Monday, December 6, 2010

Goodbye Blogger... Hello Google Sites

Now that we have Brooklyn in our lives, I have been trying to find a way to consolidate our blog with our photo albums. After searching high and low and testing various solutions, we have decided to go with Google Sites. I am in the process of creating our own family Web site that will allow for a one stop shop for blog updates, photo albums, and a lot more goodies.

Ashley is really nervous that the 3 of you who read the blog without me having to send you an email when I post something new will not follow us over to our new site. So please help me out by changing our link on your friends list (if you have one and us listed) or remember our new link address.

Check it out! Remember it is still under construction...

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Week One in Review

So as I am sure most of you celebrated, yesterday was Brooklyn's one week birthday party. I have created a quick collage of some pictures I have taken over the past few days. (click on the picture to blow it up)

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Brooklyn is doing great! She is such a good baby. She sleeps well, eats well, and even poops well. Ashley is still in recovery mode, but is getting better.

Most of you have heard the delivery story but for those of you who haven't I will share that now. Sorry it's long, for those of you with ADD look at the collage.

Last Thursday we went in for our over due Dr.'s appointment. We were hoping for some good improvement from the previous week and were bummed when there had been none. In fact the Dr. basically laid out the fact that Ashley would most likely need to be induced the following Wednesday.

On Friday morning I went to work and then school to study for the last of my 3 mid-terms I had to take that week. I was planning on taking the test around 3pm so we could go to the BYU basketball game that night. Ashley had called several times throughout the day complaining of cramping and contractions. We both thought that it was after effects of her Dr.'s appointment the day before and thought nothing of it. I went to take my test and Ashley went to go save seats for the game. Around 5:30 she started timing her contractions and noticed they were coming 2-3 minutes and lasting 45 seconds.

I got out of my test around the same time and as I called her to meet up with her for the game she told me how her contractions progressed. I hurried to the Marriott Center and found Ashley sitting contently reserving 5 seats while contracting haha. After much debate and googling of birthing Web sites we decided to leave 10 minutes before the game started.

As we got home I quickly created a contraction log for Ashley to enter her contractions into. (I wanted to make sure we had good evidence to support a trip to the hospital if that was what we decided to do. Nobody likes the "walk of shame" after being rejected admittance to labor and delivery. Ashley started keeping good track of her contractions and they still were coming every 2-3 minutes and lasting 45 seconds and what at the time Ashley thought was kind of painful.

After consulting more birthing Web sites, our moms, and others, we decided to pack up and head to the hospital around 11 pm. When we got there, they strapped Ashley up to a baby/contraction monitoring computer and checked her for progress. She made some progress from the day before but not what we were expecting based on her contraction rate and length. After an hour the nurse came back and checked again and had found no progress. We had to make the "walk of shame" for the second time. (see previous blog post). The nurse gave Ashley the advice to come back when A) her water broke B) she was in so much pain she couldn't walk or talk.

They gave her some medicine to take the edge off. This allowed for about an hour two's worth of sleep, before she just laid on the couch in pain. Around 4:30 am she was nice enough to come into the bedroom and wake me up so I could join in on the fun. We basically laid in bed for the next two hours while I tried somehow to ease Ashley's pain. Finally Ashley was at option B) referenced above and we packed up for a second time and headed to the hospital at 6:45 am.

When we got there and the nurse check her Ashley and jumped from a 1 to a 3 and was calling our Dr. to approve her admittance. This was great news, except our moms her boarding a flight in an hour from Sacramento to Salt Lake with a transfer in Portland (got to love Southwest). We figured that we would be there for a while and so we weren't to worried about them missing much. Ashley was admitted and thankfully opted for an epidural. Once she was on that, life was great.... until the nurse checked her for the 2nd time and Ashley jumped to a 6!! This was the same time our moms were transferring plans in Portland.

We were pretty surprised at her progress. The nurse left to call the Dr. who she advised would most likely want to break Ashley's water to move things along. Of course we weren't to excited about that as our mom's still had a flight from Portland and drive from Salt Lake. Luckily the Dr. was at the hospital in the next town delivering a baby.

We hung out for another two hours and around 11 am the nurse came back to check Ashley. As she lifted up Ashley's gown, she said, "Oh wow, your water broke." Then she checked Ashley and said, "oh wow, your're at a 9 1/2." This is when I replied, "Saaaaaaaayyyy What!?!"

The nurse went to go call the Dr. who was luckily still at the other hospital. Ashley and I hung out for about 30 minutes trying to get everyone the update (expect our mom's who where approaching their decent into SLC). When the nurse came back she said told us that the Dr. wants us to start pushing. At this point there wasn't much we could do so we started pushing (I include we in there, because everytime Ashley was to hold her breath and push for 10 seconds, I found myself doing the exact same thing as if somehow my pushing would transfer over to her).

Our mom's landed early and were being picked up by my brother Andrew. If any of you have driven with Andrew you know he is the best person to escort a mother and mother-in-law to the hospital where their daughter is pushing their granddaughter out at.

Around 12:30 the Dr. was back from the hospital and he came in to see how the pushing was coming. Unfortunately for Ashley but fortunately for our mom's, we hadn't made much progress.

We continued to push for about another 45 minutes when we heard a knock at the door and our moms walked in. I don't think I have seen three happier/emotional women ever. There wasn't much time for tears though as we had to keep pushing through the contractions.

The Dr. came back and checked Ashley again after 2 hours of pushing, and we found out that Brooklyn's head was sideways rather than facing down. He informed us that it wasn't likely she was going to turn down and didn't want to keep Ashley pushing much longer. He gave us two options 1) c section 2) Forceps a.k.a. GINORMOUS salad tongs. He also noted that the sideways salad tongs move is the toughest to perfom. But luckily for us our Dr. did a PHENOMENAL job explaining the pro's and con's to us.

After what I might consider the toughest game time decision of our lives to date, we decided to put our faith and trust in the Dr. with the salad tongs. They prepped the room for delivery and we prepped ourselves for birth.

Without going into to much detail or creating another collage, I will just say that both our Dr. and Anesthesiologist could not have performed better during that birth. We had some rough experiences with the OB, mainly the nursing and admin staff, but now I know why we were supposed to go there, so this Dr. could delivery Brooklyn safely to us.

Brooklyn Rae Waddell was born at 2:15pm, weighing 8.5 lbs, and was 20 inches long. While they had her in the baby incubator cleaning her off, they noticed she was having a tough time breathing. She had a lot of gunk in her lungs and was trying to get it all out. They called the respiratory team in to have a look. They were able to get some gunk out but wanted to take her to the NICU to monitor her for an hour.

They cleaned her up, let Ashley hold her for about 10 seconds, and then Brooklyn and I took a field trip to the NICU. The nurses there were great. They put a tube down her throat and sucked up a ton of liquid. Then put her on a darth vader sleep apnea breathing machine for an hour. Once they took her off, and checked her out they gave her the green light to head down to mom.

But first we had to make a stop in the nursery to get a bath and some other stuff done. Ashley was separated from Brooklyn for almost 3 hours!!! (minus the two minute stop she made in the NICU as they wheeled her to the recovery room). They finally brought Brooklyn into Ashley's room and I was able to eat two hour old Wendy's, which I can't verify, but assume tasted like placenta soup.

After that we had a great day and a half in the hospital. The nurses were great and the food was pretty good. The husband got one free meal, where you order one main entree and as many sides as you want.... yeah I order 17 items, Ashley wouldn't let me order one of everything.

Well If you managed to stick it out this far, go ahead and treat yourself to a dessert of some sort. As I was writing this I was complaining to Ashley about it's length, because honestly if any of you wrote something this long, there is about a 99.9% chance I stopped after the pictures. But if you stuck it out, I respect your attention span. Leave a comment :)

Love,

Ryan, Ashley, and Brooklyn

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Brooklyn Rae Waddell

Brooklyn Rae Waddell was born at 2:15 pm on November 13, 2010. She weighed 8.5 lbs and measured in at 20 inches. Both Ashley and Brooklyn are doing great. Ashley is pretty exhausted after pushing for over 2.5 hours. Luckily both of our moms made it in time for the birth. She is so adorable and we love her so much. I will post more about the fun birthing process in the upcoming days.

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Brooklyn Rae Waddell




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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Due Date...

Well today is my official due date... but it looks like this baby is going to take her sweet time making her debut. For the past two weeks I have been dilated only to a one. I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon so hopefully we will hear better news on how far I have progressed.


In the mean time I have been making the most of my free time by organizing the baby's room and our apartment. Last week I successfully made a car seat cover and it actually turned out pretty good. This is a big deal because I am horrible at arts and crafts. So I will take this time to brag about my accomplishment! Actually it was really easy. All I had to do was sew a square together and then attach velcro ties to the top so that the cover will stay over the car seat. The hardest part for me was picking out fabric. I spent an hour in the store trying to decide. After emailing pictures of my final two choices to my mom, dad, two friends in my ward, and Ryan's mom for their opinion I finally made my decision. Here is the finished product.


By the way, car seat covers are sold in the mall for $50.00!!!! I made this for under $20.00!

As for Ryan, he is very busy with school. I hardly see him during the week but I'm proud of him for working so hard in school and his job. This week he has three test. He took one this morning and will take the other two tomorrow. So that means this weekend he has lots of free time in case the baby decides to show up! Thankfully these are his last tests before finals!
That's the update for now. Hopefully our next update will be full of baby pictures!!! Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Friday, October 22, 2010

Birthday & Weight Guesses

Here are the guesses so far, keep sending them in!

Ryan - Nov 5, 7 lbs 2 oz (I'm hoping it backs up to a weekend so I don't have to miss school or work)
Ashley - Nov 9, 7lbs 12 oz

Andy Fields - Nov 8
Joe Cunliffe - Nov 12, 14lbs
Tiffany Cunliffe- Nov 11 @ 11:11, 7lbs 3 oz
Jen Barber - Nov 8, 7lbs 5 0z
Kristin Reeder - Nov 9, 8 lbs 4 oz
Aunt Norma - Nov 10 @ 10 am, 10lbs 10oz
Aunt Kathy - Nov 5, 7lbs 5 oz
Leandra Call - Nov 7, 7 lbs 13 oz
Carly Nielson - Nov 12, 8 lbs 1 oz
Donna Channell - Nov 7, 8 lbs 3 oz
Aunt Terri - Nov 13 @ 7 am, 7 lbs 11 oz
Kelsey Waddell, Nov 2, 7 lbs 2 oz
Chris - Nov 7, 7 lbs 7 oz
Courtney Channell, Nov 9, 8lbs 2 oz
Tom Channell, Nov 11, 7lbs 12 oz
Andrew Waddell, Nov 12, 5 lbs 10 oz
Taylor Gorby (5yrs old) - Nov 10, 1 lb
Morgan Gorby (7 yrs old) - Nov 19, 12lbs
Erin Gorby -Nov 3, 7lbs 4 oz
Debbie Waddell - Nov 6, 7lbs 4oz
Chris Geary - Nov 14, 7 lbs 6 oz
Scott Channell - Oct 31, 7 lbs 6 0z
Dave Waddell - Nov 12, 7 lbs 8 oz

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Full Term Status!


So today is Ashley's 37th week of being pregnant! That means we have reached the full term status and our baby should be fully developed and just packing pounds from here on out. We have been pretty busy with school and work. Ashley is still working hard and is currently training her replacement. She has one more week left and then she will just hang out and get our house organized for the baby to arrive. I have been really busy with school. I am taking a business finance class right now, and I had the first mid-term on Friday. It took me 3 hours for only 25 questions!! It was pretty hard and I ended up getting an 84%, which I was pretty bummed because that isn't that great for hours and hours of studying. Well turns out the class average was a 60, so for the first time in my life I was one of the curve setters haha!
Well enough about school and work. Here is a picture of Ashley I took today to mark her 37th week.

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My little brother Andrew, celebrated his 23rd birthday on the 18th, we went up to my Aunt Kathy's for a nice Sunday dinner and cake. On Monday we took him out to Kelsey's pizza restaurant and ice cream.


Here is Ashley at week 36. I don't think you guys realize how hard it is for me to 1) get this pictures and 2) post them.



So you might be asking yourself, why is Ashley at the hospital!?!? Well last Wednesday (without getting into to many details) Ashley had some pregnant issues and she called called her Dr. for advice and everyone she talked would only tell her "Go to the hospital." We were pretty sure everything was OK based off Google, but we didn't want to be crappy parents before she is even born so we decided to go to the hospital to see if they could answer Ashley's questions. Of course the hospital won't just answer your questions though without admitting you. So we were there for an hour, they ran some tests and everything is ok, and we got our questions answered so hopefully we won't have anymore hospital visits until D-Day.

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Now since we are full term we can start the guessing of the delivery date and baby weight. Unfortunately I could not find a widget to track this, and I know its obnoxious to leave a comment if you don't have one of the 4 allowed accounts, so email me at rywaddell@gmail.com and I will start a new posts with everyone's guesses. Remember she is due Nov. 10th. The winner will get to choose the babies middle name, because we can't come to an agreement...... just kidding do you think I would really trust you with even the middle name of my child!? Your crazy!

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Hot Pregnant Lady...

Here is a picture of Ash from last week, so about 33 weeks in.




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B-day & Ultrasound #4!

Last weekend was Ashley's 26th birthday weekend! Due to school and work we had to post-pone birthday celebrations until the weekend. On Saturday we woke up and had an awesome french toast breakfast at Kneader's. Then we drove the Alpine loop which had an some pretty fall colors. (We also did the loop again today and saw a moose 5ft off the road!) Here are a few pictures from our trip.




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This Thursday Courtney, one of Ashley's sister's, planned a surprise visit for the weekend. We had a blast hanging out with her and pigging out at every single yummy food place in Utah including J-Dawgs, Tucanos, and Kneaders. I seriously think I gained 15 lbs this weekend. It was well worth it though.

On Friday we went to our 4th and final ultrasound. Unfortunately we didn't get any new pictures of her but according to the Dr. the baby looks great and is super active which is a good sign. She is weighing in at approx. 5 lbs, so if she keeps pace Ashley might have a good size challenge in front of her!

So we are right at 34 1/2 weeks now. At 36 weeks we start seeing the Dr. on a weekly basis. I can't believe how quickly these past 8 months have gone. Ashley is doing great, but between us I think she is getting to the point where she wants this baby out. She is having a very difficult time getting comfortable, sleeping, eating, and living. But if you're concerned if that has affected my sleep at all, no need to worry I am doing fine.

Speaking of me, school is going great. Part of the Facility Property Management program requires a certain number of Construction Management classes. So I am taking an electrical wiring class, a structural framing class, a finance class, and a marketing class, with a few others. I am learning a lot and having fun.

We hope all is well, leave us a comment (even though we don't respond, and you may see no benefit on your part to post a comment, we really enjoy hearing from all 3 of our readers).

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Ultrasound #3 & Update

Yesterday Ashley, Kelsey (my sister), and I all headed to the hospital for our third ultrasound. We got the same person as our first time, and if you remember she did not think I was funny so we don't like her. First she took all the baby's measurements. Currently she weighs around 2.8 lbs. We got to see a cool view looking directly at her (which was weird it almost looked 3-D) that showed her lips and nose. The tech then checked the heart and legs and everything looks great! Our baby got a slow start and was measuring 6 days past 11/10 in the beginning but now she has caught up and is in the 50% and should be arriving as schedule, or sooner! Here are the pics we were able to take home.



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This past weekend we were able to head back to Sacramento for Ashley's baby shower. We had a blast hanging out with friends and family. We got some great gifts and are excited to start putting the baby room together. Thank you for all the nice presents!

Ashley is feeling great, and is still working at the Dental office. She is starting to transition from the front office to a dental assistant to allow her to work part-time after the baby comes. I was excepted into the Facility Property Management Program at BYU and start this Fall. It should take two years for me to finish so I will graduate in April 12' (yes that is exactly 10 years since I graduated from high school, so what!?).

We have one more ultrasound scheduled for Oct. 2nd! We will keep everyone updated as we get down to the wire. Only 11 weeks left!

P.S. Vote on our new poll! Help us decide on a name (but lets be honest we are going to name her whatever we want, even if you think it's stupid). You guys didn't do so hot on the last one as 13 voted boy and 10 for girl, so I expect better results!

Friday, June 25, 2010

Ultrasound Round 2

Today Ashley and I went in for her 20 week ultrasound. And we were able to find out what we are having. So without further ado...... it's a girl!!!!!

We had a great time with the ultrasound tech. She was really nice and spent about 15 minutes showing us the baby and explaining what everything was, which was really helpfully to me because those ultrasound pics are like those blurry 3-D pics that were super popular in the 90's. You have to stare at it for awhile until your eyes adjust and finally can make out what it is.
The baby was super active and a bit camera shy. She was flipping and rolling around, and sucking her hand and running away from the camera. Here are a few of the ultrasound pics. The tech was nice and printed out 10 different shots.

The Dr. then came in and did another ultrasound to check for any abnormalities. Thankfully our baby is looking great!

Here is the confirmation that it is a girl. It is hard to tell because the shot apparently is if she was sitting on a glass table and you were looking up at her (which is kinda of weird and gross to think about). The mouse arrow is pointing to the direction of the "girl parts"

We were able to watch her drink the fluid which I am told she pees out only to re-drink it. Yummy! You can see this shot she has her mouth open drinking some nice refreshing amniotic fluid mixed with pee.


This is a shot of her foot.

For the second half of the ultrasound she was curled up in this really tight ball. Here her elbow is touching her knee. She must get her flexibility from Ashley because I come nowhere close to touching my toes when, make that if I ever stretch.


And last but not least this is the first outfit that I will buy my daughter. A seer sucker dress to match my seer sucker suit! We are so excited and can't believe we have already it the half way mark.

Please leave us comments and name suggestions! I am a very picky and have vetoed 90% of Ashley's suggestions so far. It won't be easy for us to settle on one.

Oh you can also start sending us baby presents. We also accept cash. Hahaha!

Love,

Ryan & Ashley

Saturday, May 8, 2010

There is someone we would like you to meet...

So as most of you know by now Ashley is pregnant. Yes I know she finally broke me down. Depending on who you ask she is 12-13 weeks along (the Dr. says 12 but Ashley says 13). Anyway we had our first ultra-sound yesterday and it was really cool. It was at the Provo Hospital (the old building Mom so I guess your old stomping grounds).

We walked into the room and the lights were off except for two soft mood lights. The T.V. was on and I instantly made a joke about how we needed some Marvin Gaye playing softly in the background and some candles, and I got NOTHING from the Nurse... I don't even think she looked at me. So the boring, dry nurse started the ultra-sound and was just cruising along doing her thing taking weird measurements of Ashley's insides. I then made a joke about how I thought I saw the cheeseburger Ashley had for lunch, and again NOTHING!!! I mean I don't consider myself Chris Rock or anything but COMMON ON!

So after the robot nurse finished everything she needed, she then started to focus on the baby. That's when it got serious, because the possibility of Ashley being one of those women who wants a baby so bad that they force their body to create all the signs of being pregnant went out the door.

But it was way cool because we got to see some really good shots of the baby. And he/she is quiet active! It was bouncing around, kicking its legs, moving its arms, and I think I even saw a few dance moves in there. The nurse then started to get these weird views which made us see the babies skeleton and I made a comment of how our baby looked like a cyborg T2000 from Terminator after its face melted off and again NOTHING!! So that was my last attempt.


So she took a couple snap shots of the baby and printed them out for us and this is what we got to take home.





Afterwords the the Dr. came in and she was awesome. She was sarcastic, witty, and cracking jokes, so I really liked her. We also get to do a super tech ultra sound at week 20 so we should have some more cool pictures to post then. And that is when we get to find out what we are having!

I have added a new question to our blog. Please fill that out so we can see what everyone thinks we will have.

So far Ashley as been feeling pretty good and hasn't been crazy sick so that is really good. Although she sleeps like every second she isn't at work I think. But other than that we are doing great and really excited to have a Ryan Jr. soon.

Feel free to leave us comments!