Finally we have the time and concentration to sit down and do something for ourselves! It's been a long road these last two weeks. My whole life I have wanted to be a mom and had NO clue what that entailed until recently. It has been emotionally, physically, and spiritually the biggest challenge I have ever faced. I have had to make more snap decisions than I ever have in my entire life. Thanks to Lindsey, I have realized that deciding to feed Kate at 3pm or 4pm thankfully has no eternal significance! Either way she eats and gets nourishment and in turn is a growing, healthy, baby girl! It's just my need to control the situation that needs to be put under the microscope. Thanks to all of you came to see us and helped us so much in making the transition with Baby. We have been feasting on all of the wonderful treats that everyone left in our freezer. Everytime we sit down for a meal we are reminded of how much we are loved! Jason has been so amazing with helping me feed Kate at night and with staying calm. I had to make a really hard decision about breastfeeding vs bottle feeding and finally had to pray hard and just make the plunge. I won't go into a lot of detail, but anatomically Kate and I are not a good match for nursing. We thought we would be able to overcome it, but I started to dread every feeding because of how much pain and tears were involved. I wasn't bonding with her and felt nauseous every time I heard her cry, because I knew what was wrong...she was hungry and I was the only one who could feed her. I did a lot of research and asked for lots of advice and have decided to pump as much milk as I can from myself and supplement the rest with formula. It has made for a much happier household since mom is not constantly in tears. Satan still grips me with guilt sometimes about not nursing so I still need you to pray for God to help me overcome that. On a lighter note, I am posting a few pictures of Kate's first few days of life. We have been in kind of tizzy with our three-hour rotating schedule and have forgotten to take a lot of pictures, so some of these might be repeats, but some of us haven't even seen her yet! Sorry for such a long post there's been a lot going on lately!!

Jason had said right before she was born, "I hope she grabs my finger." And she did. =) This was right after she was born and they laid her on top of me. At the time I was still smiling, but in about 5 min they had to take her away from me because my blood pressure dropped significantly and I didn't have the strength to hold her or feed her right away. I was very sad that I couldn't do those things. That wasn't the way I had pictured it. They kept me in labor and delivery for a few hours after her birth to keep doing blood tests to count my blood cells. We are so thankful that I did not have to have a transfusion.

She was SCREAMING the whole time, it was the most beautiful sound ever. Not so much anymore.

Thank heaven for epidurals.


She was immediately calmed when daddy was holding her.

I had just had a shower...I have never enjoyed a shower that much in my life. I wanted to be clean for our first family photo.

Go to the blog to see this video