Elese meets her Nana , Grandpa and Grandma Lambeth

Elese with her Grandma and Grandpa (Garrett's parents).




Elese and her Nana (Kelly's mom). The only person missing, my dad. I know he would have loved her the very minute he saw her.

WOW! Not what I was expecting.

Yes, I look like a chipmunk. Silly me, I actually thought that once the baby came out that I wouldn't look pregnant anymore, hah!

Drum roll please! Elese Makenna is here!

I actually can't believe we made her! What an amazing moment! I have never loved someone so much in my life.

Our Labor Story

Many are aware that we were planning a water birth at home, let's just say it didn't quite work out that way. So here's a little insight as to how that all played out. I was due October 19th and as usual with your first I was "late". I woke up at 1:35 Friday (the 24th) morning with contractions that were a little more regular then they had been prior to that day. Honestly I didn't pay attention to the duration of the contractions because I figured that they would do what contractions are supposed to do, intensify as the labor progressed. So I decided to sleep between contractions and let Garrett know when they were coming and when they were over. We also called our midwife and were instructed to call her when my contractions were 3-4 minutes apart for one hour. As my labor progressed I decided it might feel better to get in the birthing tub, and it was amazingly relaxing. The tub was so relaxing that I fell asleep several times. At about 8:00am my midwives and Doula showed up. Upon being checking I was only at 4cm which at that time I had the urge to push and was beginning to become really uncomfortable. My water broke at 4:00pm and I had only dilated to a 6. There are a lot of details in the middle that I will spare you from, so long story short, I labored at home with the urge to push for a total of 20 hours and only dilated to an 8. By 9:30pm my midwives felt at that time the baby was trying to tell us something (like "there is no way I am coming out this way.") so we made the decision and headed to the hospital at 10:00pm. Once at the hospital I received and epidural and continued to have contractions but my dilation reduced to a 7 and she "backed up" the birth canal. At 6:00am Saturday morning I was given pitocin with no progress and the her heart rate started to show signs of stress. Finally the Dr. suggested that I have a c-section. It was definitely not what we had planned for the arrival of our baby girl but knew it was going to be the best decision to get her out safely. Finally she arrived at 1:21 p.m., a healthy 8lbs 12 ozs. Come to find out she was facing the wrong direction, posterior, and had she been smaller I may have been able to get her out the good ol' fashioned way. We are so excited to be parents and are loving every minute of it.

3-D Ultasound

We decided that we couldn't wait to see our little girl's face so we had a 3-D ultrasound done. It was amazing to see the little one who was growing inside of me.

We have a foot!

Today we went for the big ultrasound to find out what we are having. It has been a long time coming. I have to tell you that I don't like surprises, so when I was told I had to wait until I was 18 weeks pregnant to find out the gender, I wanted to pull my hair out in anticipation. So the dad to be took a little wobbly footage to have for a keepsake.

This is our peanut!

I went to the doctor at 7 weeks to have an ultrasound. Although we still had our doubts that this pregnancy would stay, we were so excited to see a heartbeat. To date we had never had a heartbeat with our previous pregnancies. It was such an overwhelming moment for us. We both were pretty choked up over that fact that we will finally be blessed with a baby and be called mama and dada.