..newborn photos..

we took finn to get his newborn pictures taken when he was only 6 days old! some people were so surprised that we would get them done that early, but most photographers recommend doing it within the first two weeks, because that is when they sleep the most. and sleep mr. finn did! he would wake up occasionally when he didn't like a certain position, and he peed a couple of times, but for the most part he was a champ! i am so pleased with how they turned out. i searched and searched for a photographer that was "just my style" - it took me a couple months to find her, and when i did i knew she was the photographer for me! we scheduled his photo shoot clear back in february...finn didn't make it here by the date we originally scheduled! little bugger. so we rescheduled for one week later and it was perfect. i love them all!

..finn's first easter..

we had a fabulous easter this year. something about having a tiny person living with you makes every day fabulous. :) i am sad we weren't able to go to church (everyone has advised me to wait at least 6 weeks before taking him bc of all those germs) - bc while our day was fabulous, i did miss the unique spirit that is always present in church on easter sunday. not to say we didn't feel the spirit...this tiny person so fresh from heaven fills our home with such a wonderful spirit, and this year more than ever in my life i am so thankful for my savior...for his atonement and resurrection...and the knowledge i have that our family will be together forever. :) my little guy is 2 weeks old already! we had his first doctor's appointment today and he is perfect! he didn't like when the nurse pricked his foot with that needle, but he didn't even cry...just grunted and moaned. this boy sure is a great baby (knock on wood!!) and makes life so enjoyable and fulfilling for his mama and daddy.

his 2 week stats:

weight: 8lbs 2oz (back to his birth weight) - 30%

height: 21" - 61%

head circumference: 38.2cm - 73%

..life with baby finn..

wow! it is hard to believe that at this time one week ago i was sitting here, timing contractions...wondering if i was really in labor! actually at this very moment we were getting ready to leave for the hospital! crazy how fast a week goes by.

{baby finn}

life with baby finn has been incredible! at one of my baby showers the ladies asked me to guess what type of personality he might have based off of how he was "in the womb." i told them i thought he was a very sweet baby bc he never really kicked or punched me! i always felt him moving, but never got many painful kicks or jabs. and so far i have been right...baby finn is so so sweet. we went to get his newborn pictures taken yesterday, and the photographer just kept commenting on how sweet he is. he sleeps most of the day, but when he is awake he is so alert and content. i was worried about whether or not he would be able to sleep through our crazy dogs barking - they tend to get pretty loud, but finn sleeps right through it so far. he is also a little tease - i cant even count how many times we have changed his diaper, and the second we pick him up off the changing table he pees or poops again! he especially loves to do this to his daddy! :) i don't know if it is the diapers we are using or what, but he pees through about 4 outfits a day! haha or he did for the first couple days. we have gotten better about checking him more often...what can i say, we are new at this! so far he doesn't like baths - but who would when you are just getting sponged down?!

{finn and his daddy}

i don't know about other girls, but while i was pregnant i wondered what lance would be like as a dad. i am not saying i didn't think he would be a good dad - i wouldn't have married the guy if i didn't think he'd be good with our kids. but he just never seemed too attached to the baby while i was pregnant. sometimes i would say to him, "are you even excited?!" and of course he said he was, i just never really saw it. but the second baby finn was born, lance turned into such a papa bear, and it just melts my heart to see him with baby finn. he is so loving and attentive, and always concerned about if he is too hot/cold, comfortable, hungry, etc... whenever anyone holds finn i can see what is going through lance's head - he is so concerned with how they are holding him, and if they are supporting his neck and head enough. normally i am the paranoid, overly protective person in our relationship, but it's almost as if our roles have been reversed. i can just see the love that lance has for finn and it makes me love lance even more. i know he is going to be such a great father, and i am excited to see the bond these two develop. :){how it feels to be a mommy}

i don't think anyone ever really knows what it's like to be a mom until you hold your baby in your arms for the first time. some things all the sudden become so much more important, while other things don't matter at all anymore. the lack of sleep and not being able to go places like i used to...all the weight i gained and the discomfort i experienced during the previous nine months don't matter at all to me. all i care about is baby finn and his comfort and health and well-being. rather than worrying about how horrible i must look since i haven't showered in two days, i worry about finn and whether or not he is getting enough to eat, how many wet and poopy diapers he has had and if the number of hours he sleeps is normal! already i love him more than i could ever put into words...and i don't think it has even totally hit me that i he really is here.

{finn & his older brothers}

as many of you know, i was so worried about how duke and claus would react to their little brother. everyone kept saying to me, "you are going to have two very jealous dogs when that baby is born." i got so annoyed when anyone told me that, mostly i was just hoping they would be wrong. and wrong they were! duke and claus absolutely LOVE baby finn...especially claus. duke doesn't really seem to notice finn much until lance gets home from work and starts holding him. then he becomes very interested and likes to be right there by lance and finn...in on the action. but he doesn't act jealous. claus follows me around everyone, just like he always has. he stands right by me when i change him...he sits right by us when i am just holding him...even when i am nursing finn, claus just sits right in my lap! it is so cute. claus is very protective of his little brother - whenever anyone comes over, claus sits right by whoever may be holding them, just to make sure they don't hurt him. :) claus loves giving finn kisses, and at first finn didn't like them. he would pull his hand away or kick his little legs any time claus licked his hands or feet. he has started to make this little squeal whenever the dogs kiss him...it is pretty funny! and i am happy to report that my feelings for my dogs have not changed! i love them just as much as i ever did, perhaps even more, after seeing what cute big brothers they are. :)

{my initiation into motherhood}

warning:this story kind of contains a lot of information, but i am blogging it for my own documentation!

we came home from the hospital tuesday night (4/12) and everything was perfect. duke and claus reacted better than we ever expected to the arrival of their little brother, and it just felt good to be home...to finally have baby finn in that crib that was so empty for so long. i fed him at about 8:00 and everything was fine, then we put him in his crib where he fell soundly asleep. he woke up hungry at around 11:00 pm...i tried to feed him but my milk had come in and i was totally engorged!! ahhhh it was awful! poor finn couldn't latch on bc...well i will leave it up to your imagination! anyway he just cried and cried and it was so sad. he was so hungry, and i could tell he was so frustrated bc he was trying his hardest but just couldn't latch on. so we gave him a binki and rocked him and got him to fall asleep...but still that didn't solve anything bc the poor guy was starving and couldn't eat. i figured that if he was really starving, he would latch on eventually, so i decided to wait until he woke up again before doing anything. well he woke up at 1:00 am, starving and screaming. i tried nursing, but he still couldn't latch on. i didn't know what to do, so i did the only thing i could think of that might solve our problem - got in my car and went to wal mart at 1:30 am to buy a breast pump. i knew they didn't have the one i wanted - i had hoped that we could hold out til the next morning until target was open so that i could buy the one i wanted - but when your brand new baby is starving and sad, you do what you gotta do! so i bought a breast pump, came home and pumped some of that milk out, hoping it would help baby finn latch on....and sure enough it did. :) on my way home from wal mart i was just overcome with love for baby finn. there isn't a thing i wouldn't do to take away his pain and sadness.

{my RAGING hormones}

after giving birth to cute baby finn, so many people would say things like "get ready for your hormones, they will be out of control!" well i couldn't really figure out what they meant, because my hormones have been out of control for nine months! haha well i guess it's another one of those things where you don't understand it until it happens to you!

my first hormonal moment happened while listening to the tim mcgraw song, "don't take the girl." there is a verse about a mother giving birth to her baby....and i just totally lost it! i have heard this song hundreds of times and it is a sad song, but it has never made me cry the way it did this time.

the next time i totally lost it was a couple days after we had been home. my mom had been coming over during the days to cook and clean and help with baby finn. well she wasn't able to come the next day and when she left that night i totally lost it, and i mean totally. i think i cried for two hours! and it wasn't even that big of a deal...i could handle being at home alone with finn, i wasn't too scared and knew that if i had any worries or concerns there were so many people i could call to come help. there is just something about having your mom there to help you, especially when you have no idea what you are doing! it is also just nice to have someone here to talk to. i think that being a mom makes you appreciate your own mom that much more, and i am so grateful that my mom lives so close and is able to come over so often. she was about as excited as i was for this little guy to get here, and i am so grateful that baby finn will have such a wonderful grandma. :)

our friends, the clarks, brought dinner to us one night, which was so incredibly thoughtful and nice, considering she just had a baby three weeks earlier. well, a couple days before they brought dinner to us, i was telling jen how one of my cravings since giving birth was apples and caramel dip...so guess what jen brought with dinner - apples and caramel dip! i totally just started bawling! haha i think i have appreciated things more than i ever did...i am so grateful for friends and family who care so much about us and who are so willing to go out of their way to show their love. it just means the world to me!

baby finn's pictures were scheduled for saturday 4/16, and to my surprise lance was able to come (i thought for sure he would have to work, he has been sooooo busy)! so the night before we were just hanging out, and lance says to me, "i don't think i'm gonna go tomorrow." i just started bawling and said, "lance, you have to." he said, "why?" i said, "i can't go alone, i am too scared." he just had this confused look on his face and said, "what are you talking about?!" i said, "finn's pictures. you have to come!" he said, "no, i was talking about the bachelor party i am supposed to go to tomorrow night. i don't think i am going to go." haha then he gave me a great big hug and said, "of course i wouldn't miss finn's pictures."

well there you have it. a novel of our first week as parents. i am so grateful for all that i have been blessed with, and honestly our first week home has been more wonderful than i ever would have expected. i am so thankful for all the amazing people we have in our lives, who already love baby finn so sooo much. i am thankful for an amazing husband who works so hard to provide for our little family, and for being such an amazing father. and i am so incredibly thankful for baby finn, and for the love he brings into our home. :)

{baby finn @ one week old}

..mr. finn jeffrey powell..

april 10, 2011

8:38 pm

8lbs 2oz

21 inches long

we are SO in love :)

..HE'S HERE..

Yes ladies and gentlemen, we are more than thrilled to announce the arrival of baby Finn Jeffrey Powell!! It feels like we've been waiting FOREVER for this little guy to get here...but he was well worth the wait! :-)

He weighed in at a whopping 8lbs 2oz and is 21 inches long - bigger and taller than I was expecting originally but not at all surprising since he was a week overdue.

Here is the story of Baby Finn's birth...

For the past three weeks I have been between 2-3 cm dilated and completely effaced. My nurse told me three weeks ago that I could go at any time...and everyone that I told those numbers too thought the same thing! Hence my extreme impatience with each passing day that he did not come. At my appointment two weeks ago Dr. Barton (who I absolutely adore) said, "wow, I am really surprised to see you here, I thought you for sure would have had him by now!" Ha ha great, just what I wanted to hear! ;-) Well the days kept on going by - me, along with a ton of other people were 100% convinced Mr. Finn was going to make his grand entrance on April Fools Day bc of the joke I played on everyone last year (I announced I was prego on Facebook and 99% of my friends and family believed me)! Well April 1st came and went and still no Baby Finn. At that point I gave up hope ha ha and in my head came to terms with the fact that I would probably have to be induced.

Last Monday at my appointment I hadn't really made any progress...but I was still far enough dilated that really it could have happened at any point. Never the less we scheduled an induction date - April 11. At that moment another week seemed unbearable! I was fine physically, but
mentally I was going insane! I just wanted to hold my baby boy!! The week passed surprisingly fast and I actually got SO much done. I got a
pedicure, bought finn some more clothes (gap was having a sale, how could I not?!), completed some finishing touches on his nursery, spent
a ton of time in bed just relaxing with drawers and phobs (aka duke and claus), and pretty much just took it easy! I have to admit it was a
pretty good last week. The only thing I was way bummed about was Lance's sister, Tiffany, was coming to town April 8-10 and we thought
he'd be here by then when she planned this trip over a month ago, but of course April 8th came and still no Bebe Finn.

On Saturday the 9th I had nothing to do until the evening. I woke up and it was snowing and Lance had to work so I decided to stay in bed
all day! Ha ha and I mean ALL day. :-) Well when I got up to go to the bathroom at about 8:30 that morning, my underwear were wet. Not soaked completely but wet enough that it was uncomfortable and I had to change. It crossed my mind that my water may be leaking...I have
heard of that happening. However I went to the hospital a few weeks earlier for the same thing and it was just mucus that was coming out. I
felt stupid for being paranoid, so I decided to wait it out. Well the day went on and I had to change my underwear 4 more times! Finally I had the sense to put a pad on, and in 3 hrs I had soaked through that too! This didn't seem normal so I called the on-call doctor to see what he recommended. Of course he told me it would be best to go to the hospital and get checked...but he also said that since I was already dilated
to a 3 it was very likely that it was just mucus and normal vaginal discharge coming out of me. He said that in most cases, contractions will start within 18-24 hrs of your water breaking, but you run greater risk of infection if you go any longer. Stupid me didn't want to be that overly paranoid person who went into the hospital a second time bc she thought her water was leaking. I mean how many times does that even
happen?! Most women's water doesn't break until they are in full on labor and for those women whose water breaks before active labor it is
usually a fill-your-shoes type of gush/puddle that comes out! So I convinced myself that I was being paranoid and didn't go in to the hospital.
That night at about 10 o'clock I started having contractions. REAL ones, which I was thrilled about even though they hurt. I had never felt an
actual contraction until that point, and was afraid I would be that girl who delivered her baby at home bc she didn't leave for the hospital in time! The contractions lasted about 3 hours, then they went away, so I knew I wasn't in labor yet.

We woke up this morning and just took it easy...it was our stake conference, and of course we didn't go! Ha ha Mostly I didn't want to see
people from my ward and hear them say, "you still haven't had that baby?!" ;-) jk. My contractions started up again around 10:00 - they hurt worse than the night before and were 6 minutes apart. Lance's fam came over for breakfast since it was Tiff's last day in town, and I wasn't
feeling too great. At that point (12:00) they were 5 minutes apart. Around 2:00 they were 4 min apart...i waited for an hour or so then decided it was time to go to the hospital! YAY!!

So we got here and were admitted by 3:30 pm. A nurse hooked me up to the heart rate/contraction monitor thing, then she checked to see if my water had broken....and indeed it had. The nurse said "yep, you've ruptured, you are having a baby today!" Holy moly...what we had been waiting for all these weeks. Unfortunately, because I waited so long to come in I had a fever, which is a sign of infection. I felt so horrible -
already the worst mom ever!! The nurses assured me that the baby was doing just fine, but I still felt so bad. Around 4:30 pm the nurse hooked me up to an IV and gave me antibiotics for my fever and started me on pitocin so that my contractions would become stronger. The
on-call doctor who I spoke with the day before came in and explained what was going on. Lance asked him how long it would be before the baby came and he said anywhere between 2 and 30 hours! Ha ha what a great time frame, eh? He said that bc I was dilated to a 4 my
labor might not be as long as some women, but I wasn't about to get my hopes up! I was prepared for the longest labor in history since this little guy showed no previous signs of wanting to leave my uterus any time soon!

At this point I was feeling terrible. I think a lot of it was my fever...not only were my contractions extremely painful but my body just wasn't up to par. I would describe my contractions as terrible period cramps combined with abdominal Charlie horses! Ha ha plus I was feeling extremely nauseous. My nurse told me I could have my epidural whenever I wanted it, but she and the doc both recommended I wait until
the pain was unbearable so that it would have a greater effect. I lasted about an hour! Ha ha I felt like a huge baby, but can I just say THANK THE HOLY HEAVENS!!! Once that thing was in I was happy as could be. From that point on my labor and delivery were absolutely
wonderful! I didn't even care if my labor lasted 10x longer than it would have if I had waited, I was just glad to be able to enjoy the whole experience rather than wish I was dead! ;-) jk.

6:15 rolled around - exactly one hour after my epidural - and the nurse checked to see what I was dilated to. I almost didn't believe my ears when she said "you're all the way there...you're at a 10." Are you freaking serious?! OMG! I was so happy. However, his head was still a bit high, so the nurse said we would most likely wait for another hour before starting to push to let the head descend some more...but she called the doc for instructions and he wanted me to start pushing right then. So we did. Starting at 6:50 I pushed and pushed and pushed! For nearly 2 hours I pushed! But it wasn't bad since I couldn't feel much. And honestly I wasn't that tired, I mean heck, I had only been in labor
for a couple hours! MY doctor showed up around 8:00. I was SO thrilled! I always just assumed it would be the on-call doctor who would deliver me since it was a weekend but I was wrong. I have grown to absolutely love Dr. Barton over these past nine months...he is so easy going, which balances out my neurotic paranoid personality, and he just has the best bedside manner. I did get annoyed every time I had to wait over an hour to see him during all my appointments, but in retrospect that waiting was worth it. :-) Needless to say, having him deliver me just made my whole experience even that much better! Anyway, we pushed a few times but I still had a little ways to go so he left for a while. After 30 minutes we still hadn't made much progress so the nurse called the doc back in, he snipped me (sorry for tmi!) and as he was doing it he said, "okay, you are going to deliver him on your next push so make it your best one." I think I went into shock at that point...after 24 years of imagining what it would be like to have my own baby, 9 months of carrying this sweet little boy in my belly, a month of waiting impatiently for him to get here and 4 hours of an absolutely enjoyable labor, I couldn't believe it was time to meet Finn and look into his adorable eyes!! The moment came, the doc told me to push, I did and out popped Finn!!! Dr. Barton told me that if he would have given me the episiotomy an hour earlier he would have come that much sooner. Thanks for the extra hour of pushing doc! Ha jk.

The second I heard that scream and saw that face and held my sweet, handsome, adorable, beautiful baby boy....I can honestly say it was the absolute best moment of my life. I started talking to him and to see him just stare at me...is there anything better in the world? He knew who his mommy was. :-) After a few minutes of laying with him they took him to be weighed and measured and of course they needed to check his vitals to make sure he didn't have any infections. Then we let the grandparents in the room...my mom, Lance's mom, his dad and dad's girlfriend were all waiting impatiently outside...they were so thrilled to finally meet him. :-)

So there is the story of Mr. Finn Jeffrey Powell's birth. We are absolutely in love with him and so thrilled he is finally here! As long as the wait seemed, it was so totally worth it. We are just grateful he is healthy and so far he has been such a sweet baby. We couldn't be happier.

..patiently - or not so patiently - waiting..

at one of my ultrasounds, the technician was trying to get a good picture of finn, but he wouldn't move, so the tech said "you have a lazy baby." haha and i am starting to think he might be right! which wouldn't be so bad for the first few years... ahhh wishful thinking. he will probably end up being a holy terror, but hey, what can you expect when half of his genes come from his father? ;) just kidding.

this little boy is just nice and comfy hanging out inside of me. what does he think i am, free lodging and an all you can eat buffet?! i just can't imagine how any living creature could be comfortable in such a cramped and tiny space, but finn must be bc he is showing no signs of wanting to leave. my dr. stripped my membranes at my appt to weeks ago - i was 2 cm dilated and 95% effaced, and the dr. told me to expect him to come within two days. YAY! well, two days went by and still no baby finn. then the next week at my appt i was 3 cm dilated and fully effaced...when the dr. first saw me he said "wow, i am so surprised to see you here, i thought you for sure would have had him by now!" haha thanks doc. NOPE. so he stripped me again, hoping to start some contractions, but did it work? no siree! at my appt yesterday there were really no changes - 3.5 cm dilated and fully effaced. the doc stripped me again, but it's not like that's going to do anything! haha this kid is staying put if he has anything to do with it, which he has everything to do with it! so we scheduled a date for induction - monday, april 11. although i really really just want finn to come on his own, it is nice to know i only have one more week.

another week of waiting seems like forever, but i know it will go by fast! it is amazing how fast this whole pregnancy has gone...even the past month. i look back at what i was doing a month ago and it's hard to believe that much time has passed. we sure are excited to meet our little boy, but i have to believe that he is still cookin for a reason...a reason that only him and heavenly father are aware of! i know in the end it will all work out and be for the best.