Texas Life

So moving to Texas has been an exciting adjustment for me. The first thing people think of when they hear the word Texas is heat and humidity. Every time I ever mentioned that I was planning on moving to Texas people always took that as an invitation to tell me about all of the negative things they had ever heard about Texas. Let me also elaborate on the size of Texas…it is huge! So while yes Houston may be intensely humid that does not mean the whole state is.

I am not going to lie and say it has not been hot hear, because it has. However the humidity has not been largely noticeable. From what I understand that hottest month of the year is August, and I have survived that month, and from here on out the weather is supposed to just keep getting better. For the record I will take any amount of heat if it means I avoid snow and freezing temperatures!

In addition to the weather I received many warnings concerning the bugs in Texas. Let me also say the bugs in Dallas are no worse than any of the bugs in Utah or Southern CA.

Now that we have discussed all of the negative things about Texas let me tell you some of the highlights. I have seven malls within ten minutes of my house. Talk about shopping opportunities! We have more restaurants per ca-pita here then they do in New York City, and did I mention that the food is amazing! And the best part so far is they have some of the nicest people. I love southern hospitality!

I was worried about making the adjustment of living in a new place without much family around, however I have made some of my best friends out here already; It has been fun to build such strong relationships. Before when I was in Utah I knew that any friends I made would have to be temporary in the sense that I knew we would be moving away after graduation. This made it hard because I got really close to several different people, and then I had to leave them all and move 20 hours away. However, since I have been in Texas I have not stopped getting to know people. Everyone is so sweet and friendly. I feel like I have already made some lifelong friends out here. It has been a hard adjustment to get use to Morgan going to work, and me staying home with Levi, however I am really grateful for my friends who have been helping me through it.

On my Birthday 2 of my friends came over and took me to get pedicures and to go out to the mall! I have never really had friends come and take me out on my birthday before so this was such a special treat. While we were out doing that Morgan made a beautiful dinner! He smoked ribs all day, and he even made an ice cream cake! I was very impressed. We had a very special time hanging out with our friends.

Well that is all I have time for right now because Levi will be waking up any minute, but I will keep you updated with all of our future happenings!

 Penny Sees a squirrel in the backyard, and she is hypnotized!

 Levis new friend Jax!

Daddy loves to give Levi his baths! 

 Levi at a restaurant way passed his bed time! This is his first time in a restaurant high chair!

 My birthday cake!

Seeing the Deloitte office where Morgan will be working!

Levi’s Birth Story

I am trying to decide exactly where I want to start my birth story. I was a pretty inconsistent blogger through the bulk of my pregnancy (and by inconsistent I mean only posting once) and so I am going to do a brief summary of being pregnant before jumping into my birth story.

I have heard many people tell me that they “love to be pregnant” or “they love their pregnant bodies” I however was not one of those people! Being pregnant was a lot of hard work and most of all exhausting. My first trimester was not too horrible. I did get extremely nauseous in in the morning, especially if I worked outside in the heat; however I did not throw up at all so that was a blessing. The second trimester went by pretty fast, but the third trimester was where I grew a whole new appreciation for pregnant people. My body was so sore. I could not bend over what so ever, and I mean not at all. Poor Morgan had to pick up everything I dropped on the floor, pick up all of Penny’s poop, and he even shaved my legs….I was one lucky girl to have him throughout the pregnancy.

My due date technically would have been March 14^th if you were doing the mathematical calculation, but based on ultrasound it was changed to March 21^st.  So I was thinking that Levi would for sure come early. I could not see any possible way he could come any later than March 21^st but boy was I wrong.

 I also took a Hypnobabies class and decided to do an all-natural home child birth. I know most people think this sounds crazy, but I have the biggest phobia of needles, and I would rather take on any amount of pain if it means no epidural and IV. I could wright a whole post just on natural child birth, but I do not want to get into that, nor do I want to bore you with those details.

I started to have contractions at the beginning of March, but these were not your normal contractions. When I would have a contraction I could feel my stomach get really tight with pressure and then it would relax and loosen. This would be the way that most contractions feel, but the only difference was I felt no pain what so ever. These contractions went on for over a month, and the whole time here I am thinking that Levi is going to be born any day now, but he just wasn’t coming. When I got to my due date my midwife tried rubbing different oils on my belly, but that just was not starting labor either. Every time my midwife checked me I was not even dilated to 1cm.

The contractions continued for about another week, when we decided to try to induce labor naturally by the consumption of castor oil. Let me start by saying castor oil is the most disgusting thing to ever touch my mouth. I took it at about four o clock, and nothing was happening. In fact I felt completely normal. I went and took a nap, and still nothing was happening. That night Morgan has a dinner with other students that were being hired to work for Deloitte We decided to go, since nothing was progressing with my labor. For those of you who are not aware castor oil causes people to have lots of bowel movements, and the theory is by having bowel movements if causes your body to dilate. So we are getting to the end of dinner when I began to have regular bowel movements, and my contractions were all within three minutes apart, and again I remind you I feel no pain from any of these contractions.

 I get home and call my midwife, and tell her my progress. She tells me to get some sleep, and to caller her back when the contractions hurt badly enough that I have to breathe through them. At about 10:00 p.m. Morgan calls my midwife back and tells her I can now feel a slight amount of pain, however in the progression of this 30 second call the pain got 10x more intense and I told him to tell her to come over ASAP. She was there at 11:00 and I had already dilated to a three and my contractions were 3 minutes apart. I was lying on my bed, and I remember just trying to focus on keeping my body relaxed. I learned in my hypnobabies class that the more you can relax your body, the faster it can progress though labor. My midwife got the tub of warm water ready so that I could labor in the tub, she had this set up within an hour of her arrival, and then she came to check my progression again and I had dilated to a six!  Once I was in the tub the contractions were getting more intense. I was lucky to have 5 midwives/doulas there to apply pressure in different places. I would have never guessed that applying pressure could relieve so much of the pain. I had one midwife on each leg, one pushing on my hips, Morgan holding my head, and my mom holding my hand. I was very blessed to have so many people helping me through out my labor. they would coach me through the contractions and remind me to relax. I am the kind of personality that does really well with positive encouragement. I just thrive off of people cheering me on. I am really lucky to have so many people in my life who believe me, and encouraged me all the way to the end. I was going to need all of the encouragement I could get because once I got in the tub The contractions basically never stopped; it was like an hour of straight contractions. It would get really bad and then it would loosen a little bit and then it would get really bad again. I remember just saying that I wanted a two minute brake. I remember thinking that you usually have at least a minute of relief in between contractions, but not me. I threw up at some point during this hour, and I remember being very concerned that I was going to poop in the water, but I never did. Hahaha I know that is grouse but I want to remember all these details. After being in the tub for an hour, I got to the point where I was just like I cannot do this anymore and that is when my midwife checked me again and said it was time to push.

I got out of the water and pushed for like thirty minutes, and then Levi was born at 3:30 in the morning. My whole labor from start to finish was only 4.5 hours. (This is starting at the time I could feel any pressure/pain/discomfort)

At this point in time I thought the worst was over, I had survived child birth; but boy was I wrong. Personally I think the most painful part of the whole experience came 2 days later when I was awoken at like 4:00 a.m. because my milk came in. I remember wakening up my mom, and she helped me go and stand in the warm shower to try to relive some of the pressure, but this was not helping. I was so engorged I did not even know how so much milk could fit in such a small space. This is probably too much information, but I feel it is important. Nobody ever talks about the milk coming in, and this is an entire experience in its own. I had constant milk dripping out of me. I know they make pads that you can use to line your bra with to absorb the milk, but these pads would only last me about three minutes before I was leaking through. Every night when I went to sleep I took one of the giant Egyptian cotton beach towels and I folded it into quarters and then I would wake up and it would be completely soaked with milk. I remember Morgan waking up one night and asking me if I had just pulled it out of the washer because of how wet it was. I went to the doctor to have a check up, and he said I was one of the top ten most engorged he had ever seen. This made me feel good because I felt more justified for all the pain I was feeling. I could write a whole post just about my breastfeeding experience but I will leave it at that for now.

Overall Everything went perfectly, I was really proud of myself for having Levi all natural. So many people told me that I would not be able to do it, and they said things like “you’re going to be begging for the epidural” so to all of those people who questioned me and did not believe in me I just want to say “I did it! And you were wrong!”

Morgan and I are now living in Dallas, and I am no longer working so I therefore have a lot more time on my hands. I am excited to become a regular blogger, so look forward to more future posts from me!