The Weavers

Wow, it has been so long since any blog updates! Life has been busy keeping up with my little boss, but most of all this whole experience has been so overwhelming, I'm not sure how to put it into words. Every time I sit down to start writing, I get completely paralyzed with the task ahead. In order to start blogging once again, its important to document the past 12 weeks, so I decided to post the Labor Story and then one picture from each week (not easy!), followed by a video from today of Addison talking! Going forward, I hope to keep up with weekly updates :)

THE DAY MISS ADDISON ARRIVED!

I can't believe almost three months have already passed since the day Addison was born. In some ways, it feels like it was just yesterday, and in other ways, I really can't remember life without her. I want to first start off with the labor story because I don't want to forget anything (however, I will spare you all of the medical details!).

It was the night of Wednesday, April 13, and Eric and I had just gone to dinner at Bonefish Grill. We came home and I started to feel a little "crampy". I started to notice that these cramps were accompanied by horrible back pains and were happening every 40 minutes, so I started to track these "cramps" on my iPhone contractions app. At around 10:00 p.m., I started to text my dear friend Kellie who had her sweet baby girl Avery in January, asking her what contractions felt like and she told me I was definitely labor. For some reason, I was still in a state of denial and decided to try and "sleep it off". Ha! That didn't last very long because I woke up every 30-45 minutes with awful back pains. At around 2:00 a.m., it finally hit me and I decided this was probably the early stages of labor and we would most likely be heading to the hospital soon. So, I did what every normal woman would do...jumped in the shower, blow dried my hair, and put on make-up...who wants to go to the hospital with bad hair and no make-up? Not me! At around 3:00 a.m., I woke Eric (& Cocoa) up and he too got dressed and started to pile our things into the car.

At 5:00 am, we called the doctor who told us to go ahead and go to the hospital. After that, we called our families and told them it was happening and headed to Jupiter Medical Center. It was all so surreal. We had driven to the hospital so many times for our pre-baby classes, but this time we were driving there to meet our baby!

Once we got there, the nurse put us in a temporary room and checked me out, but we had to wait for the doctor to get there and determine if I was definitely in labor and progressing before they would officially check us in and put us in a room. In the meantime, they had us walk the halls to get labor really going. At this point, every 5 minutes, I had to stop, close my eyes and grab Eric's hands because the contractions were getting very intense. The picture below was obviously not one of those moments :)

Dr. Vangilder arrived around 8:30 am, gave the official ok that labor was definitely in motion, and we checked into Birthing Suite #5.

They hooked me up to the heart and contraction monitors and the waiting process began.

At Around 10:00 a.m., they broke my water and I got the epidural (the best invention ever!). As you can see below, the contractions got a lot stronger, but I felt nothing. I had to stay in bed from this point on because with the epidural, I was a "fall risk"!

Over the next few hours, I continued to progress and time went by pretty quickly for me, as I felt no pain and Eric and I just hung out, talked, and listened to our "labor mix". Our families, who had been in the waiting room since early that morning, came in at this time to say hi.

At around 3:00 p.m., the epidural started to wear off and the doctor came back to give me a little more and then I was comfortable again. At around 4:00, everything was in place to start pushing! It all became very real when the baby nurse was starting to heat up the baby blankets at the end of the bed! I knew she would be here soon!

And then at 4:44 p.m., Addison was born!!

Nothing can describe that moment, but it made being pregnant for 9 months and giving birth seem like nothing!! Its just so amazing how God created life and the process we go through.

Holding my baby for the first time and seeing her sweet little face was so indescribable and a moment we will cherish forever!

WEEK 1

WEEK 2

WEEK 3

WEEK 4

WEEK 5

WEEK 6

WEEK 7

WEEK 8

WEEK 9

WEEK 10

WEEK 11

WEEK 12

After months of hard work and just in time before little Addison arrives, the nursery is complete! My favorite thing to do these days is to just sit in the nursery and think of all the little projects that made this room what it is today. It was such an enjoyable process and so fun to think of the different places we accumulated the pieces from, which is everywhere from chic on-line stores, to hand me down antiques, to Home Goods and even Cracker Barrel! Thank you to Caden Lane for the inspiration to our nursery, as well as Peyton Tanner for the custom painting that gave the nursery such a special touch! Now all we need is our baby!