena looked at me once or twice like she wanted to push, but the doctor wasn't in yet, so she was good and waited. He came in, got ready and sat down then the nurse said "You are having a contraction, go ahead and push if you want to." The doctor said, "yeah, give me a good push," and then after about the count of 2 said "oh, whoa! No more pushing, no more pushing!" The baby's head was already out and Shena just about pushed her out onto the floor. Her cord was wrapped around her neck, but he was able to get it off easily. He got his fingers under her armpits and pulled her out. It took her a minute to make any noises, but nobody seemed concerned at all. As the doctor was trying to clamp the cord, Addelyn grabbed the clamp and wouldn't let go. I immediately thought of that new Holiday Inn Express commercial (I'll post a link to it later...connection is too slow here at the hospital). He finally pried it away from her, and handed me the scissors. I cut the cord and she immediately grabbed the clamp again. Her first trait demonstrating itself. She's been pretty quiet...let's hope that trait continues, too.

After the delivery, we called parents first. I then called Lettie, who was watching the kids, and told them all over her speakerphone. I heard lots of yelling, but I think most of it was Lettie. From what I've heard, Cade was more interested in watching the Steelers game than finding out the news (where'd he get that from?). She brought the kids up at about 7:00 and they got to meet their new sister. There was unanimous agreement from all three of them before hand that they wanted a little sister, so they really were excited. I'm sure it was their faith that pulled that one off, because Shena and I were seriously doubting that it was going to be a girl. Up to this point we have been calling this baby "Sera, Sera" (as in "it is what it is). The kids have been calling mom's belly that for 5 months now, and so it was pretty funny to hear all of us trying to remember to refer to Addelyn by her real name. Everyone called her the wrong thing at one point or another while we visited with her. They were all excited to hold her...even Cade, but only after the Steelers game was over. We have had a tradition in our family where the sibling(s) buy a present for the new baby and the baby has a present for each of the sibling(s) when they meet for the first time. I took the kids yesterday to find something for the baby, but we had to make it a unisex gift and I told them that we were only buying one gift, not three, so they all had to agree on something. It came down to a pair of Carolina Panthers onesies and a stuffed duck. Kelson and Analise were pulling for the duck, Cade wanted the onesies. Cade said "Ok. We need to have a vote. Whoever wants the duck, raise your hand." (Kelson and Analise raise their hand). "Whoever wants the onesie, raise their hand." (Cade raises his hand.) "Ok, so two people voted for the duck and one voted for the onesie, so we are going to get the duck, dad." I was proud of him. That is not necessarily like Cade. He doesn't like surprises and he doesn't like to give in when he has an opinion. So the kids bought a duck for the baby and were very proud of it. Addelyn brought wrapped gifts for the kids. They were white boards (pictured in Shena's post) with either a "Cars" or princesses design. The kids were excited to get them, and as you can see in the pictures, Kelson was excited to write a message to Addelyn (I love you Addelyn). He couldn't spell it, but he came up with the message himself. Cute kid.

Regarding whether this was going to be a boy or a girl, we obviously didn't know, but we didn't have any hunches either. When I was pressed, I was guessing a boy, but I was positive that Cade was a girl before he was born. When Cade was baptized in August, I was the one who confirmed him a member of the church (and for those who don't know, this involves giving a priesthood blessing, without specific verbiage...kind of like a prayer). I don't remember, but during the confirmation, Shena said that I mentioned his "brother and sisters." Shena was excited because she thought that meant that is what we were having. With all of the ultrasounds she had, I was surprised that we hadn't accidentally seen some boy or girl parts. I actually thought that I had a week or two ago. During one of the ultrasounds I was positive I saw some boy parts, but I wasn't sure. I couldn't see an umbilical cord in the same shot, so I was a little unsure. I had my fingers crossed because Shena BADLY wanted another little girl. I know she had really bad heartburn the whole pregnancy, and that was similar to her experience with Analise.

They headed home about 7:30 when Addelyn had to go to the nursery for her check up. They had done all the weighing and measuring inside the room, so as we were walking out we realized that we could see her from the Delivery waiting room as they checked her out. The kids went in there and there was another family there waiting for their baby to be born. The kids were excited to show off their new little sister. Kelson said to a grandma who was in there "Yeah, that's my little sister." We watched her for about 5 minutes while the pulled her arms out, checked her mouth took her temperature, etc. Analise kept saying "Pick me up. Me wanna see." They finally headed out the door to go to sleep about 7:45.

As for names, we appreciate all the input and suggestions. I'll make a seperate post on why some were rejected. We tried hard to give this one a name from my mom's side of the family. Cade is named after my dad and Shena's brother. Kelson is named after a family member on Shena's dad's side. Analise was named after Shena's mom's side. So we felt it only fair to use my mom's side this time. We searched the names for something we liked. We found a boy's name realtively easy, because it would be a middle name and we could then pick out another first name, kind of like we did with Kelson, that wasn't necessarily a family name. But the girl's name was harder. Shena and her sisters didn't have middle names, my sister didn't have a middle name and Analise does not have a middle name, so we didn't want to give this one a middle name either. We had to pick just one name that was not only a family name but also one that we really liked. Our first perusal over the names didn't generate anything that caught our eye. We toyed with the idea of just picking a seperate name without any family ties. That is when we opened it up to suggestion from the blog audience. I got a suggestion last week from Teresa Slack that I really liked, Adelaide, and Shena thought she liked it too. But as we got closer to birth day, Shena was having second thoughts. She was afraid that this baby would feel slighted (if it was a girl) that she didn't get a family name when everyone else did. I had looked through the names again on mom's side (on familysearch.org) and had come across a name that was pretty similar, just not necessarily as direct as we would have liked. My mom had a great aunt named Addaline. It was close to Adelaide, but we didn't like the spelling. It looked like a poorly punctuated clerical instruction, not a name. So we played with several different spellings: Adaline, Adeline, Addeline, Addalynne. We were afraid that "Adaline" would get pronounced "Aid-uh-line" instead of how we wanted to pronounce it "Add-uh-lyn" so we kept the two "d's" and changed the "line" to "lyn." There you go. Pronunciation and all...Addelyn. We like it.

The one draw back is, for the time being, she will have the same initials as Analise, but that wasn't enough to get us to pick a different name. Oh well.

After the kids left, I ran back down to the nursery to get a couple better shots of Addelyn. The only pictures I had taken up to that point she was still pretty dirty. They had cleaned her up pretty good in the nursery, so we had to get better pics for the blog.

The original plan was for Shena to get a tubal about an hour after her surgery. The nurse came in and gave her some kind of sodium nitrate to settle her stomach to get her ready for surgery. It's pretty nasty tasting and of course she couldn't have anything else to eat or drink afterwards. About 10 minutes after, the anthesiologist came in and said that there was a change of plans and that they weren't going to be able to do the surgery tonight. Some kind of emergency had tied up the operating room. Shena was a little disappointed that she had to swallow that nasty stuff for nothing, now. They decided to move her to the regular rooms and get her settled for the night. The nurse came in and asked her if she would like something to eat and said about all I have to offer you is a cold sandwich. She hadn't eaten in about 23 hours, so she didn't really care. As the nurse was taking care of a few other things, filling out paperwork and such, the nurse from labor and delivery came running back in the room "You haven't eaten have you? Drink anything? The room opened back up and they want to get you taken care of tonight."

So that is where we stand right now. They got her dressed and ready to take her down to the OR...and we are sitting here waiting for them to come in and tell her whether she has to take that nasty stuff again. It's been over an hour since she took it last time and they might make her do it again. We'll see.

Addelyn Arellano

Little Girl - 6:01 pm - 5 lbs. 14 oz - 19.25'' long

Epidural worked beautifully, Dr. said ok, give me a push...no, wait stop! And the baby was there.

Steelers game went to half time at about 5:55, I turned off the TV and the nurse called the doctor...Shena was ready to push by the time he got here, but she waited until he said to.

More later.

Countdown Begins...

Nurse just checked again. She's @ 6 & 90%. Look for news in the next hour or so...might be pretty dang close by then.

Progressing

Nurse just checked Shena. She's 4 & 80%. Don't ask me to explain what that means, because if you don't know, I'm not going to tell you. This is a family blog.

As I was getting ready to type this note, Troy Polamalu made an INCREDIBLE interception in the Steelers game. Shena looked at me and said "We are not naming this baby Polamalu." I don't know...I kinda like Polly for a boy's name (better than Malu, right?). I offered "Troy" and she didn't like that either.

Just Resting

Nothing exciting to report. Shena's sleeping, letting the drugs do their work. A lady came in to get everything ready for the delivery...utensils, baby lights, etc. Otherwise, I'm just watching the game...still trying to pin down a boy name. We think we've got one...but it's a little too "popular" for me...we'll see what happens.

Pitocin & Epidural

Contractions are going regularly, but she wasn't progressing as quick as they wanted, so they added pitocin to the IV at about 2:00. Shena then ordered her epidural as the nurse was putting the pitocin in just in case it goes quick. Last time the epidural wasn't done properly and she felt everything during labor, and she didn't want to go through that again. Plus, if she is going to get her tubal afterwards, having the epidural will make things go easier.

He came in for the epidural about 2:20, just as the Panthers were driving for the final 1st half touchdown. He and I were joking about the game and Shena's labor as he was sticking the epidural in. She didn't think it was very funny. I will post this now, and if the epidural doesn't wind up working right she will be ticked, but he was watching the game almost as much as I was while he was getting her set up on it. Of course he paid attention while he was actually sticking her, but the rest of the time, he had his eye on the game.

About 15 minutes after the epidural, she was out like a light. Mumbling something about wishing there was such a thing as a walking epidural for the last tri-mester of pregnancy.

It's half time of the Panther's game 21-16 Panther's over the winless Detroit Lions. Sad.

I told Shena that we've got to get a win here because I don't want to have mixed emotions about today. Of course it's a great day that we will be having the baby, but I don't want the bad memory of a loss to a winless team! Ha!

Water Has Been Broken

Shena & I debated names for an hour...from 11:30 to 12:30. We had just settled on a girl's name (I'll give details on how this process went later...after we've announced the birth, the sex and the name of the baby) when the doctor came in to break her water. He broke it about 12:40 and said he would try to get the baby to come out at halftime of the Steelers game.

We also discussed the "tubal" that will probably take place after the baby is born. As we've mentioned before, this is our last child, so we are taking the steps necessary to make it permanent and definite.

They were also kind enough to bring me a plate of lunch. It was hospital food, but the dessert was banana pudding, which is one of my all time favorite desserts, and it wasn't too bad. Other items: one piece of fried chicken, some kraut looking stuff, baked beans, corn bread. It will hold me over until this evening anyway.

In Our Room

We're into our room. They moved us from the triage room (where we first arrived) to the labor and delivery room and got Shena checked in about 11:00 am. We are still working out names. This may wind up being a last minute decision. Who knows, maybe the kid comes home without a name and just goes by "Sera, Sera" for the rest of it's life regardless of it's sex. We did however have a conversation regarding an ex-flame of Shena's. His birthday is today so I suggested that if it's a boy we name him after her ex. She is going to kill me for writing this, and I hope I don't tick him off (I believe he or his wife checks this blog on occasion), but she said "I really never liked that name much." I think what she was saying was, "I liked this guy, and it's not like I didn't like him because of his name, but I don't know that I like that name for my children." Either way, it was fun to bug her about it. Anybody who knows us as a couple know that we have no problem discussing past boyfriends/girlfriends. There is not even a twinge of jealousy in me when I Shena talks about ex's, so it was a funny conversation.

Baby's Birthday...Probably Today

We came to the hospital this morning at 9:00 am. Nurse called the doctor and the doctor said, no more monkeys...wait, nevermind scratch that. The doctor said we had 2 options...1 was to have another ultrasound to check the fluids. If they were ok, she could go home, or #2 was to go ahead and break her water and have the baby today.

Shena thought about it for about .02534 (I counted) seconds and then said "I'm ready to have a baby, thank you." She has been really miserable the last 3 days...pressure, contractions, back pain, etc.

They will be checking her in in just a few minutes. Get ready for play by play. I'm just hoping this baby gets here either before the Panthers' game starts at 1:00 or waits until after the Steelers' game ends at around 7:30 or so. Otherwise I may not be a very helpful coach.

(One of) My Wife's Addiction

So we were cleaning the house today (nesting as they call it) getting ready for the baby. At least we took the time to do it. We have been procrastinating this, didn't really feel the urgency, until we had our close call last week.

Anyway, Shena has this little corner of the couch where she sits, and next to her there are some built in shelves and an open space down below the shelves. We pulled the couch back to vacuum underneath it and I noticed the pile of stuff that had accumulated there. I started pulling stuff out and counted about 25 skeins of yarn. I also found 6 different "knitting bags," as she calls them, stuffed down in this corner. It took us 20 minutes to get through the pile and roll up and unknot (that's a word, right?) the mess of skeins. In the mean time, we also found 3 different, unfinished projects. She has a problem. She even commented "I'm as bad as my sister." If you know of a way to break this addiction let me know (I've heard that juice & Vitamin C works for cigarettes...maybe it would work for this, too).

Still Incubating

We had another visit to the doctor today. Fluids have dropped again, from 23rd to 16th percentile, but apparently it's not enough for Shena's doctor to induce. He is on call all weekend, though, and hinted that if she is having a lot of contractions on Sunday, she should probably come in and have her fluids checked again (at the hospital). If Shena doesn't go into labor this weekend, he will probably not get to deliver the baby (he's done all of our other 3). After this weekend, he is not on call until after Thanksgiving week.

But he also said that if she doesn't have any problems, she will probably make it another week. We'll see what the next 48 hours bring. Stay tuned. We'll keep you up to date.

In other news, I had one of those indoor waterfalls in my office today. Kinda like the ones that are meant to relax you. Problem is, it wasn't supposed to be there, and it was getting water all over my desk, files and leather couch...so it wasn't so relaxing.

It was a rainy day today, slightly heavy at times, and there is a drain outside my wall that was partly plugged up. The water pooled near the down spout and found it's way through some holes in the room (there are a lot of them there, apparently). It was quite the mess. I was running up and down the halls of the building trying to track down a mop and trying to get somebody from the leasing office to come in and see just how bad it was. I knew they would think I was exaggerating, but you can ask anyone who saw it...it was coming down. I'm just glad I was there when it started. I was about to head out for lunch, when I started reading an e-mail and so I wound up staying an extra 10 minutes. If I had walked out I very well may have had a ruined couch, shorted out laptop and water out in our lobby area. It was coming down that fast.

I wound up moving all my furniture out of that corner of the office and will probably leave it like that until they tell me it's fixed. Weatherman calls for more rain tonight and tomorrow, so it may be an interesting day of work tomorrow.


Funny Kid Quote of the Day
Kelson: Mom, you know what? Daddy's and mommy's sleep together because monsters can't eat two heads at the same time.

Kelson's Oral Surgery

After finding out Monday that all was ok with baby, we decided to try to go ahead with Kelson's surgery today. Thankfully they still had his original appointment available. We had to be there at 7:45am. Kelson was just as calm as ever. We weren't allowed to go back with him for prep or anything. Kelson simply kissed us and walked with the nurse. What a brave little boy! We would probably have to knock Cade out just to get him to leave the house for such an ordeal. The entire procedure took less than 30 minutes. They told us that there was a really good chance that they would have to start an IV and put him under sedation. Cheeto had stepped out to get something out of the car when the nurse came and asked for us to go to recovery. She said Kelson is one of the bravest little guys they had ever worked on. He did it all without sedation. They gave him a shot of novocaine and he didn't even flinch. He was sitting up and just waiting for me when I saw him. They had to pull out his two front baby teeth and then made an incision to cut out the extra teeth. He has a few dissolvable stitches which should fall out within a couple of days. The surgeon said it was a good thing we did it as soon as we did because the extra teeth had started to root themselves to the baby teeth which would have caused more problems later. Kelson will be without front teeth for almost a year. Good news is that his adult front teeth are aligned correctly and should come in perfectly. He is a bit embarrassed that his front toothless. He was happy to hear that he got to leave 4 teeth under his pillow for the tooth fairy. He might break her bank tonight!

We have him home and he is eating his "special" Spiderman popcicles. Daddy went and got him Kung Fu Panda to watch. He is happy and comfortable. We are enjoying a lazy day. It's nice that it's cold and dreary outside. I like lazy days like this. We are so proud of our Kelson. He truly is an angel child to have gone through so much the past month without one single complaint!

I was shocked to see how big the teeth the pulled out were.
Where was he keeping all these teeth in his little mouth?

FHE

Last night we had FHE at G'ma's and Papa's house. Well, we usually do, but last night they prepared the lesson. We had to do before dinner because part of it took place outside and it would dark and cold soon. Too bad, Dad had to miss it. What a fun time the kids had! It will be one I hope they will remember. Papa started out by giving them treasure maps. He made one for each one of them to carry. He then gave them a little garden shovel so they could dig up their treasure.
Cade went first and found his immediately. Analise went second and had to dig a bit and get some extra help. Kelson found his easily as well. Each of them found these "diamonds" (as they called them). Each of them were different colors. They truly felt they found a treasure.

We then went inside to talk about "real" treasures. This took some convincing. G'ma took over with the lesson and led them in the right direction to figure out what a real treasure is- that is nothing you can buy or keep on earth. She then showed them her scriptures and taught them that Heavenly Father has given us a great treasure map, the scriptures, and just like digging for the "diamonds" we need to dig into the scriptures and read about how we can return with our Heavenly Father and families forever.
My hope is that they will look at these stones they got and remember this important lesson. Cade has really been into monetary items lately. He seems to never be happy with what he has and believes that he just has this one more thing then it will make him happy. Aren't so many of us like this? I hope this important lesson will stay with them forever. Thanks for the great lesson Papa and G'ma!




sorry if the video makes you sick- it was hard to film and walk steady!

No Action Today

We got back from the doctor's a little bit ago. The patch seems to be working and the fluids are even up just a little bit from Friday, so nothing exciting to report for now. More tests on Thursday...but at this point it looks like we may wind up going full term after all.

The frustrating thing will be going week by week. But I guess that is what we have gone through with all the others, too. No biggie.

Word up.