• A growing baby who is gradually getting back up to her birth weight (her two week old goal), who lost her umbilical cord stump today, and who, according to her doctor, has the strength of a two MONTH old!

• An amazing husband - he gets up with little one in the night, he changes diapers, he picks her outfits, he makes me breakfast, he gives me awesome foot massages, he does laundry, he makes dinner, he washes dishes, he puts together bottle drying racks, he runs errands and gets us groceries and other necessities - and he does all this in a single day! You wouldn't believe all he has done to help me physically as I have recovered from the c-section.
  
  
• Family nearby - both Josh's parents and mine have been a tremendous help and I know they will continue to be so. It's also such a blessing to have my brother and his wife nearby who I can go to with endless questions since they are walking this same journey as us, just 3 months ahead of us.
  
  
• Simple pleasures - the beautiful sunshine today, being able to get out, leave the house, drive through neighborhoods I haven't seen in weeks, run errands - even if it just meant sitting in the car with Baby while Daddy goes in to all the stores for us.
  
  
• God - from whom all blessings flow!
  
  
• Sleep, which is where I am headed now. Who knows for how long...
  

home sweet home
after 12 days in the hospital i am home.

home and with our daughter catherine addison
she makes our hearts melt. we love her so much.

funny ow quickly things change. like our vocabulary.
i used the term "eat-ums" this morning.

and how now we are constantly referring to eachother as mommy and daddy.

daddy just left to pick up a couple things. like breakfast.

i'm typing with my left hand as my right arm is holding baby girl.
this is my first time at the computer (whoops, hit the space bar in my sleep therr) since friday morning before surgery. it just hasn 't been much of asss priority. (i currently have 72 facebook notifications waiting for me)

recovery has been rough to say the least. i think i'll spare you the details for now. i'll sum it up with nausa, vomitting, dizzy, groggy, lightheadedness, extreme fatigue, pain. oh the pain...

my mantra that i repeat dozens of times throughout the day is:
"every day will get a litttle bit easier. every day will get a litle bit better."
sometimes i say it with cnfidence. sometimes as a prayer. sometimes while weeping.
but "every day a little bit easier. every day a little bit better."

when it's extra hard, i look at her aand know it's worth it.
we find ourselves mesmorized by her expressions, her stretches, her squirms, her beauty, her smiles, her skin, her full pouty lips, her furrowed brow...
i especially get a kick out of seeing her squirms and realizing she made those same movements in me.

i thought about going back and cleaning up all my typos in thi post but figure it is a better representation of our reality to leave it as is.

Currently looking forward to (in no particular order):

• Meeting our daughter
• Leaving the walls of the hospital
• Seeing our neighborhood
  
• Being home
• Sleeping in my own bed (as little sleep as I will get)
  
• Using my own bathroom
• Sharing a bed with my husband again
• Surgery being OVER
• Being able to put socks on myself again at some point
• Going to church
• Wandering at Target
  

According to the doctors' timeline we've made it to 39 weeks!

The official plan (as much as you can plan these things) is to meet our little (or not so little) girl this Friday via c-section. It is scheduled for 11:45, but that can vary a bit either way depending on other surgeries.

Yep, 11-11-11 is our daughter's potential date of birth.

Funny, I vividly remember reading an article on cnn.com 9 months ago about how couples were trying to conceive so that their baby could try to be born on 11-11-11. Ha! At the time we were trying to conceive, but that wasn't the reason why!

So, needless to say, the next couple days are going to be a bit more challenging as we wait, become more bored and more anxious.

Please be prayer for my/our anxiety. Pray that it won't affect our sleep or our health. In particular I anticipate Thursday night to be quite challenging as we prepare for Friday morning.

We ask for prayers for the surgery and for baby's and mommy's health and safety.

Then I know recovery is gonna be very challenging, especially as we are learning how to take care of a newborn.

Also please pray for Josh as he is working through Thursday and providing much support and care for me.

The staff here continue to be great! I've had visitors here and there during the day, as well as my mom spending a lot of time here too, and we are grateful for that.

After baby arrives and Josh is here full time we will want to focus more on the three of us rather than keeping many visitors. Yah, we're gonna be "those people" who limit visitors in the hospital and "those people" who keep the baby's name a secret until she's born!

Yes, we finally agreed on a name a couple weeks ago! We look forward to announcing it soon! Thanks so much for your continued thoughts and prayers!!

There is not much new to report. We have been told it really is a scenario of one day at a time. We are still in the hospital. That will not change until we take our baby girl home.

Today is Day 4 of our stay. According to our doctors' timeline (which is what we are going by now, as opposed to our timeline which is 3 days behind our doctors' as far as due date is concerned), we are 38 weeks and 3 days pregnant.

Our goal is to get to 39 weeks, which is Wednesday, November 9th. National studies have recently been done that show great brain and respiratory development for baby between 38 and 39 weeks. So, unless something more urgent would arise, they plan to keep her in me until then.

What happens then once we hit 39 weeks is still uncertain. There have been signs that prompted us to consider a c-section, and that is most likely the route we will take. Of course this was hard for me to imagine since this is not what we have envisioned for the last 9 months.

Tonight there are 2 nurses in our area whose only patient is me. This is very different from last night and today, as the unit was very busy with many babies. It is such a blessing because we were able to spend a long time chatting with them and asking them endless questions about what to expect with a c-section here. After getting a LOT of details and information, I feel so much peace.

God is good. We continually pray to feel His presence among us, and I feel He did that through these nurses.

We are blessed. We are surrounded by people who are looking out for me and Josh and our baby. We have had a great, healthy pregnancy for 9 months and are grateful that this bed rest and hospital stay are relatively short in the grand scheme of things.

I also realized that the mysteriously high blood pressure readings at our doctors' office (that went away as soon as we got the hospital each time) were what led us to be admitted to the hospital which led us to learn about Baby's issues of distress and umbilical cord problems. The astronomically high BP readings were actually a Godsend because without them I never would have been admitted to the hospital.

We are fortunate to have our families close and available to help with some meals for Josh, visits and care for me throughout the day while Josh is at work, as well as many other things we ask of them.

We appreciate your thoughts, comments, offers of help, and prayers. For those of you who have offered to help, we are still trying to figure out what we need most. One thing that comes to mind would be meals for Josh as he is fending for himself so much and is home only briefly between work and here, basically long enough to check the mail and pack another change of clothes for himself and anything else I need from home. If you feel so inclined, we would appreciate any gift cards for quick meals for him to grab on the go (for example, Jimmy Johns, Panera, Chickfila, Chipotle, Culver's, Starbucks, Martin's Supermarket). After we go home I know that we would continue to benefit from meals. Our church's care ministry team has offered to provide a handful, which we are grateful for. If anyone else wants to contribute, it would be greatly appreciated. We will probably know more needs as they arise later. Of course we expect to need some last minute baby stuff when she arrives, so Target gift cards would be a benefit for that.

Please know this is not an unsolicited begging for help. I just know many of you have offered assistance or asked how you can help, so these are just some things that came to mind.

Ways that you can pray for us would include:

• health and safety for baby, Josh and myself
• wisdom for Josh, myself, and the doctors
• physical and emotional strength for both Josh and I
  
• that we would commit our trust to the Lord for this and all circumstances
• continued peace and comfort from the Lord

Thank you all very much!

The words of Jennifer (as scribed by Josh):