Thursday, March 27, 2008

Happy Birthday, Bug!

Our little Karli Bug is turning 8 today! It's amazing how quickly time has flown.

The story of her birth:

We went into the hospital early evening on the 26th to be induced. Oma and Opa were out of town. Grandma (Jon's mom) came down from Garrison to be with Megan. They started the medicines to tell my body it was time to get the show on the road. The nurse asked if I had eaten supper or anything before coming in. I had not so Jon ran to Subway for me. She said I'd need the food for energy to get through this process. Overnight the medicine did it's thing and in the morning I was moved to the birthing room. The doctor broke my water but wasn't sure if it actually worked or just created a trickle - no big gush. That was about 7:00 in the morning or so. I was toughing it out through the pain and waiting for the "right time" to have an epidural.

Oma had flowers and a big basket of goodies delivered to the hospital since she couldn't be there. It arrived just as the blood pressure cuff was going off on my arm. The nurse got pretty scared by the numbers that showed up. I guess it was the tears and sobbing I was doing missing my mom.

Anyway, the morning went by pretty quickly. I don't remember much else other than slapping Jon's hand when he was trying to be nice and helpful. He got me into this mess and all that. :) I decided it was time for the good drugs to relieve some of the pain that was focusing on my lower back. The nurse checked and oops - the window of opportunity was already closed - too late.

When it was time to push, I got down to business. With Megan I had pushed for about 2 hours so I expected it to take a while. Since the lovely lady decided to try the voyage nose up instead of down, she was fighting against me. The doctor used a suction device and pulled her out of there rather quickly. That is when it was discovered that she had meconium (poo in the amniotic fluid) so they had to get her suctioned extra clean.
We had many visitors at the hospital that evening and the next day. I was sick and tired of everyone poking me and checking things out so I asked if we could go home on the 28th instead of staying one more night. Fine with them. We got all the paperwork done and we had a nice dinner in the hospital room and headed home.
Since we left the hospital early, they made an appointment for Karli with the pediatrician in just one week instead of the normal two. When we went in for that check up, the doctor said something like, "Oh, that's right, we had a broken collar bone." I was confused as no one had told me about that minor detail. It explained why she wouldn't sleep on her right side. She was awesome on her left and when I would switch it up for her, she'd throw a fit. I just thought it was weird. Now I find out my perfect little darling had a broken bone. It evidently was from the quick trip down the birth canal. There is nothing they could do anyway for the healing process, so it was no big deal, I guess.
So that is the story of the first week. There are so many more stories over the past 8 years that I wouldn't have time to share them all in one post. I'll have to gather up some photos and share one story at a time.
Enjoy your birthday Bug!

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Champion Team

We made our first journey to a dance competition today. Megan is finally old enough to compete in the United We Dance competition for Just for Kix. She was excited and so was our whole family. The first dancers started in Jamestown about 10:00. They sorted the teams by age level and number of dancers on the team. Megan's team was in the third group. Out of five teams in their division, they placed 1st! A well deserved win. They looked awesome.

We stayed for all of the Mini Kix (4th and 5th grade) teams. The other Bismarck North Mini Kix also took 1st in their division. That says a lot for the awesome coach (Michele) who is always concerned with precise movements and details like hair and socks that other teams evidently don't stress to their dancers. It makes a difference when watching something like 90 teams perform one after the other. We are very glad to have our girls involved in this program! I can't wait to hear how Michele's other teams placed - I'm sure they did well also.

(I'll get links to pictures when I get copies - I can't believe I left the camera in the car and didn't realize it until about 2 minutes before Megan performed. Oops!)