We definitely partied hard this New Years Eve. I think we all went to bed around 11. Don’t worry though, Aidyn didn’t want me to miss out on the celebrations. She’s real thoughtful in that sense. She was partyin’ hard at 1 am, then 3 am, then also at 5.

Happy New Year Everyone! Hope you live it up like we plan to!

Caleb’s cousin David Kenney was in a terrible accident in December. He was rear-ended by someone as he was waiting for a deer to cross the road. All of the Bodell’s got together to remember and celebrate his wonderful life.

All of these babies were born in 2011.

Caleb and I also took Aidyn to the Festival of Tree’s in South Jordan. It was the last day it was open, so it was super crowded, and unfortunately, I only got two pictures. It was a fun outing (after which our car died at a gas station, a story for another day…)

Just had to show my cute baby off. She is almost always smiling, or you can easily get her to smile. I like to pretend that she reserves her smiles for me because she loves me so, but I caught a glimpse of her smiling at the wall the other day, so there ya go.

Christmas time is such a magical time with kids. I know that mine was only 5 months old, and all she wanted to do was eat the paper, it was fun to watch her experience new things, like trees and lights.

Julia came to town for a few days and so we enjoyed spending time with cousins. We took them to go visit Santa.

Brigham was not thrilled with the experience, but enjoyed the See’s Chocolate sucker that Santa gave to all of the children. Santa was clearly not thinking through that one, who gives kids chocolate suckers? Who?

Christmas Eve we went to Anne and Scotts house and spent time with my family. I didn’t take any pictures, stupid me. I need to get them from Scott. He snapped this gorgeous picture of my little beauty. The best present we got all year.

Christmas Morning, Elder (Uncle) Johnny got to Skype home from New Jersey. In this picture you see pictured: Johnny on the T.V. Caleb, Rachel, Michael, Me and Aidyn, and Caleb holding an Ipad that has Julia, Steve, Jacob and Landon. Not pictured, but who were also there, were Aaron and Brigham. When Johnny comes home he will have 4 new family members that he has not met.

After speaking with Johnny, we went to Church. I didn’t know how I felt about Christmas being on a Sunday. I thought it would detract from my ability to lay around in my Christmas Jammies and play with my new toys. However, it was quite the opposite. It was nice to get up and get ready for the day, to go to church and to listen to a wonderful program about our Savior, Jesus Christ, and to remember what he has done for us. What a great day it was.

We had to snap a few pictures of our little girl in her church dress. She melts my heart.

I hope that everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

Last year around this time my life was so different. I was busy working and experiencing my first year of teaching. Every day I was waiting for movement. I wanted to feel those little flutters, to see my belly start to grow, and to stop feeling so darn barfy. I can’t believe it has been a year since we told our families we were expecting a baby, and waiting anxiously for each doctor appointment so that we could hear our little cutie’s heart beat.

I can’t explain to you how grateful I am for such a sweet little girl. I got pretty lucky. I’m also so very blessed to have a wonderful husband who helps out so much with her.

She is pretty smitten with her daddy.  She lights up when she hears his voice, and will search the room until she sees his face.

Some days I wake up and just can’t believe that I have been trusted to be a mother. I’m not a great housekeeper, nor a wonderful chef, but I have been entrusted to care for this tiny (well, she’s not actually TINY, but small) person.

I’m so happy to call those two my family, and grateful for our lives, health and happiness.

Thank you Rachel for taking our pictures even though it was a little chilly outside.

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In case anyone ever wondered… The girl is a pretty good eater. She is gaining weight just fine. Particularly in her chubby little face. Check out those chins.

I’ve always wondered how babies could sleep like this. I know we aren’t supposed to allow babies to sleep on their stomachs until they can roll over on their own, so don’t worry, I was watching her very closely. She is like her mom, and sleeps better on her stomach.

This last weekend cousins Parker and Sophie came to visit. I didn’t take any pictures with Sophie, we were just enjoying the time together. I should be better about pulling out my camera.  Scott went to the BYU football game with Caleb while we were at my school carnival. After the game, Anne, Scott and Parker waited at my apartment for game traffic to clear up. Parker was so entertained by Aidyn,  all he wanted to do was sit by her and stare. This was a pretty precious picture that I happened to capture.

My two favorites. I love to wake up and see this. Makes my day.

We have been having a lot of fun around here. Aidyn has started to be a really great sleeper. She will go to bed around 11:30 and not wake up until 5 or so. This has been going on for about a week, so I guess I shouldn’t be jinxing myself. Here’s to hoping she continues this trend!

P.S. Notice the red tones in her hair? It’s not quite red, yet at least.

Here’s a list of words that can adequately describe how I feel:

adoration, affection, adulation, attachment, cherishing, delight, devotedness, enchantment, enjoyment, fondness.

This is not my everyday vernacular. I definitely had to go to Thesaurus.com and find synonyms for “Love”. I guess you get the idea.

Aidyn went to the Doctors office yesterday for her 2 month checkup (a week early). The doctor had a good listen to her heart and lungs and told Caleb that she is a healthy kid. We don’t need to be worrying about her being sick anymore. Aside from the small cold she had developed earlier in the week, she is doing great! We are so thrilled to hear that great news. She got her 2 month shots yesterday, which, as you can imagine, was no fun for her. Which, in turn, was no fun for us. I don’t like to see her cry…

Her stats from the Dr.’s appointment:

Weight: 11Lbs. 60th Percentile

Length: 24 in. 96th Percentile (No surprises there!)

She has started recognizing when we are smiling and laughing. It’s a rare occasion to catch a smile, because she is fascinated by the camera.  We usually end up getting something more along the lines of….

this:

Turns out, she’s got Acid Reflux, so she does a LOT of this. She is about as pleased with it as we are. As is evident by the face she is making.

Please excuse her sock hands. When she is angry, her first instinct is to take her claws to her face. She drew blood once a few weeks ago, and it broke my heart. I’m not prepared for that. So, she is not exactly a fashionista, but she’s saving that beautiful face.

Aidyn has lots of cousins that she (someday) can play with! Aidyn and cousin Milo (Courtney’s boy) are 2 and a half months apart. Courtney and Caleb are about that far apart too, so it’s fun to see their babies together. Brigham loves babies and wants to play with them whenever he gets a chance.

And, Aidyn met her Great Grandma and Grandpa Bodell for the first time a few weeks ago. We are so grateful to have them around and love them so much.

I’ll say again in my simple vocabulary. I love my life right now. I have the best husband in the world who helps out with so much. He takes turns with a baby who likes to be up at night. He watches her during the days when he isn’t working, and loves her so much. I have the sweetest little girl who only cries when she’s hungry. She loves to look around and recognizes her mom and dad. I’m seriously, so blessed.

She was starting to get mad, that is the reason for the stare down.

At five weeks old, Aidyn is such a sweet little girl. She is holding her head up quite a bit on her own. She is alert throughout the day, and such a joy to spend time with. I love this little girl so much!

Bathtime was a traumatic experience for both of us. No one teaches you how that is supposed to work. Especially when that sick little umbillical cord is still attached. She wasn’t entirely excited about the experience.

Caleb came down later to inform me that they were going to keep her up there for an hour to run some tests and clear the fluid out of her lungs. Unfortunately it wasn’t that easy. The fluid in her lungs ended up being an infection. An hour in the NICU turned into overnight, which turned in 5-7 days. The first time I saw Aidyn after delivery, she was hooked up to a C-Pap machine that was giving her oxygen. She still wasn’t processing the oxygen right, so later that night they had to intubate her, and put her on a respirator. The respirator was breathing for her at 600 breaths per minute, which made her tiny body shake. We weren’t allowed to touch her, since her body was being stimulated so much by the machines.

She was also being treated for the infection on an antibiotic that would need 5-7 days for it to be complete.

Then we found out that she had a heart murmur.

My poor sweet baby was just hours old and had all of these complications. It was a little heartbreaking for me to watch her like that, aside from the fact that I hadn’t even gotten to hold my little girl.

That Friday, I was discharged and was getting ready to leave the hospital. As I was packing up my room, I saw a few babies being wheeled into their mom’s rooms, and I will admit, I started feeling a little bit sorry for myself.  It certainly wasn’t what I was expecting the arrival of my sweet baby to be like. I was so heartbroken that I would be leaving my Aidyn at the hospital while I went home. I walked up to the NICU to meet Caleb up there. I was met with great news. They had been monitoring her breathing, and she was doing great on her own. They had taken the breathing tube out.

For those of you who know me, it was a tough decision to post this picture of the three of us. Caleb and Aidyn look great. It was the first picture of the three of us, so it’s special to me. Eyebrows or not.

Now that the oxygen had been removed, this meant that we were finally able to hold her. After 3 full days of just touching her foot, I can’t even begin to explain the joy I felt when the nurse placed that tiny baby in my arms.

Caleb wasn’t allowed to hold her until the next day. They described what she had been going through as if she had been running a 10k. It was physically exhausting to her, and she needed to only be moved in small increments, and be able to sleep as much as possible. The day he was allowed to hold her was such a happy day. I always knew I married up, Caleb is such an amazing person, but seeing him with his daughter was a pretty incredible experience.

After 7 very long days and sleepless nights, we were ready to go home. The nurses had administered the last antibiotic dose, we had done all of the training that was required, I had packed up my sleep room at the hospital. We were ready. Aidyn just had to sit in the car seat for 90 minutes without any complications, and then we were outta there.

Unfortunately, the last 15 minutes of the 90 minute test, she start de-saturating, which means, she was having trouble breathing. The doctor wouldn’t clear her without doing a 12 hour oxygen test. (I was heartbroken, of course, but knew that I would rather take home a healthy baby that could breathe). The test required her to be hooked up to a machine monitoring her oxygen levels for 12 hours. During that time they would write down everything that she did or that was done to her. Every time we picked her up, they recorded it. When she was fed, they recorded it. Diaper change, you get it.  Then the doctor would analyze it and find out if there were other times that her oxygen levels would drop, or if it was just when she was in the car seat.

Luckily, the only times she had trouble with the oxygen levels was in the car seat (which means we can’t drive in the car anywhere further than 15-20 minutes away until she is a little bit stronger). That morning (July 21st) Aidyn was discharged and we headed home.

It’s funny, we had a conversation with our Brother-in-law, Stephen, who was saying how, after you have a baby, and you go to a store, you feel like everyone in there should see your bracelet and be so excited for you and tell you congratulations. They should be so happy for you that your life is so wonderful and that you are bringing home a sweet baby. That is how I felt as we walked out of the hospital. Everyone in my path should have been congratulating me on this great occasion. We are out of the NICU! We are headed home!

Life has forever been changed. I am adjusting to my lack of sleep, however, I’m not really adjusting to seeing the most adorable little thing in the world, and knowing that she is mine. I love her so much, and am so happy to be her Momma. We love you little Aidyn and are so grateful that you are getting stronger and more healthy every day.

This may be a boring post, but I just figured I would write it, for my own remembrance. I wanted to write down my labor story, but don’t worry, I won’t go into a lot of the graphic details.

It has now been a month, so, I’m hoping that I can remember everything. Here goes:

July 12, 2011 I had a Doctors appointment. This was my 39 week check up. At this point in my pregnancy, I was feeling very large, and hot. As one of my students once said, “I feel hot, not in the attractive way, but in the- it’s unusually warm in here- way.” That’s how I felt. Everyone just seemed unusually warm. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. I walked into my Doctor’s office feeling a little apprehensive. The week before the Dr. informed me that I was not even close to delivery, and that I should plan on being pregnant until at least a week after my due date, at which point he would induce me. I kind of figured that there was no reason to have an appointment this week, since I was going to be the one person in the world to be pregnant forever.

When the Dr. came in to the room, his first words were, “Let’s get this baby here.” I immediately wanted to hug him. We talked a lot about my pregnancy, he estimated that my sweet little girl was about 8lbs. He then asked if I would like him to perform a slight procedure to increase my chances of starting labor. Unsure of what that procedure entailed, I said yes. Afterward, he informed me that I had a 30% chance of going into labor that evening. He then asked if I was good at math. Embarrassed, I didn’t really say anything, because, let’s be honest, I’m not. He said there is a 70% chance I wouldn’t go into labor.

That night Caleb was supposed to be out of town for a conference for work. I didn’t want to be dramatic, as I sometimes can be, but I kept feeling like he should come home, which he eventually did.

Around 1:30 a.m. I woke up to what I thought was just weird cramping from the procedure the Dr. had performed. As I laid there, they kept getting worse and slightly more painful. I remembered that I had downloaded an app. for timing contractions (there truly is an app for that.) At that point, I started timing the contractions. They started getting more and more frequent, and subsequently more painful. Around 2:30 Caleb woke up. I informed him that the contractions were about 4 minutes apart and were lasting at least a minute. We both kind of laughed nervously, because we weren’t entirely sure what we were supposed to do. We decided that we better go to the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital and got all checked in. Once we were on the labor and delivery floor, waiting to be admitted, the contractions started to get quite fierce. I thought for sure the dr. would come in and tell me that the baby was practically here, but unfortunately that was not the case. For one, the dr. on call was not answering his page, and for two, I was not progressing how I should, despite the contractions now coming 2-3 minutes apart. Someone authorized the nurse to give me some morphine while I waited to see if I would get admitted.

At one point in the night, the nurse informed me that I would most likely be going home. I immediately started crying, not quite sure how I would handle this pain at home. However, the Dr. on call wasn’t answering his page, so I had to just wait to find out anything.

Around 7:00 a.m. the Doctor shift changed and the Dr. now working decided to admit me. The nurse sent for the Anesthesiologist to give me the epidural, but apparently it was a busy morning in Provo, and there were 3 other women ahead of me waiting for him. Finally around 11:00 am. I got the epidural. Life after that was quite wonderful.

This is where things start to get really boring. Now that I think about it, I start to feel bad that I was so boring during this. There are many members in Caleb’s family who play games while they are in labor, keeping entertained. As for me? After I got the epidural I slept. A lot. I slept probably all afternoon. I’m not sure when I finally woke up.

Around 4:45 pm. the Nurse came in and decided that it was time to push. I’ll save you all the details. 40 minutes later my sweet Aidyn Jane was delivered weighing 8lbs 1 oz and was 20 1/2 inches long.

They set her on my stomach which is when I immediately noticed that something wasn’t quite right. She wasn’t crying, which is what I was expecting, she was more coughing. And she was a little bit grey. I informed the dr. that something was wrong with her. He said she was fine, and that everything was okay. When they couldn’t get her to cry quickly, they pulled her off of me.

A whole bunch of respiratory therapists came into the room and quickly began working on her. When they didn’t have any luck, they took her and Caleb and headed up to the Newborn ICU.