First Day Home

On Sunday, the 30th of January, we brought Maggie home from the hospital to our little apartment around noon. That same afternoon we had our first visitors. My parents (Maggie's Ema and Papa), my siblings, Sadie, Sydnee and Korbin and my Grandma and Grandpa Smoot.

Along with the Sunday dinner that my mom brought us, Grandma made us a crock pot full of roast and potatoes, 2 pies, rolls and salad along with cut-up fruit. We were set for the next couple days!

My mom was all about documenting Maggie's first day home. I'm glad she did now because I love these pictures! I love to see how small and cute she was (she still is small and cute - but I can't believe how quickly she's grown!)

Maggie with Papa

Big Yawn

Such a cute face! I just wanna eat it!

Maggie with Papa, again.

Maggie with her Great Grandma and Grandpa Smoot

She's so little!

Maggie and Ema (Ema is what my mom's grandkids call her. It is Estonian for mother).

Maggie with her Aunt Sadie and Aunt Sydnee

Maggie and Uncle Korbin

We love our family so much! Thanks to everyone who came up to visit us, whether in the hospital or at home. We are so lucky to have so many wonderful people in our lives. We love you all and are so grateful to have our sweet baby Maggie home with us.

Maggie's Delivery and Hospital Stay

Okay, so I need to write out the story of Maggie's delivery. Even though I won't ever forget the experience and the feelings I had, I don't want to forget some of the small details. So here goes...

Warning: If you are scared of rough delivery stories - don't read this one. Just skip down to the pictures and the happy ending :)

So the night before Maggie was born I had a doctor appointment. It was Wednesday, January 26, 2011. I told the doctor I was a little worried that Maggie hadn't been moving as much, so he sat me in a chair and did a non-stress test where they basically just monitor the baby's heart rate for like 20 minutes. About half-way through Maggie really hadn't moved at all and the doctor stuck some weird instrument to my belly and it made an extremely loud sound. That finally got her moving and thus she passed the test. But Dr. Benedict didn't like the fact that it took some prodding to get her to move and nonchalantly told us that if we wanted to, we could have the baby tomorrow.

I couldn't believe my ears and was basically in complete shock. I had never imagined that he would tell me I could have the baby the next day! I actually asked him if we could wait until Friday so I could have a little more time to wrap my head around it. But he told us that if we wanted to have the baby before Monday it would have to be the next day.

WHOA! So after Spencer and I talked for a little bit we decided it was probably the best thing to do and it was scheduled!

After a long and sleepless night we called the hospital at exactly 6 a.m. as we were instructed. They told us that we were 3rd in line to be induced and that they would call us when they were ready for us to come in.

We finally got the call - after what seemed like days - at about 8:00 and asked us to be there by 9 a.m. We did just as we were told. We got our stuff together and headed for the hospital.

We checked in right at 9 and I got hooked up nicely to the antibiotics and pitocin. I wasn't sure at all what to expect, but we started a movie and I got all fixed up with the popcicles, suckers and ice chips (the only food I was allowed to eat).

I've got it all!

What I didn't realize was how soon I was going to get sick of those 3 things and how much movie I wouldn't end up watching.

I'm not sure how long it took to get contractions started, but I definitely started feeling it. I started the day at a 2 and 80% effaced. By the time I was dilated to a 4 and had been at a 4 for about an hour I was very much ready to get rid of the pain. So the anesthesiologist came in and I got an epidural.

I was loving the epidural for about an hour when the pain started to come back. It did not feel good. Turns out the epidural had migrated into a vein... I was not a happy camper. It seemed like forever before the anesthesiologist came back to fix it, but once he did I felt so much better. There's nothing like knowing what kind of pain you COULD be feeling and then NOT feeling it. I loved it!

I'm not exactly sure what the time table is with everything, but it was sometime after 5pm that I really started to progress quickly. I went from a 6 to a 7 in like 10 minutes and we actually started to get excited - thinking that the baby was finally working on coming. But suddenly I got really dizzy and nauseous. My mom ran to find a bucket for me in case I lost the lunch I never had and Spencer ran outside to grab a nurse. The last thing I remember there was thinking that there was no way I was going to make it into the bucket....

Then I was dreaming. I felt so good and light and happy. It was a wonderful dream. Not sure exactly what it was about - but then I woke up. I wished I was still dreaming. My mom was kinda freaking out and there were nurses all over the place - 6 to be exact. The anesthesiologist was next to come in, followed by my doctor and I felt a little like I was in a movie or part of a staged play. People were everywhere. But I guess I didn't really care because I was really out of it.

Anyway, after I passed out, Maggie's heart rate dropped from 150 to 50 bpm. NOT COOL! They had to stop my labor completely to take the pressure off her and try to stabilize her. But there really wasn't any coming back for us after that. Maggie wasn't very responsive and I was never able to get back to normal after everything, so a little after 8pm Dr. Benedict decided that we weren't going to make it through a regular delivery. We ended up needing to have a c-section.

I was really quite bummed about it all - but I was still so out of it that I just kinda nodded my head and decided that all that was important was that we have our baby and have her healthy.

And here she is! Margrette Moana Dearinger was born (or taken out of my stomach by the doctor) at 9:03pm on January 27, 2011. She weighed 7lbs 13oz and was 20 1/2 inches long.

It was so weird to lie there watching her get all cleaned up while I was being put back together. Spencer stayed with me through all of it, but as they got closer to finishing me up, he went into the nursery with my parents to be with our little daughter.
She definitely came out crying. She needed a bit of oxygen to "pink up", and she cried right through it all. Funny thing is that it was weeks before she ever cried like that again.

Isn't she so cute!?

I finally got to hold my little Maggie when they finished stitching and stapling up my stomach. She was waiting for me when they rolled me out of the operating room.

She is a finger sucker! This made me so happy! I think it's adorable.

It only took a couple seconds to realize how much she looks like Spencer. The first thing I saw were her lips and then her eyes. Both Spencer's!

Don't I look like a million bucks!? :) I was just happy to have it all over and to be holding my baby.

Our First Family Picture!

My two favorite people in the world!

My parents

When they finally took us up to our room, Spencer was able to get some good daddy time in. Doesn't he look good with a kid in his arms?
A nurse came in not long after to give Maggie a good sponge bath. Can you see her little cone head? I thought that the only babies who had cone heads were the ones who actually came out normally... I guess not :)

She didn't enjoy the bath for very long

We were in the hospital for the next 3 nights after that. It was really nice for me to have that time to get walking again. We had fun with our little one while we were there and took lots of pictures. Here's just a few of them.

My sleeping sweethearts

She loves to stick out her tongue at you

She's also taken up modeling. She's a natural.

My cousin, Alyse, (and many others) came to visit and we played a little dress-up with Maggie. I love this outfit on her and decided that it was going to be the outfit in which she would go home from the hospital.

And here she is on Sunday, January 30th all ready to go to her new home.

Welcome to the family, Maggie!

We love you!

The thoughts of a very soon-to-be-mother. aka - ME

It's apparently been a while since I've posted - I plan on writing the whole birth story, but I got on and realized that I wrote this and never posted it. So I figured I'd post it first and then get into the whole birth and life of Maggie. Enjoy!

I'm starting this post the morning before I am to be induced (01/27/2011). I can't sleep worth my life. I crawled into bed at like 11:00pm last night utterly exhausted and yest I haven't hardly slept. I finally got myself out of bed at 4am in a futile attempt to make myself tired and to stop keeping Spencer up - but I don't think either has worked. It's now 5:45am and we are supposed to call the hospital somewhere between 6 and 6:30am to find out what time they want us to come in.

It's totally surreal to think that we're actually going to have a baby. It's weird to think that I won't be pregnant anymore. It's weird that this thing inside of me is actually going to be on the outside as a living, squirming, dependent child. And it's weird to think that I'm actually excited about that! :) Maybe some of you actually know what I'm talking about or what I'm getting at here - but as you can tell, my main word of choice is WEIRD.

Life After Travel

So, it's been a while since I've been on here... I guess I figured that life hasn't been all that eventful since we got home from our summer fun. We've just been waiting around ever so patiently (or not so patiently really) for our sweet daughter to come along. And while we now have less than a week left before her due date she seems to be taking her own sweet time to get here. Can't say I blame her really - but we'd sure love to have her here :)

Anyway - I figured that it would probably be good to update our lives now before we become a family of three. We have some random pictures from throughout the last few months and I figured I'd post them. It's kind sad that I'll be doing such a lame synopsis of everything, but I guess that's just how it'll have to be.

This is me at about six months pregnant.
Jackie came to visit and met me at Maddock's in Brigham City so that we could spend some time together. It was so much fun to see her and I wish she lived closer so that she could actually come see the baby before she's 3 years old.

Then we have the holidays!

They were so much fun! I was so excited for Christmas and the 3 weeks off of school that Spencer had that I insisted we put up the tree about the 2nd week of November. This picture was actually taken closer to Christmas, when we had actually done our shopping and placed gifts under the tree - but I seriously LOVE having Christmas decorations and a tree up. It brings so much excitement and happiness to life. It's wonderful!

Kinda funny that the first part of our holidays started with the Christmas - I like it that way though. THEN we had Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is definitely up there in my favorites category for best holidays! The food is wonderful, the family is wonderful - what more could you want?

This year Spencer and I planned to have Thanksgiving with my family. Well my family has always done the every-other-year trade-off between my parents' sides of the family. This year was my family's turn to have Thanksgiving with my mom's family. So in an effort to make sure that everyone in her family had a place to go on this holiday, my mom invited everyone to our house. She figured that maybe 3 or 4 families would decide to join us and we'd have a nice quaint day together. As the weeks went on after her invitation went out it seemed that everyones' plans started to change from dinners with their own small families to one big dinner at my parents' place. The numbers of attendees went from 30 to 50 to 60 and by Thanksgiving we had 80 family members show up for dinner. AWESOME! Out of the 10 kids in her family, 8 of them came with their own kids and grandkids, my grandparents and even some of the children from a 9th sibling. It was quite the gathering! Staying the night at our house alone we had 17 people needing beds - not including my siblings and Spencer and I who were in town for the event. It was so much fun having so many wonderful family members around and I'm so glad that we got to share that with everyone this year.

After Thanksgiving there was only 3 weeks left until school got out for the semester. I was so stinking excited to have the break and have Spencer to myself for a little while.

The day of Spencer's last final, December 17th, his best friend, Trevor Nelson got married!!! We had SO much fun being there with them! They had the most beautiful wedding, luncheon and reception! I loved it! Trevor's wife, Heather is wonderful and we love finally having her here in Utah with us all.

Here's the fun group of us married couples who got to enjoy the festivities together. These are definitely some of our closest friends and we're pretty lucky to have them around.

Left to right: Spencer, Me, Kim and Rob Jepson, Trevor and Heather Nelson (the newlyweds!), Krystal and Mike Molyneux and Whitney and Ben Hillyard with their son, Tyler.

After the wedding we got to head straight to my sister, Aimee's, apartment because she'd just gotten home from having her 2nd baby! I couldn't wait to see her and her son!

These are just a couple pictures from when they were in the hospital. I was lame and didn't take any pictures with them when I was there - but what can ya do?

Such a happy family! Oaklee is such a cute big sister and, from what I hear, loves to be mommy's little helper.

They named him Porter Smoot Perkins and we call him Smoot.

He was born December 15th, 2010 and weighed almost 10 pounds!!! He's such a chunk and so much fun to cuddle with! Having him around for the holidays has not made the wait for our baby any easier. But we sure do love having him around!

After finally seeing little Smooty for the first time, it was off to Spencer's parents' house for Christmas! They threw a baby shower for me there and everything. It was such a wonderful week! Christmas in a new home was especially exciting for me. Spencer's family has so many amazing and fun traditions and I loved being able to be a part of it all this year.

My favorite tradition, by far came Christmas morning. All the grandkids sleep in the loft of Spencer's parents' house and they get to spy on Santa as he brings everyone their Christmas gifts. I can't say I was totally thrilled with the idea of being up at 5:30 in the morning to join in with the spying - but once we got up into the loft with all the excited children it was hard not catch the excitement they all felt.

Here's Santa sneaking in and getting all the gifts laid out.

Just a few of the grandchildren all looking out excitedly to find out what they got for Christmas.

Once Santa leaves, then everyone gets to run downstairs and start the opening of their presents.

I guess we were pretty good this year because Santa even left us some goodies!

Spencer got a scarf and new sunday shoes along with his long-awaited Owl City CD. I guess you can say we had it pretty good this year :)

Spencer got me the greatest boots! What a star!
Here's us opening some of our presents. Wow! Aren't we attractive at 6 in the morning!?
Our new stockings! I made Spencer and I stockings this year because I knew I didn't want to buy them. Spencer's mom used to make stockings like this out of felt for all her kids - so with a little help from Spencer's sister, Lana, I was able to pull it off. I've never felt like a very crafty person, but I must say that I was quite proud of myself for pulling this one off.

One of the presents we received from my Grandma and Grandpa Cox was their life history. It is an incredible book and was put together so nicely that when we opened it up and Marilyn and Spencer's step-brother, Dave saw it they spent the next hour or so going through it and their own family history books doing comparisons and finding links between ancestors. It was so much fun! I haven't much gotten into the family history stuff unfortunately, but seeing them get so excited about it and talking with them about it made me feel like I could actually enjoy it.

Here's Marilyn and Dave enjoying family history readings.

After a wonderful Christmas dinner and much time spent with many different family members I was entirely exhausted and tragically not feeling well at all. When we woke up the next morning and started getting ready to go to my parents' house, Spencer made me get back in bed and let him finish the rest of the work. So I then spent the next days at my parents' house feeling like I'd gotten hit by a train. It wasn't exactly my ideal vacation at that point - but it was really nice to be with my family and be able to relax in a place where I knew that Spencer and I would be taken care of.

I think the highlight of our stay at my parents' place was Dance Off 2 or Dance Party 2 or something like that. It's game on the Wii that my family got for Christmas and it entertained us for hours.

I especially loved watching the boys try to move with the beat and get all the dance more correct. I may have been sick but I could not stop laughing. Good times!

Spencer was so wonderful the whole time I was feeling gross and just a few days later he came down with the same thing... It was about this time that we decided it was time for us to head back to Logan so that we could get ourselves feeling healthy again before school/work started again and before we got anyone else sick.

We had a very chill and relaxed New Year's Eve together. We made ourselves pizza and caramel corn and watched Step Up 3d together. If it hadn't been New Year's Eve there's no way we would have made it to midnight to bang our pots and pans together - but we somehow forced ourselves to stay awake.

And that, my friends is about all there is to it right now :) We now just sit here and wait. Spencer has started his last semester of school and I've been substitute teaching and we CAN'T WAIT to have our daughter join us in this crazy thing we call life!