Delivery Story for Baby #2!

To make a long story short....I started contracting painfully on Friday the 6th,but not consistently. The contractions would be anywhere from 5-30 min apart and then I would have a couple hours of rest. This lasted from Friday all the way to Monday night before we went to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital around midnight and being a Birth Center RN I was pretty sure that they were going to send me home because my contractions were not every 5 min. I was just hoping they would give me some morphine to go to sleep and then home. When my cervix was checked I was 4cm dilated, so this meant that I was not leaving without a baby in my arms! I was very excited to be dilated this much because I had a C-Section with JJ just 21 months ago. I now knew that it was a great chance that I would be able to have a successful VBAC (Vaginal Birth After C-section).Soon after being admitted an epidural was offered...I did not think twice. I love epidurals and how great they work for my patients who are interested in a decreased painful labor. My epidural was in place and our midwife offered to break my water to speed up the contractions and labor. Wes and I both agreed that a 2-3 hour wait would be nice...to nap, since we had little sleep over the last couple of days and we knew what would be coming with a new baby! Wes, my mom, Donna(Wes' Mom), and I all napped for about 3 hours. Pitocin(medication to increase contractions ) was started around 445am because my midwife was busy delivering in the next room. My midwife then came in at 0615 to break my bag of water after checking my cervix, I was 5cm at this point. 2 1/2 hours later at 0845 I started feeling a little pressure and asked my nurse to check me. My nurse checked me and I was 9.5 cm. This meant .5 cm away from pushing. My midwife came to check me around 1005 am and I was complete with the head being visible. I started to push at 1012am exactly and the Baby JoElle was born at 1014am! Yes I only had to push for 2min with a total of 6 pushes. All I can say is Thank you Jesus!

 

We had a lovely time at the hospital with our new Baby Girl, the wonderful hospital staff, and our lovely visitors. Our most important visitor was a new Big Brother named JJ. To say the least, his initial reaction was confusion, on the verge of tears, and then to all smiles. He has been quite emotional over the last couple of days but we believe he will eventual step up to his new role and position as Big Brother.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers, thoughts, congratulations, and excitement for this new season we are currently walking through. We know that it will be super busy with diapers, feedings, sleep deprivation, and just plain ole craziness at times. We also know the bible says, "Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him. Children are like arrows in a warriors hands and joyful is the man/woman whose quiver is full of them." Psalm 127.

He has given our family an awesome gift, JoElle Teanna Bell. In these last nine months God has not just allowed us to have time to prepare our home for Baby Girl, but he has prepared our hearts!

Knowing your Mother's Love Language!

While planning Mother's Day Gifts for our Mom's Wes had brought this book to my recollection. I was sharing with him that I knew it would make his Mom's Mothers Day if she just had time with her kids and it would make my Mom's Mother Day if she received a nice gift from her children. This is when Wes stated that this was because they had their own individual Love Languages. After coming to this great epiphany we were able to make both of our Mother's happy on Mother's Day! We made it a point to spend time with Donna(Wes's Mom) and give her flowers along with a card. For my Mother we teamed up with the rest of my siblings and gave her a wonderful gift she could open up and use!

I love The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman!

The subtitle of this book is "How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate" (and Gary Chapman has written other books for kids and teens as well as mates). But the love languages are for any relationship.

I think that they are so important to learn about. They're vital, really.

Why?

Well, basically, what the book says is that we all hear or feel or experience love in different ways.

Makes sense since we're all unique!

Chapman explains that there are five different ways that people hear love:

1. Words of Affirmation
2. Gifts
3. Physical Touch
4. Acts of Service
5. Quality Time

Can you imagine how your relationships might be enhanced or improved if you took the time to discover the other person's love language and then communicated love in that way to that person?

And . . . can you imagine how you might feel if someone took the time to find out your primary love language and spoke that language of love to you?

So, that's why I think learning the love languages is vital for all relationships. I think that they can make a huge difference in how we all feel. If everyone feels more loved because they're actually, finally hearing that love, then the world will be a better place, in my opinion, and I highly recommend The Five Love Languages. What a perfect gift it makes too!


My husband has found that my love language on special occasion is Words of Affirmation and Acts of Service. Hopefully he will pass the memo onto JJ and JoJo one day! On this Mother's Day Wes gave me a beautiful card with words of affirmation along with flowers(picture of the flowers are at the beginning of this blog). He also went to Mimi's cafe and got my favorite breakfast for me! Which is an egg white omelet, potatoes, and a low fat blueberry muffin. Last but not least,Wes also took care of JJ the whole day from getting him up, preparing his meals, playing with him, and putting him down. It worked out perfect because I was and I still am having contractions on and off.


Thank you also to my Beautiful Sister In-law and Brother In-law for affirming me on Mother's Day with their words, presence, and flowers!

Celebrating 4 years of marriage at 38 weeks pregnant!

There could be a million reasons why we celebrate our wedding anniversary - but in reality there's only one: marriage is a gift from God that should be celebrated every day and every year!
When I got married is by far one of the most significant and exciting events that took place in my life. When we celebrate our wedding anniversary each year, we do so because we remember how big and how special our wedding day actually was. Each year we reflect upon and remember what a great commitment we made to each other on our wedding day. So few marriages last now days so those whose marriage continues to be strong should do all they can to celebrate their special day. We celebrate the accomplishment of making it through another year of faithful marriage to one another. Celebrating our wedding anniversary is a great way to reaffirm our love and commitment toward each other. Life gets busy, work gets stressful, and as children are adding to our family we know that time for us to be alone and keep our marriages strong is at a premium. We use our wedding anniversary as a perfect excuse each year to get away from work, home and the kid and enjoy a day of uninterrupted time together.Wes always makes the plans for our Anniversary, since I always take care of Valentines Day. Our wedding anniversary is always fun and memorable as long as we are together and as long as we are doing things we both enjoy. This is how we celebrated this year: On our actual Anniversary day Wes surprised me with 2 dozen roses and a beautiful purple Anniversary card with some special words well stated inside:)

We started are day at 8 am the Saturday after our Anniversary because Wes was surprising me by taking me to one of the best Breakfast places in San Francisco....Mama's!

It's so good that there is always a wait and a line in front of the restaurant. Wes brought fiber bars and apples for our anticipated wait but I passed and waited a whole hour. This 38 week pregnant woman wanted to get our money and appetite worth's of food!
So we took this time to take pictures and talk about our last great year of marriage!

It was so so worth the wait. We 100% think that it is best breakfast place we have ever had in our lifetime.


Wes then took me to the California of Academy Sciences, which is also located in San Francisco. Its a really cool place. It's the only place on the planet with an aquarium, a planetarium, a natural history museum, and a 4-story rain-forest all under one ROOF!
This is where we also shared a nice plate of gourmet Nachos...as you see this pregnant lady loved a day filled with eating out.
With that said we next headed out to Walnut Creek for some yogurt and a couples foot massage!
Last but not least we ended our 12 hour day to ourselves with some good Vietnamese food at a place called La Chavel...one of our families favorites!

We can't end this blog without a big THANKS to Grandma D and Papa for watching JJ so that we celebrate ALL day. One more thanks to God for not letting me go into Labor with JoJo on this special day!

I also want to state and let Wes know that he did an excellent job in treating his Bride as a Queen on this day...like he does EVERYDAY! Love ya Babe!