We are moving on up....

....to the West Coast!

Today was our pre-inspection to move out of our current home. We got very lucky and the guy found nothing obviously wrong with the house. However, he didn't look very closely so I called maintenance to fix a few things and the rest I will have my checkbook out just in case! I am hoping I just think more is wrong then what they really care about. We ended up getting lucky and the carpets are so old that they will be replaced when we move out, so we do not have to clean the carpets or do flea/tick treatments after all. That saves us a ton of money right there. I am tempted to pay someone to clean the house now or just pay the opt-out fee since we're saving so much on the carpeting. Our backyard & grass passed muster too, which surprised me until I read that when we moved in they had marked our grass as dead. (I don't recall it being dead, but again not going to argue.)

Everything is falling into place and I can hardly believe that in a little over 2 weeks we'll be saying farewell to Hawaii and hello to Washington State. It's a new adventure! I will miss so many things about Hawaii and so many friends. PCSing is never easy, but I know we'll make it and hopefully I can easily make many more new friends and find tons to love about the West Coast.

Wordless Wednesday

Photos by Brenda Van Photos. Matthew was 7 days old when these were taken.

Love

Blogger still will not let me upload pictures...I am terribly sorry. I will have the birth story with pictures up as soon as it is working again.

1. How long have you and your significant other been together?
Avery and I have been together since 2007.

2. How did you meet? {What's your "love" story?}
We met in Hawaii. He had just arrived a few weeks prior to begin a tour of duty in Hawaii and I came out for my college spring break to visit a friend. Avery was that person’s roommate. I programmed my phone number into Avery’s phone and we went from there.

3. If married, how long have you been married? If not, is this the guy you hope to marry? {do tell}

We are married. We were married in a civil ceremony on May 28, 2008 and then in the Catholic Church on December 28, 2008. We celebrate the May anniversary and privately acknowledge the December anniversary.

4. If you are married, where did you get married at? Big or small wedding? If not, where would you like to get married? And will it be big or small?
We got married in Hawaii. It was a small and intimate wedding. (I’d love to renew our vows one day and have a bigger celebration with more of our family and friends there.)

5. Do you have any nick-names that you call one another? Do share!
We call each other babe or baby. We also use hubby and wifey respectively.

6. Name 3 things you love most about your honey.

1. I never question how he feels about me. He always ensures I know I am thought of, appreciated and loved.

2. He always thinks I am beautiful and I actually believe him.

3. How hard he works at his job and at home.

7. Tell us how he proposed? Or your ideal proposal?
He proposed over the phone and told me that he was on one knee even though I couldn’t see him. He proposed again a few months later in his barracks room after giving me roses and chocolates. It was simple, but so sweet.

8. Is he a flowers and teddy bear kind of guy for v-day, or strawberries, champagne, and rose petals?
He’s a flowers kind of guy for Valentine’s Day and I like it that way.

9. Are you a sunset dinner on the beach kind of girl, or pop a movie in and relax on the couch?
Can I say both? Because we do both.

10. Tell us one thing you'd like to do with your significant one day. If you could do anything? Go anywhere?
I want to go on a belated honeymoon someday. We always talk about it and never do it. Obviously now that we’ve just had our baby, this will have to wait awhile again. But that’s okay.

11. Tell us what you plan on doing on this Valentine's Day.
Avery is/will be on an underway, so I am planning to spend the day with my baby boy. My son will “take” me out for dinner and perhaps some shopping during the day. ;-) When Avery gets back we’ll celebrate the holiday belatedly.

12. Are you asking for anything this Valentine's day?
I usually do not ask for anything, but this year I hinted about a purse I’d like.

13. Give us one piece of advice of keeping a relationship strong and full of love.

Remember that you are never alone and that there is always someone in your corner when you are with the one you love. (This is huge for me, personally.)

14. Show us a picture of what love means to you.

Due to blogger having issues, I cannot. Hopefully a photo can appear again soon.

Matthew's Birth Story

Okay...here it finally is! Warning: long and detailed.

On January 22nd, I went in for a scheduled induction, because I was over 41 weeks and had made no progress towards labor. The started by giving me Cervadil, which is a medication that helps you dilate. In my case, it also made me contract irregularly. They hurt but were not unbearable.

Still smiling, because the cervadil had been in only a few hours.

Once the Cervadil was in, I just got to wait around. I took a nap for awhile, because they told me I should get some sleep.  When I woke up that's when I noticed the contractions and honestly, it just felt like a bad back ache.  The pain was gradually getting worse though. There seemed to be a lot of uncertainty on whether I could eat or not. At first it was a clear liquid diet and I really appreciated the food. Then they said I could have regular food. So Avery went and got me some junk food (it was what I wanted and no I don't care if you disagree with it), unfortunately by time he got back they had decided I couldn't eat regular food, grr!  I tried again to sleep and Avery read to me from a book that I can't even remember to try and distract me from the pain. It worked and I was thankful he read to me. It helped me stay calm.  Our Doula, Keri, came to check on me every few hours too.
After 12 hours (at around 1am on January 23rd) they removed the cervadil and checked me. I was still only 1 cm dilated. At this point, I cried my eyes out, because I was in pain and irritated that the induction wasn't going as well as we were hoping. The medical team re-grouped, gave me a shot of fentanyl and put in a catheter to see if it could help me dilate more. It took the residents 3 tries to get it in and the fentanyl lasted about 10 minutes.  I also started bleeding and I was a bit scared, but it was normal they said. The contractions got worse and I couldn't lay still, I just kept getting up all night, thinking I had to use the restroom, until 3:30am when they checked me again, a little progress had been made and they gave me more fentanyl. This time it worked for about 3.5 hours until my ob/gyn arrived to check on me at 7am. He told me to get the epidural at that point and I did. The epidural felt fine going in and I was so happy to get it. (Unfortunately, this started the long process of trying to figure out why I was still feeling the contractions despite the epidural....I had what they called a "window" which means an area where the meds just can't seem to hit.  They were very nice though and kept giving me more meds & boosters to try and get it to work.)  Through out the day, my family and friends were texting, wondering how I was doing. I am so thankful for my cousin's wife, my Mom, and my friend Becky for keeping people informed as I was not in the mood to be on Facebook.  At 1pm, they removed the catheter and were able to finally start the pitocin. Our doula came to help me get through the end of it, because due to that window I was in a ton of pain. The doula and Avery had to hold my hands to get me through the contractions. I remember Keri telling me to try and relax every muscle in the short break between contractions so I'd have energy to push. I was crying to get through them at that point. At 3pm, they discovered my water had broken on its own and I hadn't realized, because I couldn't feel anything. My doctor was called and at 3:30pm I started to push. At 4:12pm HST on January 23rd, Matthew Orson entered the world. He looked perfect! (I am guessing due to him being overdue! He wanted to stay in longer just to look good for us. Hahaha!!) They laid him on me while I was stitched up.  Despite reading that epidurals can make babies tired, he was not. He was very alert and breastfed with no problems. After the stitching (which took awhile and scared the medical student out of Ob/gyn practice, LOL!), they took Matthew to get cleaned up and got me ready to go to the post-partum floor. As they were moving me I suddenly felt very ill. I'd had so much medication that my stomach got upset. I remember them asking me to try and move my legs...I couldn't. So the nurses did the moving for me. Once I got upstairs, my Mom came and we waited for them to bring Matthew up from the nursery. I missed him! The awe of having him was intense...I just stared at him for hours until exhaustion took over. We stayed in the hospital 2 nights, because he had mild jaundice.

His first picture!

First family photo!

He was 8 lbs. 3.8 oz. and was 21.5" long.

Leaving the hospital on January 25th.

Hanging out at home in his swing.

He will be 3 weeks old on Monday. I can't believe how quickly the time is passing, which is so cliche and I can't believe I am saying that. We move to Bangor in just a few weeks, which I also can't believe that our time in Hawaii is so quickly coming to an end.

In case you weren't aware....

My miracle was born after I had to be induced and then be in labor for over 24 hours. (Yeah it sucked and my epidural didn't work completely, but oh well.) The birth story is for another time when I actually feel like typing it out.

I'd add pictures, but blogger picture upload isn't working for me tonight. Boo!

Stay tuned for more blogging soon.