Wedding Photos & Baby Shower

This past weekend Jeff, myself and our little Landon headed out to Rosedale to visit with my family. On the Saturday Jeff looked after our little tyke while I photographed the wedding of Mike & Chelsey Tran. The last wedding I had taken photos at was at the wedding of Chelsey's Mom over two years ago. Anywho, it was definitely a challenge but well worth it as I was quite happy with the results! Here I have posted some of my favorite photos out of the 1500 that I took :)
On Sunday my lovely sister and Mom held a baby shower for Landon and I. They sure did spoil us! It was so great to be around old friends and family and show off our little man.

Mommyland

Well, I am officially a Mommy :) Sure I was one a month or so ago but now I really feel like I am. I have started to get the hang of life with my little man but I sure have had some difficulties. My incisions kept me from doing a whole lot in the first few weeks and breastfeeding has been quite the struggle for me. However, now I don't feel any pain at all in my incisions and Landon and my boobs are starting to get the hang of things, thank goodness!

Everything has changed! Now I'm on Landon's schedule, which is fine, but it did take some getting used to. He feeds about every 3 hours or so these days with a little bit longer stretch happening at night. During the day I usually feed him and then right away we go and get something done, whether it be errands or a nice long walk.

Landon is growing up a storm! When he was born he weighed 7lbs 7oz. and was 19 inches long. He has been eating like CRAZY and now at 5.5 weeks he weighs 10lbs 15oz. and is 22 inches long. He's starting to change so quickly with his puffy cheeks, rolls on his legs, and he's starting to follow us with his eyes, turn his head, and lift his head up to look around. It's so neat to see him change, but at the same time it reminds me that he is going to grow up so darn quickly!

My body:
It sure has taken a toll.. doesn't help that I didn't really do any exercise the last few months of pregnancy! I lost 20lbs within 2 weeks of delivery and now I have 20 more to go. I'm eating pretty healthily but I know the pounds are not going to drop off magically. Today I got the okay from my midwife to jump on the exercise train so that is exactly what I am going to start doing tomorrow. I'm pumped! All of my pants and shorts only fit halfway up my thighs.. so i'm definitely excited for some of those to fit again :)

That's all for now, thanks for reading!

My Birth Story

Well, Jeff and I had planned for a drug free homebirth and well, we ended up with something slightly different. I’m sure I’ll soon forget the pains of labour/birth and recovery as having this healthy baby boy in our arms is worth every second of it.

Here is the timeline!

Thursday, April 23

5pm: Water breaks while floating in a cooled down hot tub at Jeff’s parent’s house

8pm: Meet the midwife at Victoria General to get antibiotics because I’m Group B strep positive

9:30pm: Quickly do the belly cast before my contractions start! (I’ll post pics of this soon)

11pm: Contractions are starting up

12am: Back to the hospital for another dose of antibiotics ( have to have them every 4 hours)

1am: Contractions are getting stronger

4:15am: Midwife arrives, contractions are pretty strong

5am: I’m 5cm’s dilated! Woo! Contractrions are super strong, baby is posterior so I’m experiencing crazy back labour

8am: The moms arrive to help Jeff out! I’m moving from room to room to shower to ball, trying it all out. Midwife checks me again and I’m 8cm dilated! Woo! Moving quickly, or so I think. The shower ran out of hot water twice.. not fun!

11am: Pain is getting crazy, I’ve been feeling the urge to push for a while now, midwife checks me, I’m still 8cm – stuck!

1pm: I decide I need some relief, and the baby is not moving any further, heart rate still great though! Time to move to the hospital – worst car trip EVER! Felt like an hour long. I labour at the hospital for a while, I’m exhausted!

2pm: Screaming for an epidural – baby is still 8cm and head is not turned fully yet, still posterior. I get relief and take a 45 min or so nap, thank goodness!

3:30: I get to start pushing! Exciting J But contractions are irregular so they start some plutocin.(not caring about spelling here). Contractions get stronger and I can feel a lot going on down there which was nice.

6:30: Midwife calls in a doctor to see if he can use the vacuum to help the baby out, he tries this 3 times or so, no luck. He says he needs to do an episiotomy, I say go fo it! Get the baby out already! He does this and then tries the vacuum again, after two more tries the baby is just about out when the vacuum pops off. He says we need an emergency c-section. The baby’s heart rate was still pretty good, but I think I was bleeding quite a bit so I had to be under general anesthetic.

7:14: Landon Andrew Mottishaw is born and handed to Jeff in the hallway after being checked out. But, Jeff doesn’t know the sex yet! Our plan was for him to be the first to tell me what the sex was before anyone else knows. So he held our little boy for about 40 minutes without knowing it was a little boy. After I wake up he is told the sex and then comes in to tell me. It was a great end to a longgggg experience.

Now: May 7th!

I'm on the mend! My body is quickly recovering and I'm able to walk around and sit without being in pain, phew! Landon is doing great as he is already up to 7lbs 11oz after starting out at 7lbs 7oz and then losing 10% of his birth weight. Jeff and I are quickly adjusting to life as parents of a newborn and are excited to watch our little man grow.

37 Weeks - Full Term!

Baby Land: Well, it seems like time has flown by so quickly, i'm already 37 weeks preggo! It sure did sneak up on me. If I was to have the baby now it would be considered full term and it would most likely not need any extra care, so that's good to know. The midwife also said that I can start 'helping' the baby along its way. I have already purchased some red raspberry leaf tea and may start drinking it once I feel I'm ready and organized for baby to arrive. That's not to say that anything I do will help baby come sooner, but you never know!
Also, a week ago or so Jeff and I did a tour of the hospital. It's a nice hospital and it seems small and cute, but I'm not too sure I can picture myself labouring there. Our hope is to try for a home birth, and if for some reason I don't feel comfortable with it at the time or if something goes 'wrong' then we can always go to the hospital as it's not too far away :)

Easter: Last weekend my parents came over to the Island and saw our house for the first time! It was great to have our first real house guests as they stayed two nights here. It was nice to have house guests but I sure did notice myself getting tired quickly. Jeff and my Dad ended up puting up our very own clothesline and got the garden ready to go. My Mom and I did a little bit of shopping and got a few things like hanging baskets so that I'll be ready to plant them when the time comes. Thanks for being such great house guests you two!
On the Friday of this weekend Jeff and I also made our first trip up Island since moving over here. We went up in the morning to Ladysmith to wish his Mom a Happy Birthday and to go out for lunch :)

Baby Moon: As my parents were leaving, Jeff and I went over on the ferry with them and headed in to Vancouver where we stayed at our friend's apartment in English Bay with a beautiful view! (He was out of town). We caught a movie, had a nice dinner, strolled along the sea wall, watched blue herons (there's a heap of them nesting in Stanley Park), and relaxed. It was so nice to just do whatever we wanted and enjoy each others company. On the Tuesday Jeff went to work while I went to a few baby stores and Ikea. Got that out of my system for a while! :)
Oh yes, in the morning of the Monday Jeff and I headed out to UBC with our photographer to take some maternity photos. We went to a spot where we were alone and she got some lovely shots! I have a few posted on my facebook if you want to check them out, or you can look at her website at www.lucida-photography.com

That's all for now! Thanks for reading :)

The End Is Near! Well.. sort of.

Well, i'm now in my 36th week of pregnancy and the countdown is on! I'm so very excited to meet this little person. The nursery is pretty much complete, and we have almost everything we need for our little bean to come home with us. Things are starting to get really uncomfortable with my body.. the skin on my stomach aches constantly now as it stretches even further, and the hip pains at night are making it so I'm sleeping less and less, thank goodness for naps! But I must say, I still love being pregnant! I love the big round belly and the oh so amazing movements I am feeling inside.

This past weekend I was out in Chilliwack to visit with my parents one last time before baby comes. I was a little nervous as my husband was in Edmonton and I was so far away from home. A lot of people that I know have been delivering super early! Eek! I'm shooting for 37 weeks, as then the baby will not be considered a preemie. Who knows though, I might end up carrying to 41 weeks.

Don't bother asking us about what names we have chosen and we will not tell you! hehe. We've decided on a boys name and have the girl's name narrowed down to two. However, we're not going to say what the name is until we meet our little one.

Yesterday I had some maternity photos taken by a friend of a friend as she is just starting up her own photography business. It was a lot of fun and the pics look great :) This is her webpage: Bradford Photography.net . We had, however, booked another maternity photo session with the photographer that shot our wedding. She'll be taking pics of us next week out near UBC I believe. Check her out at www.lucida-photography.com . I'm super excited for her to take these photos - you'll see why if you check out her webpage.. she's amazing! She has taken engagement photos for us, weddintg photos, and budoir photos and she has never ceased to amaze me!

Well... Let's hope this little one stays in me for at least two more weeks! Thanks for reading!

Home Sweet Home

Well, we're settling into our new place quite nicely it seems. Over the past week I've been unpacking and setting up like crazy, too much actually. I've quickly come to realize that my body does not handle things the same way anymore. After about one hour of moving things around or cleaning my body is done for the day. They belly is coming along nicely now, popping out and growing by the second it seems, i love it! I cannot believe that I'm already 33 weeks pregnant and will only have around 7 weeks left! Eek!

This past weekend Jeff and I have been prepping and painting the nursery. We have decided to to at least one, maybe two accent walls (depends if it works) using big squares of different colours. The wall was taped off in to 20 different squares and we used 4 different colours to fill them in with white lines seperating them.. this may make more sense to you once I post a photo :) Two of the colours of the squares match our baby bedding perfectly! The other walls will be a neutral tan colour. Let's hope it looks good! The only thing we have to worry about is that the walls are textured, so it's not as easy as it sounds. The paint may bleed into the white lines and ruin our beautiful design, oh well, we'll soon find out!

We've met quite a few of our neighbours now and they all seem quite nice! Phew! The ones next door to us even brought us cookies and a baby gift as they know we are expecting, how sweet eh?

Yesterday Jeff and I became true suburbanites, or house owners I guess; he mowed the lawn and I weeded the garden! It was so nice to be outside in the fresh air and finally actually want to weed and do gardening :) There is still plenty to do, but for now the yard and house are looking great!

I think that's all for now, thanks for reading!

All Moved In!

Moving: 

Well, we're in the new house!  It's great! It's bigger and better than we remember and we are quickly finding out how we want to organize our things. So far we have most of the upstairs organized and parts of the downstairs. It feels so good to have things put away/organized. The actual move went so smoothly, thank you soooo very much to everyone that helped us out, we couldn't have done it without you. We were also so very lucky to have friends to put us up for the two weeks that we were homeless, so thank you :) 

Pregnancy: My belly is definitely growing quickly these days and the little one is moving around like crazy, it's great! I'm pretty sure it is still head down, which is good, and it seems to turn quite often so I feel it's back or butt bulge out. We're narrowing down our names list but are not going to say anything until the baby is born. Ooh, I got my new stroller! We decided to go with the Phil and Ted's jogging stroller and I cannot wait to try it out! 

Leaving Work: It was sad leaving work this past Friday. The staff even sang me a cheer/song and gave me a gift, it was so sweet, I even cried. I'll blame it on the hormones :) I most definitely think that I will go back and visit before the end of the year so I can show off our little one.

New Town:  So many changes are happening in our lives right now, including moving to a new city! We have a lot to check out still as we don't know a lot about the area. We do know how convenient everything is though, traveling to the grocery store takes maybe 5 min, even if you go to the really good one that's 'wayyy further' away hehe.  My highlight today was going to Home Depot and finding out that they have parking spots for Moms and Moms to be! What a sweet life :)  Anywho, that's all for now! Thanks for reading!