Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Grayson Bennion McDonald






Birth Story:

Sunday January 16th, 1-4PM.: (At this point I've been at a 4cm for almost 2 weeks and having contractions, and been on bed rest until I made it to 37 weeks. I had been off bed rest for 3 days at this point) We are at church and I'm having major cramps and contractions the whole time. I kept telling my friend Kristine I think I peed my pants. Right when I get home and make it to the bathroom I realize my water broke. I called my sister in law Erin who is a nurse to ask her advice. I didn't want the hospital to tell me I'm just peeing my pants and send me home! She tells me to go in and get checked. Brandon calls my mom but we tell her not to leave until we know I'm in labor.

4:30 pm : I call Kristine to see if we can bring Hadley over. We drop her off and Brandon and I are starving, we are talking about going through a drive through before we go to the hospital. My contractions are getting worse so I tell him lets just go get checked first.

5:05 pm: We check in at the hospital, they send me to triage. They come in to check me. My water is broke and I'm at a 7 cm. I'm kinda freaking out praying that I get an epidural before my little man makes his arrival! They hurry and get me an IV and start all the stuff so I can get my epidural. Call my mom and tell her to get here fast if she wants to see anything!

5:45 pm: They take me to the delivery room. I'm having really strong contractions, still begging for my epidural, and squeezing the crap out of Brandon's hand!

6 pm: My epidural man comes on in!

6:20 pm: I'm dying still and having back labor. The nurses are telling me how great I'm doing and that I can tolerate pain. And how I better have him by 7 because that is when all there shifts end. I'm thinking no I'm going to die if this thing doesn't kick in and I don't want to push until I'm numb!

6:30 pm: I'm almost good and numb, they check me and I'm at a 9 cm. They call the doctor, we call my mom. They are both hurrying!

6:40 pm: My doctor comes in while we do a practice push, she immediately jumps in and I keep pushing.

6:54 pm: Grayson arrives! 3 weeks early, weighing 7lbs 11 oz. 19 1/2 inches long.

6:56 ish pm: Right when they put him on the scale my mom walks in! She heard him crying in the hall and barely missed it :(




Monday January 17th: My awesome doctor and one of our fabulous delivery nurses come to visit and just say hi!

My mom and Hadley came to hang out with me for a bit so Brandon could go home and have a break. I can't sleep in the hospital, I kept him up all night talking about how cute our baby was and what the heck we were going to name him. I had some friends come visit too so that made our day better too!

Jealous of our awesome view?!


I don't know if all hospitals do this but at ours they do a nice dinner for the mom and dad. (Since its at the hospital its probably the most expensive meal we will have!) So here is our date night in the hospital. Also this was the moment where we had to turn in the birth certificate so we had to decide on a name!


And late Monday night they let us go home!!!!!!!!!


Grayson brought Hadley a Jessie doll from Toy Story.
She picked out a giraffe for him but threw it on the couch when she noticed he brought her something!



This birth was completely different from Hadley's. It was just me and Brandon and everything went so fast! It was pretty cool. We had amazing nurses who were so much fun that whole night! We have been so blessed. I can't believe this whole thing is over, it was a long time coming trying to even get pregnant with this little guy and we are so grateful to have him in our lives. We are so grateful for our ward and our friends who have been so thoughtful and good to us through out this whole thing!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Its Christmas time!

This was such a fun time of year with Hadley now that she is a little older. It is so fun having the "magic of Christmas" back, now that we have a child old enough to kinda get Christmas. Hadley's wish list was an orange scooter, pink camera with flowers on it, helicopter (at one point) and a big black horse. "And that's all" she'd say after she told ya what she wanted in a sweet little voice.
To get us in the Christmas spirit we:

wrote Santa a letter.
went to our ward Christmas party.
story times at the library.
watched lots of Christmas movies.
opened a new Christmas book from Grandma every few days.
decorated a gingerbread house.
visited Santa.
decorated a Christmas tree with dots.
Christmas party at school.
called Santa (aka my brothers, to threaten, I mean remind Hadley to be nice!)
drove around to look at Christmas lights.




This year was our year to be up in Salt Lake with Brandon's family. We new that wasn't happening with me being huge and pregnant. And now that Hadley is getting bigger we didn't really want to go anywhere. I started to get worried how this Christmas was going to turn out, if we were going to have a very quiet and lonely Christmas or what! My family told us they'd be down on Christmas day and wanted to try and make it here before Hadley woke up. We have the greatest friends here and a few invited us over on Christmas eve so we wouldn't be all alone.

We ended up having an early dinner with some friends and then that way we could all do our own things and traditions with our families that evening.

After dinner we came home and made our Reindeer food to spread across our front yard. So they can find our house for Santa.
Then we came in and read about Jesus' birth and tried to explain to a 3 year old why we celebrate Christmas.
Then we checked outside to see if Santa dropped off our first present and sure enough he did! It was Hadley's Christmas jammies!



Then we made our treats for Santa and left some carrots for his reindeer.
After Hadley was in bed... the fun began! I loved it, we wrapped presents and set up everything, watched a Christmas movie. And my parents surprised us and made it here late that night!

Here's how it looked before we went to bed.

Here we are before the madness began.

Santa hid her scooter by the TV to see how long it would take her to find it. It was so funny when she finally found it. She gasped and said, "my scooter! See I told you guys I wanted a scooter!"

She told me one day that she wanted to get her daddy a black stone. After a few days of talking about it we went out front and found a black rock and painted it for him. She was so excited to wrap it and give it to him, it was so dang cute!

We had the BEST Christmas this year and I have to admit it was so nice staying home! Brandon spoiled us, we had yummy food thanks to grandma and grandpa and now we are ready for baby boy to come!