read the owner's manual

i'd like to try to start back my "something spiritual for the sabbath" posts. today will be my first in a long time.

today, in relief society (the womens class), our lesson was on a talk given by dieter f. uchtdorf, the second counselor in the general presidency of the LDS church. he is an awesome man with a wonderful gift for speaking in very plain and simple ways that are fun! to read the whole article, go here. 

the article is titled "your potential, your privilege" and in it he basically poses the questions to all members of the church "are you living up to your potential or are you living below your privilege that is your right as a child of God?" he then offers solutions to help us live up to our potential in order to experience our privilege. although i could write pages on my thoughts and feelings of the entire article, i have decided to just focus on his first point- "read the owner's manual".

what is the owner manual he is talking about? the scriptures of course! and modern day revelation. are we really reading the words of prophets past and present to learn and absorb their words and messages or are we just going through the motion? or are we reading at all? are we praying to understand how to apply these messages into our own lives so that we can live more worthily of the privileges?

these questions are what i must ask myself. matt and i have been really good for a long time now at reading the book of mormon together every night. even when we are apart we call each other before we go to bed and read together. so that's great, we are doing family scripture reading. i chose the word reading, not studying, for a reason. we are doing what we've been asked, we are reading daily, but we are not living up the potential of the activity and studying it out, discussing it, and getting deep into it. we are not trying to find real life applications to help us live better and easier lives, which understanding and applying the scriptures offers us. we are not experiencing all the privileges that the book of mormon has to offer us! so there is something i need to work on, with my family.

now what am i personally doing as far as reading the owners manual is concerned- practically nothing. i occasionally read an article out of the ensign or new era and when i was teaching sunday school, i did prepare my lessons, but other than that, i am not even going through the motions. now that i am a stay at home mom, there is no excuse! i am going to have time in my day to read, i have a newborn. he sleeps- a lot. and i am going to have time to study, and delve into the topics of the gospel that i want and/or need to know more about. i will have time to find ways to apply the things i learn and to live better and understand more fully what it is that the Lord wants and expects of me.

so that's my challenge to myself- to begin a serious study. i know what i believe but i want to know more. i want to know more for myself, so that i can be a better latter-day saint, missionary, wife, mother, daughter, friend, sister, and person. and there is only one way to accomplish that- read the owners manual.

the hospital stay

here will be my last post on the birthing experience of baby evan.

after the surgery, i felt really bad. i felt like i was going to pass out and/or puke at any moment. i didn't want to hold evan for fear of dropping him. so when they finally wheeled me back to the room, i just made matt come stand by me for a while so i could look at the little bit of perfection we brought into the world. finally, after about an hour, i felt up to holding him.

clearly i was not feeling my best. i went into the hospital having my swelling down a little and then i came out of surgery more swollen than ever. not to mention the morphine they gave me post-op made me incredibly itchy, especially my face, so i scratched all of my makeup off. 

katie and grammye were our first visitors. they came as soon as they could. grammye had been the one taking care of me for the 2 weeks prior to the birth, so she was definitely ready to see the boy. katie had been DYING for him to be born, she was SO excited for us to finally have a baby in the family. they loved him instantly, of course.

 her 8th great-grandchild

ak and her baby with the bear she bought him- cola

the rest of the day we took a nap and just enjoyed out little boy. i regained feeling in the lower half of my body and then they made me go to the bathroom. this was the weirdest experience. it took me 40minutes to pee! the spinal doesn't wear off on your insides for 24hours so my bladder was numb. it was literally like i had forgotten how to pee. it finally got better the next day. grammye came back with poppie and brought matt dinner, the only thing i got to eat that entire day was 2 graham crackers and 2 things of jello.

the first night was the hardest time of the whole hospital stay. the spinal had practically worn off completely and i was in a lot of pain. it's the only time i cried. luckily, matt was so incredibly awesome to me. he helped in any way i asked. the nurses were great too, and the meds helped a lot.

the next day we had more visitors. first kaitlin came.

then my parents finally arrived! they couldn't leave until my dad got off work on thursday and it's a 12 hour drive from nyc. this is the first grandchild for them (and for matts parents) and they were so excited through the whole pregnancy. so they finally got to meet the mister!

then while my parents were there, the nurse came to tell us he had jaundice. this didn't come as a surprise to me since i had jaundice as a baby and i actually have a liver syndrome which is adult jaundice. so they brought him a glow worm blanket. he looked so cute in it!

the next day, saturday, he had another visitor, georgianna! but his jaundice had gotten worse so he was now in a glow worm suit. but when i changed his diaper she got to hold him.

then, his jaundice got worse again so he had to go into the glowing bed. my parents, grandparents, and sister all came back to see him too. since he was not going to the bathroom and his jaundice was getting worse, they had to supplement with formula so katie got to feed him a little bottle.

the next day, sunday, was going home day! i really did enjoy my stay at the hospital. everyone was so nice and i got treated so well. katie and my dad came by the hospital again since they both had to leave to go home. everyone was just so happy that he got come home with us because they were warning us that he might not be able to if his jaundice was not getting better. thankfully, after prayers and a blessing, he got better and after the nurse heard the 2 clicks of the car seat, we brought our baby home!

the c-section

as you all know, i had to have a c-section. the reasoning for that is in another blog post if you're interested in the why. this post is just going to be a run down of the morning up to his birth. there really isn't anything graphic or scary in it, i'm just sharing my experience.

we arrived at the hospital at 5:30am on thursday, august 4 for the birth. they took us back to our room and asked me a bunch of questions before putting my i-v in. let me tell you, that hurt SO bad. seriously! because i couldn't eat or drink after midnight and i had been downing water constantly, i was dehydrated and my veins were not cooperative. they had to prick me 3 times and it just hurt really really bad. the firs 2 times they hit walls and tried to push through them- major ow. the final time it didn't actually hurt, because they did it in the right place.

anyway, enough about what should have been meaningless. the anesthesiologist came in to give me a run down on the spinal. his nurse was SO nice, i loved her. he made me feel fairly comfortable about what was about to take place. then they gave matt his scrubs to change into and started to wheel me into the operating room. we left for the o-r at 7:30.

i was not nervous at all until we got in the o-r. for some reason i just did not expect it to look like a real operating room but it did. i told them all i felt like i was on a medical tv show. it was just so white and sterile looking and everyone had on masks and there were tons of machines and tools- it scared me. the nurse helped me though by holding my hand while they put the novocain in my back to numb is before the spinal. this burned really bad for about 5 seconds and then, i didn't feel anything. i did not feel the spinal AT ALL so it was worth the little bit of burn.

they laid me down on the table and started doing stuff. the nurse kept talking to me to keep me calm, i loved her! then the anesthesiologist told me he also has gilbert's syndrome (a liver syndrome i have) which was neat to talk to him about. every now and then they would ask me "did you feel that?" my answer was always no and then they would say something like "we just pinched you as hard as we could". once i was totally under, they let matt in and they started the cutting.

before we got there, matt said he was not going to watch, he thought it was gross. but then when they said "we're pulling out the head" matt stood up and never sat back down. here are the pictures he took of that moment

pulling out the head! 

here he comes!

he's here!!

everyone warned me that i would feel a ton of pressure but i didn't. i didn't feel it really at all. he came at exactly 8am. he immediately cried and they lowered the sheet to show him to me. we just loved him instantly! matt was really into watching the surgery and even after they had him out, the nurses had to call him over to the baby because he was watching them finish up the surgery. he went over and got to see all the stuff going on like the clean up, measuring (21.5 inches), weighing (10 pounds 3 ounces), dressing, etc. here are some shots of all of that stuff happening:

so here is where it got bad for me. once he was out, i felt terrible. i felt like i was going to throw up/pass out. my hands got all tingly and weird, i just felt horrible. i kept my eyes closed and just tried to relax. matt came over every now and then to check on me and was sweet through it all but the nurse was the best, she calmed me way down. they brought evan over for some photos before matt got to take him back to the room and just be with him while they finished cleaning me up.

even with the bad feeling after they took him out, i would say overall the experience of the c-section wa very positive. i felt no pain (until that night...) and it was super fast and easy. but most importantly, evan arrived perfectly perfect and healthy because of it. here are some additional photos from the o-r:

evan is here!

there is a real reason i haven't been blogging, and it actually has nothing to do with my sweet new baby. it's a simple reason- we have no internet! but my dad is visiting right now and i am using his little internet flash-drive thing that his company has so i can post the announcement of...


EVAN JOSEPH SMITH!

he arrived on thursday, august 4 at 8am on the dot. he weighed 10 pounds, 3 ounces and was 21.5 inches long. he is the best baby! seriously. not to mention ADORABLE. but back to being the best- he doesn't fuss, ever, unless he's got a dirty diaper or is hungry. he wakes up only once a night to eat. he loves to be held and by anyone. he sleeps a lot but is also awake and alert enough to thoroughly enjoy all of his little faces and sounds and cuteness. i just adore him! so here are some photos of the boy. i will post more details about the hospital stay and all of that later. for now, just bask in his cuteness via photos

tomorrow is THE day

tomorrow, thursday, august 4, evan will be here!

today i went to the doctor for what i already knew would be my final prenatal appointment, since they were going to induce me saturday if i didnt go into labor before then.

well the appointment didnt go all that well. i had not progressed one bit and while i had been loosing weight at my last few appointments, i gained weight at this one. the dr was a bit concerned so he sent me down the hall to have an ultrasound to see how big evan was measuring.

well the ultrasound tech laughed. she said "he's big". i said "big big?" she said "big big. he's weighing in at 10lbs 13oz". i know there is a 15% margin of error with the ultrasound measurements but that still means he's at least 9lbs and a few ounces. so then i went back my exam room.

the doctor came back and told me the following. he said inducing me would be a complete waste of time and energy. he honestly doesnt believe i would even fully dilate to 10cm (my mom was only 4 after 32 hours of labor). he said even if in the slim chance i did, he is absolutely confident is would take at least 24 hours, which to him, is just too much. then he said he would fear the worst case scenario- he is very confident that his shoulders would not fit. he called it "shoulder ___ (something)" and said it's where the head comes out and then, it's bad. so he said to avoid all that will inevitably happen, we must do a c section.

i have had a feeling this was coming. my mom had to have an emergency c section with me and a scheduled one with katie. the dr said he has been thinking for a while this was the direction we were headed because of the lack of progress and the fact that my belly is just much bigger than it should be.

he asked me if we could do it today. i told him matt was 2 1/2 hours away so he said what about tonight? well when he called the hospital and asked if that was an option, they literally laughed at him and said "no". so he said "what about 7:30 in the morning?" and they said "perfect!" then he put me on the phone, they told me some stuff, and we were all scheduled.

so matt's on his way now to charlotte with katie from band camp and tomorrow at this time, we will have a baby boy! now the question is, how big will he really be? (and don't worry- i didn't buy any newborn clothing and was only given about 5 items, i NEVER thought i was having a baby under 8lbs.)