Welcome Rowan

Rowan Zachery Van Wyk is here! He made his way into the world on January 20, 2011- which was his ultrasound due date, and the day that I said he would be born :) If you don't like birth stories- you better stop reading now. Here is how Rowan made his debut.

On Wednesday the 19th Sawyer had a bad croup attack and we ended up taking him in to the ER where I work at 5 am. He came into our room with dusky blue lips and fingernails, and he was shaking and wouldn't open his eyes. He was fine, got some steroids, got to visit with Dr. D at 5 am :) but there were about 10 scary minutes at home before we took him out in the cold car and he started to get better- I had contractions pretty much the whole time- nothing makes me nervous ussually but I love my kids and it was a bit scary. We got home at 7am and I noticed I had lost my mucus plug- no big deal, you can lose it and not go into labor for weeks, but with Sawyer I lost it when I was IN labor. Had an OB appointment at 10 am- had Dr. W strip my membranes and I told him "tomorrow is the day I guessed he will come, does that work well for you?" And we had a good laugh and I went home and spent the day with playing with Sawyer, cooking, cleaning, ect. That evening I noticed that I was having some really really mild contractions, and they felt different than my usual braxton hicks contractions- because they actually didnt hurt at all and sometimes my BH did hurt a bit. I laughed and told Zach "well tomorrow is my guess and I think I could be trying to go into labor!" Went to bed and slept well most of the night, except waking up to go to the bathroom and check on Sawyer a lot. At 430 am when I was going to the bathroom I noticed I was having contractions. Was up again at 530 and still having contractions. Sawyer woke up early at 630 and came to our bed to cuddle and I announced to him and Zach, I think we get our baby brother today! Horray! Everyone was excited- Zach decided he would go in and get some orders dropped off for the week if today was going to be the day- so he didnt have to worry about doing it after baby came. He told me to get up and time a few contractions before he left. Got up at 7am and timed my first set of contractions and they were about 5 minutes apart, and once I was up and about, they hurt! I told him to go to work but to make it quick because this wasn't going to take 26 hours like it had with Sawyer, I could tell! I got up and got ready and got Sawyer ready and was by 830 when he got home I was breathing through contractions every 3-4 minutes. Sawyer went to Zach's parents house and I decided I would sit down and see how far apart my contractions were if I relaxed a bit- they were still 3-5 minutes apart and painful. We decided to go to OB at about 930 or 10am- I wanted to make sure I didn't get to far along before I could get my epidural because with Sawyer I transitioned without it and it HURT and I had noticed I was already having bloody show at home. Got to OB around 10ish and was 5cm dilated and contracting every 3-5 minutes with strong contractions. Labored there, did admission stuff, and waited for Dr. W. Zach rubbed my shoulders and we played monopoly on the ipod to try to distract me from the pain. Dr. W. came around 1130ish and I was 6cm. He said to go ahead and get my epidural and he would be back to break my water. Got my epidural from one of my best friend's husband's and he did an awesome job. He gave me a half dose rate because I told him I wanted to be able to feel my contractions still- it was wonderful. I could move my legs and I could still feel every contractions but the pain wasnt bad, they just felt like a LOT of pressure. Once I was feeling good Zach went to get lunch- it was about noon. Dr. W came and broke my water while he was gone, and when Zach came back upstairs with food Dr. W. joked that if Zach got to eat, he wanted to also. I was feeling amazing so I told him to go enjoy his lunch! A few friend from work came down to see me and we chatted a while. Immediatly after my water was broken i could tell my contractions were really strong and were coming one after the other. at about 1230 dr. w came back from lunch and checked me and declared i was complete and ready to push "he's right there!" our nurses were pretty suprised how quickly i had progressed. they got all the baby equipment in the room and at 1247 i started pushing. I pushed about 10ish times and 21 minutes later at 108 Rowan Zachery Van Wyk arrived. Everyone was shocked at how big he was (although i thought he seemed so small compared to almost 2 year old Sawyer) he was a big 8lb 9oz and a shocking 21.5 inches long- too long to ever wear newborn clothes even though he is so long that his legs and waist are too slim for newborn still now. and the best part was- even as big as he was i didnt tear at all- so even right after he was born i felt great. i told zach if it was going to be like Rowan i could have 10 more kids- he told me no way to that many :)

So much to say, so little time...

Its been a while... Christmas was wonderful. Sawyer was so much fun and absolutly loved the idea of Santa, and loved it even more when Santa came to our house- and nana's house and granny's house.... needless to say, the boy is spoiled. In fact, he got tired of opening presents because he just wanted to play with the things he had opened already. We 100% soaked up our last christmas as a family of three. Its crazy to think that next Christmas we will be a family of FOUR and we will have an almost 1 year old at home as well as our big almost 3 year old!

I am 39 weeks now. I have still been feeling great- I think I am actually more comfortable these past few weeks- I think knowing the end is near is making me a big nostolgic and I have REALLY been cherishing the big baby bumps and wiggles because I know this time how much I will miss that feeling. I had a good Dr. appointment today. Baby is doing great, right on track. I am 2cm dilated which is more progress than I ever made before I went into labor with Sawyer so Im pretty happy about that. Dr. W thinks that Ill go pretty quick again since thats how it went with Sawyer. For now we are just waiting to see if he decides to come this week. I have had an increase in contractions for the last week also- hoping that soonthey will turn into something :)

Whats up?

Lots is up. And we have been BUSY. Actually I think busy would be an understatment lately. I have been working extra- turns out I work so little that if I didnt pick up some extra hours I wouldn't qualify for my FMLA leave by about 50 hours- you have to work 1250 hours in a year. And since I was SO close to being there, and considering is a large chunk of (pretty much free) change, I picked up an extra shift pretty much every week for the last month. I should be good to go now, and since one extra shift puts me at full time- the nice part was- my paychecks have been AWESOME. So really, it turned out to be a good thing because I did a LOT of Christmas shopping, because work has been stressful, and stress makes me go shopping. All of my boys are getting spoiled this year :) We had Thanksgiving tonight with my family and tomorrow with Zach's family. I LOVE the holidays!

I have also been trying to get things ready for baby to arrive- organizing Sawyer's room back into a nursery, going through all of his old clothes, ect, AND we have Sawyer's big boy room partially decorated. It really has been hard to find the time to get everything done because when I haven't been at work or out playdating with friends, I have been taking naps with Sawyer. I bought him room darkening curtains for his room to help him nap and oh boy do they ever work- on both of us. I lay down to read him one book and the next thing I know, its 2 hours later and I'm waking up in his bed with him snuggled up next to me. And he is so warm and sweet its hard to leave! Sawyer has been sleeping in his big boy bed now for a while and he does great. He goes to sleep on his own every night after we read. I thought he might wake up at night and get out of bed but he hasn't yet. I think he actually has been sleeping and napping better in his big boy bed which is wonderful because there was no way I was going to have 2 kids in cribs.

Sawyer is a regular chatterbox now days- stringing together 3, 4, 5 and sometimes tons of words together into sentences. And he talks about everything- he must get that from me. I dont think there is a word he can't say- or at least attempt to say. He does have a hard time with his own name though- those darn S's are hard! We have still been trying to play outside as much as possible before it gets too cold. I already am dreaming of spring...

And baby boy #2 is doing well, growing like a weed! I can't believe that I am in my 3rd trimester already. I will be 32 weeks on Tuesday and I feel like this whole pregnancy is flying by. I still feel like we just found out we were going to have another baby, and that we JUST found out that we get to have another little boy. It makes me a little sad because I know I will miss being pregnant- I feel like I am no where near ready to be done yet and I only have 8 weeks left! Maybe Im crazy, but I really love the feeling of being pregnant, and all the little baby wiggles! This baby definatly feels bigger than I remember Sawyer feeling at 32 weeks. And my belly is bigger. He seems like a very sweet baby though- which could be wishful thinking on my part. Sawyer was always a kicker, sometimes I felt like I had bruises on my uterus from him, and once I SWEAR he pinched me in there. This baby dosent kick nearly as hard and ussually he just wiggles and readjusts his position a lot. I have had a lot of braxton hicks contractions and I'm hoping that means they are getting things geared up baby's arrival- unfourtunaly they didnt do much when I was pregnant with Sawyer but heres to hoping that the second time my body wants to move things along a bit before hand. I would love to have less than 26 hours of labor this time.

A very busy weekend

To say we have had a busy weekend would be a bit of an understatment this week. Thursday night we had rehersal dinner for Bryan and Kelsi's wedding. We went through everything twice and the first time Sawyer went down the isle no big deal, but the second time he would NOT do it and screamed NOOOOOOOOOOO- needless to say I was a BIT nervous for Friday night after that little show.

Thursday one of my good friends from work had a baby- so I snuck over Friday morning before the wedding to see them. She had a baby BOY! and has a son about 7 months older than Sawyer. Sawyer thinks her older son B is quite cool, so Im pretty excited for our next set of sons to grow up playing together too! And I LOVE getting to hold new babies :)

Friday was the wedding and I made good and sure that Sawyer took a good nap that afternoon. In fact, I had to wake him up to get him dressed and to the church on time for pictures. He behaved very well at the church for pictures and I kept givinig him snacks so he wouldnt get hungry and cranky. Zach was the best man in the wedding so when the time came Zach was the one who walked down the isle right before Sawyer was supposed to go- so Zach showed Sawyer a dum dum sucker, stuffed it is his pocket and told Sawyer, come get the candy, and went down. Sawyer was THRILLED to be able to go get a sucker, so down he went, giggling the whole way and he go his dum dum. He did GREAT and mommy was so proud!! He was a bit squirrly during dinner at the reception, it was about his bedtime and he didnt want to sit still- plus he wanted his daddy! But oh boy, once they started playing music for the dance he was a happy camper! He danced the ENTIRE night! I didnt take him home until 11:30 because he was having such a good time.

I couldnt for the life of me get this to turn the right way...

Saturday we did post wedding brunch and then spent the afternoon with some friends from out of town who stayed with us after the wedding. They have a baby girl who was born in August and Sawyer was not pleased when Zach or I held her. He would say "no daddy, baby down! Baby DOWN!" A few weeks ago he could have not cared less when I held her... looks like we might have our hands full in a few months. Sawyer was so tired from staying up late the night before that he ended up sleeping for 4 HOURS on saturday.

Today we all slept in and then went on a "farm crawl." 7 or 8 farms in southern Iowa had activities/demonstrations ect today. We went to 4 of them. Sawyer loved the animals and activities and ran all over the place happily. We went to a pumpking patch and poor Sawyer was horrified by one of the decorations they had up- to the point where he almost cried when I went near it. Then an older boy went over and punched it a bunch of times and Sawyer was quite happy again, but still wouldnt go near it. We ended on an orchard where Sawyer got to go on a "tractor ride" and he picked and apple off one of the trees. We ate almost all of it before falling asleep in the car. Zach and I had fun too- Zach bought some local organic honey, and he loves honey. He got me some organic garlic, and I love garlic. There was also really great food, the orchard had amazing fresh apples and caramel. I was one happy pregnant lady :) We also got 1/2 a bushell of fresh apples to take home for juice/cider. It was such a fun day. We ended the night by spending some more time with Zach's parents, and Sawyer was so happy to see them again.

link for anyone without FB

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027838&id=79700095&l=b54216d3ad

Getting ready

Checking out his new log cabin for the first time

Oh, I like it!

Maybe even love it! Zach agreed to letting him have a log cabin playhouse because they arent "too girly"

We have a very busy and exciting weekend ahead of us! Sawyer is one of the ring bearers and Zach the best man in two of our best friends wedding tomorrow night! I was at work the day that Sawyer's tux came in so Zach tried it on him and took a video of him for me to see when I got home. As you can tell, he likes it :)

He danced so much when they put him in the tux that right after zach took it off and put his jammies on him- he ended up throwing up. I guess he shouldnt dance right after he eats. Thank goodness he didnt throw up on his tux!

I had him practice holding the pillow and walking yesterday, just around the house, and he was VERY proud, and excited and, well, CRAZY as usual. I can't decide if he is going to freak out, or if he will ham it up- I think it will just depend on his mood Friday night.

We have been so busy as usual but with nothing specific. Lots of playdates to the park while the weather is so nice. And we have been working on clearing everything out of our upstairs office so it can become Sawyer's big boy room. Its been a slow process for me- I ussually only work on it when Sawyer is napping- IF the rest of the house is already clean. I have his bedding ect. all ready to go, we just need to pick out a bed, repaint the room, get all the office stuff out.... I think it will be a while yet. Its going to have to get cold out to get me more motivated to work on anything inside the house.

Its a BROTHER!

Both hands by his face

Arrow is pointing to the boy parts, kinda flopped over towards his leg in typical male fashion- it was VERY obvious during our US that he was a boy :) He was not shy one bit.

Leg up- that is NOT his boy parts like a few people thought- yikes!

Cute little profile and a hand by his chest

hand on the face

19 week belly- I havent done a 20 week picture...

We had our 20 week anatomy scan this morning at the hospital. I had been literally counting down the days for the past 5 weeks. Ultrasound day is one of my favorite days of the whole pregnancy! Its just so amazing to see that tiny person that has been kicking you- AND Im never really calm about the whole thing until Im told that everything looks good. We got there and right away our US tech asked us if we wanted to know the gender and what we had at home. I said we had a little boy and she said "looks like you are going to have another!!" and I was so happy I started laughing- since about 12 weeks I have been just SURE this was another boy, and actually a lot of the time forgot that I hadnt been told yet that it was a boy I felt so sure. I even had dreams where I had an ultrasound and they told me it was a boy. I was 99% sure up until yesterday when I started second guessing myself because Zach really thought it was going to be a girl- he said he thought it was a girl because he felt like he wanted another boy because he didnt know what to do with a girl baby just yet. Well, I guess he never had any reason to worry :) It was VERY obviously a boy- even more so than Sawyer was. I had by US with Sawyer at about 18-19 weeks- I think we was somewhere between 8 and 12oz, and this boy measured in at 1lb today! And he really looked bigger and more developed that Sawyer did when we saw him- I measured 5 days ahead with my US due date being January 20 which would make me about 21 weeks compared to the 18 with Sawyer's US. I was really excited to hear this part because with Sawyer I was due January 18 but my US due date was Jan 24- which was the day I went into labor! So now Im thinking- perhaps I wont have to go a week overdue with this boy! That would be nice- but Im not going to count on it! Baby Boy was very active and flipped all around and had his hands up by his face a lot- he even had a foot up there for a while! And most importantly- everything looked great. When I picked up Sawyer from my parents house I told him- we saw the baby! And he gave me a suprised look. I asked him this morning if he wanted a brother or a sister and he told me he wanted pizza and a vitamin- so my mom gave him some pizza at her house while she watched him- he is so funny :) Im so excited for him to have a brother and a boy cousin so close in age for him to play with. Im also really excited that I get to use all of Sawyer's baby stuff again- it made me so sad to see him grow out of stuff I really liked and now everything will fit his brother!

Seating for 2!

Well, I bit the bullet and bought a double stroller already. You might be saying - at only 19 weeks!!?? but I found a deal on an awesome stroller that was hard to beat, so yes, we have our stroller about 21 weeks early. The only part that stinks is that now I can't wait to use it and Im going to have to! I got an easywalker duo which is a dutch brand of stroller know for its manuverability on all terrain. I really wanted something similar to our jogger now with air filled tires, suspension, ect since where we live the road tends to be pretty bumpy with a regular stroller. Its a bit narrower than just a standard double jogger, and about 15 pounds lighter because its made of lightweight aluminum. Which was a huge bonus for me because I cant lift much. Im a wimp. I also got a carrycot for the new baby, and a footmuff for Sawyer since I figured we would proably be able to start walking again in March. The carrycot is so adorable! I think its my favorite part of the whole stroller! I went with Aqua and it turned out to be so cute! It was either that, or brown and I did think about getting brown because stains dont show on Brown but Im so glad I picked the aqua-its adorable, and everything is machine washable anyway.

Obviously I havent really gotten to take it for a test drive but Sawyer so far seems pretty excited about the stroller, AND he can climb up into his seat alone which is awesome! He points at the stroller and says, BABY! BABY!

I also had an OB appoinment today. All is well with Baby #2- heart rate was 140 which I think is close to where Sawyer was but I really can not remeber. Im 19 weeks 1 day and I measured 21 weeks- yikes! Maybe that means this baby will come on time- but in all reality Im totally planning on going a week overdue again- I figure if I plan on it, it wont seem like such a long time. I think 2/2/11 (8 days over) is a great birthday :) And the most exciting part of all is- my ultrasound is a week from Friday! Im so excited- and thankfully its in the mornig so I dont have to hang out all day being excited! I know what I THINK it is, but I might end up being suprised :) Which is fine. Just hoping for another healthy little family member. Today Sawyer was looking at a picture of Zach holding him as a newborn and he said, DADDY! Baby! I asked him if he wanted a baby and he said "Brother!!!!" What if it is a sister- I asked him. NO!!! He said in his sassiest voice.... guess he stated his opinion on what he thinks it is! Honestly I think he wants the baby to be an older brother, who can ride a bike, that is what would make Sawyer happy.