Friday, April 25, 2014

Isabelle Claire Johnson


 On March 14, 2014 we welcomed Isabelle to our family! Paul and I left for the hospital nice and early that morning for me to be induced. I got all hooked up to everything by 6 am and we were on our way to meeting our little girl! At 10:30am I finally got my epidural. I was in lots of pain by then, but we had to make sure we paid for the epidural before I received it (yay for self pay!). From then on I was so comfy until my blood pressure got super low. I was pretty sick because of it and my nurse (Deb, who was such a sweet lady, but I wanted to hurt her) tried to fix it with tons of fluids even though the anesthesiologist said he could fix it quickly by just tweaking the dosage of my medicine. So, once she gave in a let him do that (2 hours later) I was sitting (but mostly sleeping) happy. (I love epidurals. Its one of the best things about pregnancy ;)

At 4:41pm, Izzy finally decided it was okay to come weighing in at 7 pounds, 12.2 ounces and 20 3/4 inches long. We couldn't believe it took so long! We really thought it would just be a few hours, not nearly 11! But we were so happy and relieved. I still need to pull some pictures off Paul's phone of right after the delivery, but my goodness we were so happy.

Abby was absolutely ecstatic. I mean really. And even now she's still elated every time she sees Izzy. On the day Izzy was born we could hardly pry her out of Abby's arms for other people to hold her. I love how much she loves her, but my goodness- it's a bit overwhelming at times :)
Jared, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with Izzy for the first couple weeks. When he came in after she was born he said "Hi baby Izzy. Ok. I wan go bye-bye now!". He was having way too much fun with Aunt Beth.



Here's our new and improved family! I love my THREE kids. I still can't believe I had three, but I sure do love it!



And finally, 2 days later... we got to go home! It was so nice to finally be home. We had to stay an extra day because during labor I got a low-grade fever and they wanted to monitor Izzy.
Surprisingly adjusting to 3 has been fairly easy. Paul got to stay home the first week after. I'll be forever grateful for that week. He did the same with the other two, but this time it was more appreciated because Abby and Jared would have been a mess without attention. And they love their daddy!
So many people from our ward and family brought us dinner that we had to ask them to stop! I couldn't believe the outpouring of love from our ward. I heard later that people were literally fighting to bring us dinner. Just typing that brings me to tears. No, we didn't HAVE to have people bring or provide anything for us. We were perfectly capable of it. But holy cow it sure did help ease the burden. We had so many great leftovers, too.
We are so, so blessed. Having a baby is such a fantastic, spiritual experience. Yes, its hard and yes, it stinks sometimes... but it is easily on my top 3 list of times I feel closest to my Heavenly Father. I feel His love and presence all around me in that delivery room. I feel His comfort in hard times in the days after. And I see His hand in my life as people support and love our family though the transition. There is really no adequate way to describe the feelings of love but I hope I forever remember it.

Welcome to our family, Isabelle!

1 comment:

Danielle said...

waiting for this little gal all day was TORTURE, i tell you! but she was so worth the wait! what a sweetie! and you're such an amazing mom, mahrls! love you both!