Pictures...

July 4th, 2 days before Levi:

 

Hannah being so supportive when I was in labor.  She's asleep.

Justin is ready for my C-Section:

Levi meeting his Mommy for the first time.  He turned his head toward me when he heard my voice.

Levi meeting his Daddy for the first time:

 

Going home from the hospital!

Home at last; in one of his favorite spots:

Levi Wesley Clem is here!

I have been remiss in posting on here due to my busy schedule.  Work was super busy before I went out on PTO due to the fact that both the Controller and CFO of Triad left for other jobs, leaving me as the most senior person in the Operations department.  I had to train my replacement (who I have no faith in and can't stand) and the new Controller of the company.  I was ready to leave - I am so glad I was pregnant and due when I was! 

My doctor's appointments leading up to Levi's birth weren't promising - I never showed any signs of going into labor.  So on July 5th, when I still had no signs of going into labor anytime soon, my doctor scheduled me to be induced the following morning, July 6th, at 5 am.  Basically, there was no point in waiting another week to see if he would come out on his own - if he didn't within another week, I would have been induced anyway as the risk of losing the baby increases the longer you go past the due date.  So Justin and I arrived bright and early to get checked into the hospital.  By 6:30 am, the Pitocin had been started into my IV.  Much to my surprise also, was the fact that I was apparently having contractions 3-5 minutes apart for 60 - 90 seconds each, but I never felt them.  As the morning wore on, my parents showed up and Justin's Mom arrived.  Hannah arrived after lunch.  Everything was going fine all morning - I started dilating and the contractions weren't too bad but Levi still wasn't coming down.  Around 1:30 the doctor came in and broke my water - Levi finally dropped a little bit, but within an hour had gone back up.  Also, the contractions had become much more intense and after having my water broken (it hurt), I opted for an epidural.  The anesthesiologist gave me my epidural around 2:30 and I was about 4-5 cm dilated.  From here on out, progression was slow.  The nurses kept trying to change my position to get Levi to drop but he wasn't having it.  Every time I was turned to my side, his heart rate would drop drastically when I had a contraction.  After a scary call around 6:30 in which they thought his umbilical cord might be wrapped around his neck, we had a feeling a C-Section was in our future.  Also, my epidural was wearing off on my left side in the back so I was really uncomfortable.  Finally, a little after 9:00 pm, after no progression for 3 hours (I was 7 cm dilated but he still hadn't dropped at all), the doctor made the call for a C-Section.  At 9:38 pm, Levi was born.  And I'm not going to lie, the C-Section HURT.  Next time, I want a spinal or just knock me out completely; I want more than just an epidural.  The rest of the night was very long.  I finally got to see him at about 1:30 am and breastfed him for the first time.  I didn't get too much rest that night and after having been up since 4:00 am the previous morning, 15 hours of labor, and major surgery, I was exhausted. The rest of our stay was just getting used to having a baby, trying to get around, and having tons of visitors.  We were discharged Friday at about 3:30 or so - less than 48 hours after having him. 

The last 10 days have been crazy learning what Levi likes (being held constantly and the football hold for breastfeeding) and dislikes (being put down).  He is absolutely adorable - but I might be a little biased.  I would post pictures but I need to find our camera cable!  He is perfectly content in his Baby Bjorn as I write this, but it's about time for a feeding....

What a Sweetie!

Justin sent me flowers today for no reason; they were beautiful and smell divine!

Latest Levi Pictures

I had an ultrasound Monday, April 25th to see how big Levi is.  My doctor was a little concerned with how little weight I've gained (about 11 lbs), and how big Levi seemed to be getting.  They estimated him to be about 3 lbs 10 oz which puts him in the 67th percentile.  We'll see what my doctor says this Friday about these results!

Can you see his face?  It looks like his nose is smushed up against my belly or something!

And his beautiful profile of course:



Last Trip Before Baby

I warn you now, this is a long post!

Justin and I took one last trip in February, when I was 20 weeks, to Nashville, Tennessee.  And we drove.  We started our trip on Wednesday morning and stopped in Nacogdoches to visit Justin's Grandma, who was in the hospital, and ate lunch with his mom.  We made it to Little Rock, AR that evening in time for dinner and stayed the night with Justin's Uncle Ron and Aunt Nevada.  Also his cousin and her family came over to visit.  Thursday morning we continued on to Nashville where we used Justin's Hilton points to stay at the Hilton downtown - and it was the perfect location.  Our room was on the top floor and had a great view of the Country Music Hall of Fame.  We were also right behind Music Row and a block from the Ryman theater.  That Thursday afternoon we just walked around Music Row checking out the little shops and grabbed a bite to eat at a little hole in the wall place.  On Friday, we started a little late but still managed to do a tour of the Ryman and the Country Music Hall of Fame.  Thanks to the hotel concierge, we had some great coupons that saved us a lot of money on entrance fees.

 

The view from our room of the Country Music Hall of Fame. It is designed to look like a keyboard from the front and if you were directly above, it would look like a treble clef.

  It was really nice.

 

That Friday night we went to the Grand Ole Opry and got to hear Jimmy Newman, Sunny Sweeney, Steve Wariner, Riders in the Sky, Connie Smith, Little Jimmy Dickens (who was hilarious, even at 90 years old!), Ray Pillow, Terri Clark, Vince Gill, John Conlee, Craig Morgan, and Jesse McReynolds and the Virginia Boys.  It was a great show and again we had awesome aisle seats down in the "Gold Circle" thanks to our hotel concierge.

On Saturday we checked out the Parthenon and went out to the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's home.

I'm not sure why Justin was attempting to do the Egyptian (or is that the Running Man?) in front of a Greek replica inspired building, but it was cute and I took the picture nonetheless.

This does NOT look like the statue I saw in "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief"!

Out at the Hermitage, where Andrew and Rachel Jackson are buried.

Their house was very pretty inside (no pictures of course). We toured the grounds via a carriage ride which was well worth it because it was actually pretty cool that day (in the 50's I think) and I was 20 weeks pregnant - that would have been a lot of walking and I was feeling lazy!

The rest of Saturday was spent visiting with some old family friends of Justin's, the Bingham's, who live in Nashville.  Their son was part of a business expo that was going on in the convention center, again only a block from our hotel.  We all went out to dinner afterwards at the Wild Horse Saloon.  Mr. Bingham knew a guy that worked there so he got us seats right away at a bar which he opened up just for us.  His friend also gave Justin and me several souvenir glasses for free!

The next day we checked out and headed to Memphis.  The plan was to spend Sunday night in Memphis but when we started looking at where our hotel was (way outside of the downtown area), we decided to cancel our reservation and just drive all the way to Nacogdoches instead.  We did stop in Memphis to eat lunch down on Beale Street and listened to a little bit of music.  We plan to take another trip to Memphis in the future and actually spend some time there.  But the break was a nice reprieve from the God-awful Tennessee highways.  We ate at the Rum Boogie Cafe which was a favorite of my Dad's when we lived there. 

We didn't make it in to Nacogdoches until about 10 that night.  Justin's Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Daryl were there to let us in the house.  It was a long drive that day (about 14 hours), but I'm glad we went ahead and did it.  That gave us the luxury of being able to sleep in on Monday and only having about 2 1/2 hours left to drive back to Houston.  We visited his Grandma in her assisted living place that morning and she was doing much better than when we saw her in the hospital.  She still didn't talk much but she smiled a lot at Justin and made out a couple of words.  This was also the last time we saw her alive because she passed away on March 17th.  So we are even more grateful that we made it back to see her again that day.  We finally made it back to Houston that afternoon, tired from being in the truck/driving, but glad we had the opportunity to check out Nashville and take our mini-vacation.  It's certainly not the last time Tennessee will see us; we'll be back again someday!

Some Belly Pics

 

Here are a few belly shots.  Justin loved the one of me, barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.

I'm even bigger now; I think this last one was taken on 2/15.  I need to get Justin to take some more!  He is kicking strong and moving around a lot.

It's a BOY!

And here's the obvious proof:

 For those who can't figure it out, this is looking at him with his butt closer to you and his legs up in the air with the tell-tell sign standing at attention in the middle.  As the ultrasound tech said, "Whoa!"

And here is a profile with his little hand just above his head.  He was moving around like crazy the whole time so that was really fun to watch!