sure am glad i didn't actually unpack my bags

so i have to apologize to talan. on easter sunday, april 8th, i wrote a complaint blog about how this kid was never going to come and how frustrated i was. i have since realized he was being quite considerate and only allowing for all of my plans to happen. i was able to eat a real easter dinner and see blades of glory as planned. in fact, we have to give some credit to will ferrell and jon heder and the rest of the cast as it is possible the laughter helped put me into labor.
we went to a 5:15 show and then headed back to my mom and dad's house for round 2 of easter dessert. awhile later we headed home. hayden watched a show and i wrote a blog complaining about how nothing was happening. when the show was over, dave headed off to put hayden to bed. he called his parents to wish them a happy easter and explained my situation about how i would have to be induced if i didn't go into labor by tuesday. i was watching the amazing race on tivo. it was just before 10pm when i started to feel a contraction, one with a little bit of pain, nothing major. but it was one of the first real contractions i'd had since saturday morning. all of a sudden i felt a pop and i just yelled out "OUCH." dave was in the other room and ignored me thinking the cat had just bitten me. i was sitting there thinking my water had broken and was kind of waiting for the flood to happen. dave realized it wasn't the cat and i made my way to the bathroom. there seemed to be some fluid but nothing major. so then i just said "what am i supposed to do?" it didn't really seem like my water broke and i wasn't really feeling contractions. i decided i should call my mom to basically give her a heads up that she might need to get over to our place soon. i called and said "i think something might have happened" to which mom replied in a panicked voice "what happened?! WHAT HAPPENED?!" she yelled at me to call the dr. and call her right back. i put a call into the answering service and as i was waiting for the dr. to call me back i started to feel some contractions. i told dave to call my mom and tell her she should get over to our house. this time realizing, unlike the last time, that i didn't have time to wait around once i felt contractions.
the dr. called me back and when she heard that hayden was born in about 2 hours she said "PLEASE get over here right now." my mom got to the house pretty quickly and we loaded up the car and got in as the contractions were getting worse. dave was busy text messaging the world letting them know we were on the way to the hospital while my pain was getting worse and worse. we got to the hospital and i was rolled through the emergency room with this extra-large security guard yelling out the whole way "she's ready to go. this baby is coming" and EVERYONE in the emergency waiting room was just watching me. at one point, when i didn't have a contraction, i almost just started doing the miss america wave. but then another contraction took over.
so i get up to the triage area and they were waiting for me. the on-call dr. let them all know that i was on my way in and that i needed to be checked right away. i'm guessing that it was a little before 11pm at this point and when they checked me i was a 5. so i look at the intern and say "a 5?! that's ALL?!" and she just says "a 5 is A LOT. most people come in at a 2." they asked me if i had a plan for drugs and i told them to give me anything and everything they could. they said they would call the anesthesiologist for an epidural. they also told me that my water had not, in fact, broken. still not sure what that "pop" was other than a sign from god to GET OUT NOW.
not long after being checked in triage they rolled me down to my delivery room and told me if i ever started feeling more pressure or a feeling to push i needed to tell them right away so they could check me again. not long after getting to my room i told them i felt like i might need to push soon. so they check me and i'm suddenly a 7. at this point the anesthesiologist walks in and asks why they waited so long to call him. that being a 7 he couldn't guarantee that it would work. great. here we go again. they explained to him that i just got there and i was only a 5. you can say the drug dr. wasn't mr. personality but let me tell you, he sells something i want. lucky for me, he is one of the best and was able to get the epidural in just in time and it did work. and it worked quickly. i can't even believe the difference. and honestly, anyone who decides to do this labor thing with no drugs on purpose is straight up retarded. i can speak from personal experience doing it both ways now. jessica, justin and my mom showed up and were in the delivery room with me and dave while we waited out my dilation process (later i was told that we were the funnest patients that our nurse had ever had.) so we're sitting there and justin decided to break my water. he was talking about reece's peanut butter eggs of all things and i let out a laugh and then said "oh crap. my water just broke." basically, you can say that laughter is what brought talan into this world. not a bad way to start out. so i call the nurse in and the family leaves. they check me and say, "you're plus 2, complete. you can push anytime you want." because of the sweet sweet drugs, the pushing process wasn't as quick as it was with hayden (2 pushes) but it was a lot more comfortable. i maybe pushed for about 20 minutes, maybe.
our second son, talan cash skiver, entered this world at 12:22am on monday, april 9th (only 23 minutes after his due date) weighing in at 7 pounds 3 ounces and 21 1/4 inches long. right away we all thought he looked so different from hayden. hayden came out looking identical to me when i was born. we couldn't really put a finger on who talan looked like, but he looked different. maybe it was the newness of him, but given some time we have actually seen quite a bit of hayden in him now.
jessica, justin and mom stayed for awhile with us before heading home for the evening, around 2am. dave and i got as much sleep as we could possibly get in a hospital room. but talan has so far been a wonderful, relaxed, easy going baby. he has rarely cried and when he does, it's a couple of squawks. we aren't banking on him staying this way as we know that hayden was a relatively good baby and then the colic struck. but for now, we are enjoying it. he has now let us sleep through 2 evenings and we're hoping our first nite at home will go as smoothly as the 2 nites in the hospital went.
big brother hayden came to the hospital to visit us yesterday. he knew that mommy was in the hospital but wasn't told that i had the baby. when he got there my dad was holding talan and jenn was holding rainah. we pointed to talan and said "do you know who this is?" and he said "rainah!" and we pointed over to rainah and said, "no, that's rainah, who's this?!" he looked quite confused. the babies in this family are just multiplying. we introduced him to talan and he just said "yes! i'm a big brother now!" not long after, he started running around the room being hayden and not really caring what in the world was happening around him. he didn't really want to hold him or do anything like that, but really only because he had better things to do. why in the world would he want to actually sit?! i think it will take some time for him to really grasp that talan is here to stay. but i think he's going to do far better with it than i initially thought he would.
we were released from the hospital this morning, tuesday, april 10th at around 11:30am. i apologize again for not getting information to everyone. i know many of you got an email saying my water had broken (which turned out to be a lie) and we were headed to the hospital but then got no other info after that. we tried for the past 24 hours to get a internet signal in the hospital and it just didn't happen. when we'd actually get one we would lose it before we were able to get the email out. so thanks for the patience. keep checking this blog as well as hayden's for pictures and posts. soon i'll be adding a link to talan's own page as well.
thanks to everyone for all the well wishes and love. can't wait for you all to meet talan cash.

sorry for the delay....

so i'll post the birth story soon, but for now we wanted to get some photos up. my intentions were to post blogs and pictures throughout the process, but who knew that providence hospital doesn't have wifi?! sorry for the hold up.


before drugs. at this point i was about 7 cm dilated:


people that don't get drugs on purpose are just retarded. i know for a fact, i've now done it both ways (and NOT on purpose)

introducing......talan cash skiver 4/9/07 12:22am 7lbs 3oz 21 1/4 inches



when talan was first born we were all surprised by how much he did NOT look like hayden (and me) but this picture is proving us wrong.

mommy and her boys

grandpa kellogg and the grandkids


taken this morning shortly before heading home

i'm unpacking

this has gotten quite ridiculous. after having some pretty consistent contractions friday nite and even some on saturday morning, there was been nothing. some typical contractions that don't hurt and aren't consistent. i've only got about a day left before i go into the dr. and he tells me to pick a date to be induced. not good.
i only want this thing to come out so badly because i DO NOT want to be induced. further explanation tells me that they'll have me come in one evening to give me some pill to soften my cervix and then the next day they start the pitosin. that's just not feasible for someone like me. i have panic attacks. i can't sleep in any bed other than my own. there is no way i'm going to be able to stay in a hospital for 2 or 3 nites. not gonna happen.
it's also quite frustrating after having zero indications that hayden was about to show himself to the world until 2 hours before he did and this one i was sure i'd be having it yesterday....and now, NOTHING.
i'm hoping this kid is just being difficult in the womb and when it pops out it will be the opposite of hayden. i can dream, huh?

my bags are packed

last nite i decided to clean the house and try to get things moving with this baby. i vacuumed and mopped and was even on the floor washing the baseboards. probably a little before 9pm i started having some contractions. but contractions that actually packed a little punch with them. not just the standard stomach tightening contractions. after awhile i decided to start timing them as they had been fairly consistent. they were about 8 minutes apart. at about 12:30 i decided to go to bed. maybe i shouldn't have, cuz i really didn't have many more after about 1am. i woke up this morning and after getting out of the shower i started feeling them again. i'm not sure that they are as consistent right now as they were last nite, but i have been having quite a few and they aren't the nicest feeling things in the world.
it's just such a difference between this and hayden. with hayden, i didn't feel contractions like these until about an hour before he was born and close to the time i started feeling like i wanted to push. so now i'm sitting here wondering....when in the world might this actually happen?! i don't like hospitals so i certainly don't want to get there any earlier than i have to.
many of you will be happy to know that last nite i partially packed a bag. i got all of hayden's easter stuff together so that if i end up in the hospital the family can know right where it all is and he can still have a somewhat normal easter. we even dyed our easter eggs this morning.
so at this point, i'm waiting for dave to take a shower and then we might go walk the mall (livonia mall, so if my water breaks nobody will be around). while we're walking most likely a big topic we will be discussing are names. we're doing better than we were at least. i think we're set on a boys name and we have 3 candidates that we can't decide on for a girl. maybe while walking the mall we'll just start yelling out the names and see what works best.

the deadline has been set

yesterday i went in for another ultrasound to check my fluid levels. dad said i could have done it a whole lot cheaper just going to jiffy lube and i think i agree. the fluid levels are even higher than they were when we went in on march 12th. mom and jessica went with me (mom cried, of course) and the ultrasound tech told them to stand clear of me if and when my water breaks cuz it's just gonna be a mess. here are some more photos of the baby at 39 1/2 weeks.


this is a picture of the baby's face. it is looking right at you. the tech stated once again that this baby has a lot of hair. big surprise.

this is the baby's arm and hand which is up over it's face:


today i went in to see my dr. for another non stress test since they are closed tomorrow. everything once again looked good, but again he had concern over the fluid level. he said that since the fluid levels are going up still he is giving me until my appointment on tuesday to go into labor and then we will have to induce. from there, i will probably be induced somewhere between tuesday and thursday all depending on the schedule. i REALLY don't want to be induced. and as much as i don't want to be in the hospital on easter, right now, i'll take anything other than being induced. he is just concerned that my water breaking at home is not the safest thing with all the extra fluid. and the longer that we wait, the more of a concern it is. so, we know that this baby will be born by a week from today.
dad is making me sit on garbage bags when i'm at their house so i don't ruin the furniture with what he calls my "tsunami." i'm just scared i'll be sitting in church on easter sunday and the flood gates will open. would make for an interesting story though....

39 weeks and 3 days.....but who's counting?!

i'm beginning to think my early delivery is not going to happen at this point. only 5 more days until my due date. and here's the thing. we have plans to go see blades of glory on easter nite. so that means, i need to go into labor in the next couple of days so i'm out in time for showtime. either that, or it has to wait until after the movie. and if it decides to come DURING the movie?! well that's just cause for switching kids in the hospital.
last friday i was in for another non-stress test. the baby was moving around like crazy. each time i go in they find the heartbeat on the opposite side. it's just constantly doing somersaults, i guess. so the whole time on the machine last week the baby was moving. i had to move the heart monitor 3 times because it kept moving off of it and it wasn't registering. i was in the office for about 2 hours because it just wasn't cooperating.
today was yet another non-stress test. but i was in and out very quickly. my dr. said that my baby has always looked "beautiful" on the machine. so it's doing well. just doesn't want to come out just yet. no real contractions while i was on the machine today. i have yet another ultrasound scheduled for tomorrow at 1pm for a fluid check. they just want to see if my fluid level is still high or if maybe it has gone down some. if it has gone down, they don't have to watch me as closely. but like he said, the ultrasound and results really won't hurt or help that much. i'll go in for another nst on friday and then another with my regular dr. next tuesday. on tuesday, if i make it, he'll check me to see how far i'm dilated. at that point he will talk to me about induction. he doesn't want to, and neither do i, but he said he doesn't want me to go much past 41 weeks even without the extra fluid. he said that induction with extra fluid is sometimes a really good thing because they can break the water in a controlled environment. but he does want to give my body as much of a chance as we can to do it on it's own. so if i do make it until tuesday, chances are, we'll have the baby a couple of days after that by induction. the nurse said that i looked like i dropped, so that's a good sign. and i keep remembering that with hayden, i really had no symptoms and then suddenly he was here. so i know that it could happen at anytime.
so that's the scoop. nothing really new. maybe we'll have a couple more pictures from the ultrasound tomorrow. i'm sure they won't look too different from the last ones. but i'll still post them.
until then....i'll be walking the streets of redford.

the office, and not the tv show, that's much funnier

the office is more or less done now. it was a huge project and dave managed to do almost the entire thing by himself. there is still some clean-up work to be done, but all in all, it looks great. here's the blow by blow:


i totally forgot to take a "before shot" so this is as before as you're gonna get. the studs are up:





here's some exciting shots of the drywall being put up:




and here are the photos of the finished product:

the nursery progress

so the nursery has pretty much been done for about a week or two now. but technology has been keeping me down. so at long last, here are all the photos of our progress.


here is what we had to deal with, painting white over DARK blue. i loved that room though, and will miss it:


safety always comes first with dave. lasers are dangerous:


top and bottom coats done after only 2 days:


dad's beautiful chair rail job:


the crib:

the finished room. my dad just finished building that shelf on the wall which is almost identical to the pottery barn shelf hanging in hayden's room. he also built the dresser/changing table when i was pregnant with hayden. it is one of the most beautiful pieces you'll ever see. seriously. and my mom made the curtains. good thing i have martha stewart and bob villa for parents:






so there are a few other little touches that need to be put in the room which probably won't happen until after the baby is born. like the name above the crib. but first, we must know what we are having. and even before that, we need a name. hmmmm......