Lincoln Overload

Here are some of my favorite pictures of the last week to give you your Lincoln fill.

We have already caught several smiles from him on camera. This is the first one we got.

This was after he nursed for the first time. We were both pretty excited about it.

They said he breathed easier on his stomach, so we often walked into the nursery and found him in a cute little belly ball.

Jeff is so sweet with our new babies. And with our old babies.

He spent a few days under the lights. My favorite part of this is that they stuck velcro to the sides of his head so those sunglasses would stay over his eyes.

Abe just so happened to come to town the weekend after Lincoln was born, so Lincoln got his first visitors!

Benji stopped by too.

That evening the girls snuck away for a baby visit while the boys stayed home and watched the Super Bowl.

We gave my mom a break from the wilder boys to visit the milder boy.

Looking at that IV still grosses me out. Glad that thing is gone now!

We got to start putting clothes on him once he was about a week old.

Then they put this lovely beanie on his head that stuck to the velcro on his face and kept falling all the way over his eyes.

The NICU is so cute to make the quarantine as friendly as possible. One day we came in and saw they had made him a little banner with his name.

They let us bathe him one night. I was too nervous to scrub him down, so I let Jeff do the dirty work while I took the duty of photographer.

Surprise! One morning before I got a good look at Lincoln for the day, I asked the nurse if they had to feed him through a feeding tube the night before. The nurse said, "No. In fact, we took his feeding tube out last night. And his oxygen!"

It was such an exciting surprise to get to see our little guy's un-tubed face. They said he ripped his oxygen tube out on his own, so they just decided to keep it off. He ended up not needing it the whole night.

He's starting to look like a real newborn! Now he just needs to keep remembering to breathe so he can finally meet his brothers!

Tender Mercies of Lincoln

As I was sitting in the hospital bed in shock that I was in labor, all the baby to-dos we had miraculously gotten done five weeks ahead of schedule flashed through my mind. The way things worked out, you would have thought we knew all along Lincoln was going to appear an entire month early.

The first thing I thought of was his nursery. After staring at the same nursery decor for the first two boys, I thought it was time to update the look for boy number three. I started the process as soon as I found out we were having another boy. My one problem was that Jeff had offered to paint the crib for me, and my design ideas were not flowing without the visual of the finished crib in the room.

After a little nagging, Jeff buckled down and committed to have the crib painted by my birthday. Sanding, priming and painting all those slats turned out to be more time consuming than what Jeff may have otherwise agreed to, but with the help of Eli, they got the job done with a couple of days to spare.

My nursery vision came together even more perfectly than I imagined. Jeff and I found ourselves sitting in this room every evening after putting the boys to bed, longing for a new little baby to snuggle.

A couple days after the nursery was finished, I walked past it and thought, "Why the heck did I get that done so early? Now I have a whole month with nothing to do." It seemed odd to have everything perfectly in place with my due date still so far in the future. I brushed it off as nesting energy encouraging me to get everything done before I got too big and tired to care about decorating.

Along with finishing the nursery, I also deep cleaned the entire house. I even vacuumed the couch, folks -- with the help of a couple suction-happy boys.

I organized the pantry, the fridge, the freezer, every closet in the house, every cabinet in the house. I washed bottles, had all the baby clothes washed, folded and organized. This even went so far as to organizing all the files on my computer. We spent every Saturday in January with an organization/cleaning to-do list and literally got every inch of our home in perfect order with the last items of organization crossed off the weekend before Lincoln was born.

What I once brushed off as nesting has now become clear that it was more than a nesting urge. I feel like I was prompted to get all those things done to make the transition of having a preemie baby easier. It was such a relief to come home from the hospital to a house that had no big to-dos to worry about. It was calming to come home to a nursery that was perfectly in place so we could focus all our energy on getting Lincoln ready to come home instead of working on getting the house ready for Lincoln.

Our guest room that is usually an explosion of curtain materials and shipping supplies had miraculously been cleaned the weekend before so it was ready for Jeff's parents to stay with us. I had oddly stockpiled all the necessary post delivery items that I never thought of ahead of time with my first two pregnancies. I had my hospital bag packed FIVE WEEKS EARLY! What? Everything you could ever imagine to be prepared for a baby, I had done it. And I had done it with what I thought was five weeks to spare. As I did each of these things I kept thinking, "This seems early to be doing this, but I'll just do it anyway."

There were a few other things that perfectly fell into place the week of baby's arrival:

Eli had a dental procedure that I had been putting off for months. I made a goal to get it done before I had the baby. His original appointment had been scheduled for Thursday, January 29th, but it got changed last minute to Monday, January 26th. Lincoln was born on Wednesday, and we would not have made it to Eli's appointment had it not happened to have been rescheduled.

Jeff was working on our taxes the evening before I went into labor. I had spent months stewing over how much we would owe on our taxes since we had to pay quite a bit last year because of my curtain business. I was anticipating it would be the same this year. After filling out all the forms, we found we only owed $20-$30 this year which was much less than I had been planning on. Jeff and I sat in the kitchen Tuesday night looking over our finances and realized without the extra expense of taxes, we had enough money to pay for the baby a month ahead of schedule.

We had to wait until the new year to have a baby because our insurance plan last year wasn't very pregnancy friendly. If we would have gotten pregnant the first month we started trying, we would have had Lincoln on December 28th-31st which would have fallen under last year's insurance plan and we would have owed thousands more for our hospital stay than what we ended up paying.

My mom and Jeff's parents were able to free up their schedules the weeks after Lincoln was born to help with Eli and Carson so we have had no trouble shuffling back and forth to the hospital.

It blows me away to see how everything worked out completely perfectly. We could not have planned the way everything worked out better, other than the whole baby coming 5 weeks early part. We have felt so blessed and seen how we were guided to do certain things which have made this whole baby-in-the-NICU experience bearable. This cute face helps make everything bearable too.

The last tender mercy happened yesterday. On Friday we got the OK for Lincoln to come home on Sunday. We were so excited our NICU stay had come to an end, and so anxious for Lincoln to meet his brothers.

On Friday night, Carson woke up gasping for air and coughing his head off. He was up for a half hour clearly sick and wheezy. I started freaking out thinking of bringing itsy bitsy Lincoln home to a sick house with his weak, preemie lungs. I stayed up for a while after Carson's cough attack trying to decide what to do. Maybe I would have to stay at my mom's with Lincoln while the boys got better. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if something minor happened where Lincoln ended up needing to stay in the NICU for a few extra days to give us some time to get everyone well at home.

Saturday morning we went in to see Lincoln and found out he had two "episodes" Friday night. An "episode" is when he essentially forgets to breathe and has to be startled awake. Freaky.

Every time he has an episode, it postpones his coming home schedule by 5 days. I was oddly excited to hear this news and kind of felt like it was an answer to my prayers because I was so worried Lincoln was going to come home and get RSV from his sick brothers. I'd rather have him safe and monitored at the hospital than bring him home and get him sick and end up back in the hospital in a week or two.

So Lincoln is doing well. He's off oxygen. Off his feeding tube. Nursing well. His only issue is his episodes which are a little freaky, but the doctor and nurses say it's pretty typical in preemie babies and it's just a matter of giving his brain time to mature and remember to breathe regularly.

This whole experience has reminded me that I have a loving Heavenly Father who watches over me and my family and cares about all the details of my life. We feel so blessed and can't help but recognize the divine help we have received over the last few months. Now if we could just simultaneously get a certain baby home while his brothers are well, we'd be all set!

35 Weeks

The night of January 27, 2015 I unsuspectingly brushed my teeth as I got ready to go to bed. I stared at the way I had braided my hair that day and thought, "I hope my hair is like this the night I go into labor. This is good labor hair." And then I went to bed.

At 1:30 AM, I woke up to a little gush. "Oh. I have to go to the bathroom." I thought as I got out of bed. But then it donned on me that I don't typically leak when I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night so I began to become suspicious. I became even more suspicious when I kept leaking even after emptying my bladder. I groggily considered the possibility that my water had broken which led me to audibly chant, "Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh." until I could come to grips with the situation long enough to explain my predicament to Jeff.

I finally swung the bathroom door open, stared at Jeff in denial and tried to convince myself and him that my water had, in fact, begun to leak. The shock of unexpectedly and prematurely being in labor left me rambling loud enough to wake Eli up. As I was debating with Jeff whether or not I needed to call my mom, Eli called from his room, "Go back to bed you guys! I'm trying to sleep!"

We quieted down per Eli's request as we shuffled through the house in an unsuccessful attempt to accept the idea of having a baby 5 weeks before we anticipated. The shuffling around the house led to more gushes of water which gave me the confidence to wake my mom with the news so she could work on getting to our house to watch the boys.

My labor with Carson was so fast, and I anticipated a similar experience with this baby. After getting as much packed and prepared for my mom as my distracted brain could handle, I sat on the couch and waited for her arrival. I noticed I wasn't having contractions and began to doubt my labor for the hundredth time.

My mom arrived looking just as unconvinced as we were that I would really be birthing a baby in the next 24 hours. She snapped some pictures of us and then sent us on our way.

We got to the hospital and I was barely leaking and not in any pain. The nurse checked me and found I was not dilated or effaced and the first test she gave me to check to see if my water had broken came back inconclusive. They did a more specific test to check my water and 20 minutes later confirmed that it had broken and I was officially admitted.

At my doctor's appointment the Friday before, the doctor offered to test me for Strep B, but I had Carson with me, so I decided to put it off until my appointment the following week in the hopes that I could protect my modesty for a little bit longer and find a babysitter for my boys for the rest of my weekly and progressively invasive appointments. My favorite joke of the morning was that I went into labor to avoid the dreaded Strep B test.

Only problem is, since I didn't get my Strep B test, they had to give me the treatment for it just in case I had it which turned out to be one of the more painful parts of my whole labor. I got three doses of penicillin. The first one I didn't notice, but I was talking to my mom on the phone for the second one and had to hang up because my hand felt like it was being electrocuted. The nurse told me my veins were sore from the first dose and that makes the second and third doses really uncomfortable.

They immediately got me on a high dose of Pitocin, hoping to get contractions started. It was super slow going at first. I was barely progressing and not feeling any contractions for the first two hours. As soon as the contractions started to become noticeable the anesthesiologist had arrived for the day and my doctor gave the okay for me to get an epidural.

The two worst parts of labor for me have proven yet again to be getting the IV and getting the epidural (plus the extra curve ball of the penicillin through my IV this time around). As soon as the anesthesiologist walked in I got all clammy and hyperventilate-y. He tried to be friendly with me and chat, but I ignored him for fear of accidentally seeing a needle or chainsaw or whatever other horrific tools he uses to remove my delivery pains.

The color drained from my face as they got me in curled back position, feeling completely vulnerable and unwelcome to the oncoming jabs at my back. In an effort to distract me from the surgical equipment being thrust into me, my nurse tried to talk to me. I hate this tactic. When I am faced with a needle, I can't help but visualize the nastiness of it going into me. *Barf* It's just what I do. And nurses try so hard to get me to not think about it, but that just makes me mad because then I have to worry about answering their silly questions to distract me while very specific and detailed images of needles jabbing through skin flash through my head. I just want to visualize my worst fear in peace instead of worrying about being nice and small talking with someone who is politely trying to ease my fears.

"What do you like to do?" The nurse asked.
"I...like...to...sew? I have a curtain business. And I have a  million orders in right now because I wasn't expecting to go into labor tonight." I spit out through clenched teeth.
"Oh really? I actually need some curtains. I just moved into a new house..." She proceeded to tell me how she needs curtains and asked if it was something I could do.

By the time my epidural was in place, I had given my nurse my name, number and email address so that she could contact me about making curtains for her. I love that I made a sales pitch mid epidural insertion and I'm anxious to see if she will follow through with that or if her making me make a sales pitch was her expert way of successfully distracting me from the horror of the biggest needle of all time entering my back.

The nurse came in to check on to see if the epidural was working and she said, "Have you delivered here before?"
"Yeah. I had my last baby here."
"Oh you did? The anesthesiologist thought he remembered you."

Uuuuuummmmmmmmm. I know I'm dramatic when faced with my worst fear, but out of all the people he sees I was extreme enough for him to remember me THREE YEARS LATER?!? What's funny is, when I had Carson I remember asking him if I was his worst patient ever and he didn't exactly say no. I asked him again this time and he definitely implied the answer was still yes.

With the epidural successfully in place, one of us was finally able to get some rest.

I started progressing about a centimeter every hour. I kept hearing my doctor calling my nurse on the phone and asking about my progress. The nurse eventually admitted that my doctor was out playing golf and was checking in between each hole to see if he needed to leave. Ha.

My doctor came in to check on me after I so kindly let him finish his golf game. I was an eight. He left and 20 minutes later I had a big contraction and felt the baby move down. It was the weirdest thing. My whole stomach shifted and I felt like he was on the verge of slipping out. We called the nurse in and found I was complete and ready to push.

My whole labor had a hint of nervousness and worry to it. With Eli and Carson it was all excitement because I was so ready to have them and I knew they were ready to come out. I didn't have the fear that something would be wrong with them when they were born. With this one, it was hard to be excited because he was coming so early, so there was the underlying worry throughout my labor of how he would react to the outside world once he got here.

Luckily I had spent the morning mentally preparing for baby to be rushed off to the NICU upon his arrival, and I anticipated he would spend some time there to grow bigger and stronger.

It took one set of pushing to get 5 pound 7 ounce Lincoln Blair Excell here, and he came out screaming! I was encouraged to hear him cry because I knew from having Eli that crying was a good sign his lungs were working properly. He looked really great at first. His color was good, he was pretty big for his age and his lungs seemed to be working properly, so they let me hold him.

While I was holding him he began grunting and started having a hard time breathing.

 He was taken to the NICU to get everything checked out.

His breathing wasn't getting better on its own, so they had to give him a breathing treatment and put him on oxygen.

Then they had to give him an IV to sustain him until he could begin feedings.

He was so teeny tiny and pliable. Ha. I love his little arm here.

Eli and Carson aren't allowed to visit Lincoln in the NICU, so they sent us home with a cute little book of pictures to take home to the boys.

In between trips to the NICU we had our "candlelight dinner." Minus the candles. Good news. The food wasn't as bad as I remembered and I actually enjoyed most of my meals at the hospital.

Then it was back to check on our little guy.

The whole first day of Lincoln's life I was really worried about his purple feet. I thought they were purple because he wasn't getting enough oxygen. It took me a whole day to realize they were just purple from when they inked his feet for his footprints right after he was born. Whew!

The nurses are so good to let us do as much as we can for Lincoln while we're there. They let Jeff change his diaper. Lincoln broke Jeff into fatherhood right away by pooping during his first diaper change and then peeing on him during his second diaper change. Ha!

He's such a cute little peanut.

We've already caught several smiles of the little guy.

Lincoln is one week old today and has made some big improvements. He is still in the NICU but he is off his IV and has started nursing twice a day. They have tried to wean him off his oxygen several times but he is still needing help with his breathing. He had a bout with jaundice but that has mostly gone away. We are just waiting for him to get strong enough to stay awake for all of his feedings and then he will get to come home, but it's hard to know how long it will take him to reach that milestone, so he's sticking it out in his womb away from home until then.

Luckily we've had a lot of help from our parents as we've been shuffling back and forth to the hospital. We love our sweet boy and it's been so fun to get to know him. We appreciate all the prayers and worry that have been sent our way. We've been feeling the love!

Third Trimester

We've entered third trimester territory. 

My belly stayed relatively small riiiiiiiiiiiiight up until this point...

And then full on pregnancy belly emerged and I was instantly SO uncomfortable and borderline miserable. Basically overnight my lung capacity decreased by at least 50%, my need to use the bathroom increased by at least 50% and my overall weight gain increased by a solid 50%.

Also I have a hernia? Or abdominal separation? Or both if those are different things. My doctor always stares at my belly in what I've determined to be amazement/confusion when I go in to my appointments now. From what I've gathered, I seem to have nothing holding baby up in the middle of my stomach. Maybe this is normal? Anyway. At around 30 weeks, I really began feeling my lack of any kind of muscle support in my belly area. At the end of the day, my whole underbelly would be so sore. I think the baby was positioned weird and it felt like his bum was always jabbing me on one side as his legs were trying to kick out of me on the other side. It was awful.

I have had smooth, mostly painless pregnancies with the other two, so it was startling to have such discomfort with my due date still so far away. I was dreading the coming months. Luckily baby must have repositioned or maybe I've been taking it a little easier, because all that pain has mostly subsided. Whew! I still get the occasional, expected uncomfortable jab here and there, but they aren't really painful anymore like they were for a couple of weeks, so we may happily make it all the way to 40 weeks after all!

Here is my 31 week picture. The program I use to cute these pictures up weirdly stopped working on me, so here is the less cute version. 
My biggest pregnancy symptom has definitely been nesting. I've had the nesting urge for a couple months now, but this month it was kicked up a notch. I went totally bananas. I think Christmas is what did it to me. The boys got a bunch of new toys, so we had to find a new place for everything which resulted in every closet being organized and everything put into a labeled bin. I was a crazy person. Every closet is now tupperwared, the pantry is suddenly neat and approachable, and even my computer went through a cleansing to clear out and back up all my old pictures. Now to see if we can keep everything in ship shop shape for the next 6 weeks.

Heartburn is a nightly occurrence with chocolate still the biggest offender.

Braxton Hicks now happen basically any time I do any kind of mildly strenuous activity. Like standing up for example.

My raging appetite has returned! Let's just say my day no longer consists of defined meals, but is now a constant stream of large snacks. Every half hour.

The boys are still cute and getting more excited about baby. We've been working on the nursery, and they get almost as giddy as I do when we rummage through all the baby stuff together. Carson the other day said while holding onto his stomach, "My belly is kicking too!" Then he sheepishly ran off as he realized there wasn't a baby in his belly after all.

My biggest source of anxiety comes from thinking about the hospital food. I'm delivering at the same hospital where I had Carson. My most vivid memory is how terrible the food was. I realize this is a completely irrelevant fear and will likely be a non issue once I'm actually there, but for some reason this is the one thing about the hospital experience that keeps me up at night. Ha. 

I have also begun to get anxious about where/when/if my water will break. My water has broken both times so far. I LOVE going into labor with my water breaking. It makes the whole am-I-really-in-labor debate fairly obvious and the hospital can't turn you away, so it's the way to go. But what if this time my water broke in a public place?!? This thought first struck me at church today. How embarrassing would it be if I popped in the middle of Sacrament Meeting?? Please baby, let my water break, but let it happen when I'm in the comfort of my own home like your brothers have been kind enough to do for me.

I think that's all of my unnecessary items of paranoia for now. Mostly we are just so so so excited to meet Baby 3. It's all we can talk about anymore. I can't wait to see what he will look like and how Eli and Carson will be with him. And I'm definitely to the point in my pregnancy where I'm excited to not be pregnant anymore. It feels like it's right around the corner!