Welcome Baby McKall

McKall Lydia Marshall, 11-26-08, 5 lb. 8 oz., 18 inches long. We are so excited to have McKall here with us! The labor and delivery went very well and she is a happy, healthy baby! She has dark hair, which surprised us all. Hayden is in love with her and wants to help us with changing her diaper and feeding her. He loves to give her kisses and asks to hold her. He is a typical two year old around her, aka... a bull in a china store... so we have to watch him pretty close when they are together. She is such a sweet baby and so adorable on top of it! It is so fun to finally have her here. I have had problems loading pics on this blog, so I will be adding more pics later, but I got this one to load so I thought I would go ahead with out the rest.... so keep checking if you are interested in seeing more!

A little early

I know that Thanksgiving hasn't even passed, but I thought I would change my blog to Christmas now since I will be occupied with McKall soon. Plus, I already had my Thanksgiving on Sunday since I will be in the hospital on Thursday. So there!

The day is....

Tuesday! I am being induced Tuesday (probably later at night) and will have her on Wednesday! I am still waiting to hear from the doctor on when to check into the hospital, but that is the plan so far. I spent an exhausting Thursday at three doctors/hospital appointments to determine this. First, I had my regular appointment with my doctor. She did an ultrasound and McKall was behind in growth and the doc found a few other things that she was looking for to determine if I needed to be induced. The doctor wanted to determine if I needed to be induced that day, or if we could wait, so she sent me to the hospital to do a non-stress test and have blood work done. That determines if the baby is under any type of stress at all. After being strapped up and poked the baby was was fine. Then she called the maternal fetal specialist to see if she would squeeze us in to do another ultrasound and other readings that my doc can't do with her machine. So we headed there and got to see McKall again. The specialist also determined that she was not growing like they would like to see and decided she needed to come out, but she didn't feel it was an emergency, so we will be headed in on Tuesday. They estimated her to be 5 something (it was a long day!) pounds. So she will be a little thing like Hayden. Please have us in your thoughts and pray that she will be healthy! We are very excited and it is nice to finally have an end to the bed rest.

Update

So, I haven't been doing much of anything interesting to write about. I could tell you what the walls look like and how many movies I have watched, and how I have searched everything on the Internet that I can think of.... but it is boring enough for me so I won't subject you to my boredom. Actually, bed rest has been going ok. I am so thankful to all who have helped with Hayden, meals, cleaning, and those who have just called or stopped by to say "hi." I think we are going to get through this!! I had a doc appointment on Thursday and everything is going well. Darn it, the bed rest is working! We were hoping that she would say I could resume my normal life, but no such luck. She did say that it is likely that I will be induced at 38 weeks. So, that is only a few weeks away. That could change of course, so I right now I am just trying to make it appointment to appointment to check the progress. I go back next Thursday... so hopefully more news then. I extended my bed rest to my friends house and had my baby shower last Saturday. I was spoiled with so many cute things and the cuteness keeps coming from those who could not make it to the shower. All I can say is I love pink, purple and everything girly!! This little girl is not going to be in a clothing or hair bow deficit. I got four beautiful handmade quilts. I know such talented people.

Check this out!

I found this quilt giveaway on a friends blog. The quilts are amazingly beautiful and you can enter to win too. Click here and enter away! Good luck... but I hope I win! Here is the quilt I picked.

My little cowboy

Here is my sweetie all dressed up for Halloween! He was so darn cute. He went trick-or-treating to a few houses, but I don't think he was quite sure about it. I wasn't sure that he was going to wear the cowboy hat, but he was really good about it. The funniest thing was when he tried to walk in the boots... they were really stiff and hard to walk in, so he looked pretty silly. He ended up not wearing them.

What we have been doing

Along with my expert quilting friend, Anjela, I made a quilt for Hayden's new big boy bed and room. It was a lot of fun learning how to make it. I have only tied quilts before, so this was a whole new experience for me. It was a lot of work, but well worth it! Thanks to the help from Anjela, we finished it the day before I was put on best rest. Thankgoodness! Hayden loved helping with it too. He would ask me if I was going to work on the "fagrit" (fabric) all of the time and he was so excited to put it on his bed. We went to the pumpkin patch with some friends. Hayden has been obsessed with pumpkins this year so he had so much fun finding his pumpkin and going on a hay ride. Mike gets together with his high school buddies every year to play football. Here are all of the kiddos. Every year this picture multiplies!

It also snowed while we were there! Hayden played outside and loved it! Here are the boys before their game started.

Uggggh!

I have been put on bed rest. Not too happy about it, but I know that this is what needs to happen right now. I have Pregnancy Induced Hypertension (my blood pressure keeps getting high through the pregnancy). This can cause the baby to stop growing. She is fine now... measuring where she should, so the bed rest will hopefully help her to keep growing the way she should. I had this with Hayden and he was only 5 pounds when they induced me around 37 weeks. I didn't have to do bed rest with Hayden though. Different doctor, different ways? So, hopefully she will be bigger than he was. I have cried a couple of rivers over this, but I think I am sorta coming to terms that this is what I will be doing for the next 4-6 weeks. I just hate asking for help, but I am grateful for the friends and family members who are willing to help Mike and I with Hayden and things around the house. It is hard for me to have people clean my house and to send Hayden away, but he will probably love it! He loves playing with friends and being with his grandparents. As for me, I will be reading lots of blogs, and books and watching lots of TV and movies. For Mike's sake I will also try not to be a pain from the couch or bed as I watch my house go crazy! I am so lucky to have my sweet Mike. This is not going to be easy for him, but he has been really good about it.