Family Adventures

I was lucky enough to be able to take off nearly 4 full months of work for maternity leave. I must say, I don't know what I would have done if I had to go back to work any sooner. I really enjoyed every minute of it even if it was completely exhausting and a bit challenging, it was amazing watching Gunnar grow into a little human.



After both of our moms were in town for visits, we were able to go on our first family adventure...camping! It was a little cold and rainy, but Gunnar took it like a champ and seemed to enjoy being outside so much!





Our next adventure was to fly across the country to Georgia for Aaron and Chena's wedding! Gunnar did great on his first flight and slept most of the time. He was still at the stage where if he started crying I could just feed him to make him calm down, so it worked out great. He did great at all the wedding festivities and bouncing around from place to place sleeping in different beds and cribs. Hopefully that means he's pretty adaptable.











Next adventure was Michigan! Gunnar and I flew up there by ourselves for a couple of weeks before Ryan joined us just in time for the next wedding! It was a good relaxing getaway and Gunnar really started to talk and interact a lot more at this point.











Next big adventure was Gunnar's first backpacking trip! Aaron came in town for a visit and we hiked in about 3.5 miles to Annette Lake, set up camp and spent the night there. It was a perfect distance to start with and the lake was a beautiful backdrop to our little camp ground. I was nervous that it would get too cold at night for Gunnar, but he managed to sleep through it all!









Last big adventure for the summer was a weekend getaway on the Columbia River with 3 other families. I was a pretty relaxing weekend, but Gunnar got to try out playing in some water for a bit on nice sunny days. He also got to hang out with another baby all weekend...not that they really interacted at all...but they will someday soon!



Gunnar's Birthday!

Yeah, it's been a long time since I've posted anything...oops. So the big update is that we are now parents. That's still crazy to say and it's been over 4 months now! It really just feels like we have a slightly more high maintenance and more expensive puppy. So here's a little catching up, starting with Gunnar's birthday!

April 5th I woke up a little before my alarm thinking my water may have broken. Sorry, TMI, but it may have just been a little leakage. I still felt a little funny, but knew that I had a OBGyn appointment around lunch that day anyway, so I went into work thinking I would just ask the doctor about it later. Nothing else really happened all morning other than I was feeling a little crampy. I continued on with several meetings and running around to job sites all morning. At my doc appointment she confirmed my water had not broken and that I was not dilated at all, which convinced me that the baby was not actually on his way out at all. Ryan and I grabbed some lunch before he dropped me off at work to finish off the day. I walking into my office to drop things off then started walking out to another meeting when my water for sure broke this time! I quickly waddled off to the rest room to clean myself up then tried to go back to work, but I had several subsequent gushes that needed to be cleaned up. That finally convinced me that I should probably have Ryan come back and pick me up. I frantically wrote down a bunch of notes for my replacement and met with her before leaving work around 4pm. I set my out of office and let my boss know that there was a good chance I was not coming in the next day. I called the hospital and they told me to come right in. We dropped Ben off at the house and headed to the hospital. I still wasn't having any kind of contractions so I figured it would be a while. The confirmed that my water had broken so they admitted me, but when the doctor had checked me out around 6pm I wasn't really dilated so again I figured it would be a while still. I was starting to get some light contractions by then, but nothing too bad. All of a sudden...BAM...light contractions turning into full on labor and pushing a baby out! They were still trying to get my fluids IV in my hand (I have the world's tiniest veins apparently). I asked at one point if it was too early to get an epidural. In my mind I assumed I was still in the beginning staged of labor and thought it was going to get way worse and last for a lot longer. I didn't think I could handle that. Turns out it was already about the worst it was going to get and I didn't have too much longer. They didn't have time for that epidural anyway. Apparently I wasn't breathing enough through the contractions and the baby wasn't getting enough oxygen, so they strapped an oxygen mask to me...which I guess I decided to get a bloody nose into...super cute I'm sure. They turned me on my side (which at that point was super difficult to move at all) and started having me push. My eyes were shut and I have no idea what was going on in the room, but I remember the doctor telling me that I needed to get the baby out ASAP, so the next contraction I had, I pushed with everything I had...and a baby came out at 8:35pm. I think I remember actively pushing only twice. Ryan told me later than they were prepared for having to rush the baby off to revive him because they were scared off how low his heart rate was getting during labor. Little dude came out like a champ and they handed him right over to me! Another fun fact...I was still in the dress I wore to work that day because everything happened so fast I hadn't had a chance to change yet!









Everything still seems like such a blur of people running around checking everyone's vitals and doing tests for the first few hours. I was also in quite a bit of pain at the point and couldn't really move, but they gave me the baby for a while and we did lots of feeding and napping at that point. We stuck around the hospital for another day and a half getting monitored and doing lots of tests and eating lots of hospital food and watching harry potter. On the 7th (his actual due date) we got to take him home. I was a little shocked that they didn't really check us out or anything, we just walked right out with our baby.