happy birthday lilsters!

on november 2 my baby turned 2. it is so hard for me to believe that she is that old. with each addition to the family the time that they are so super sweet and little just seems to fly faster and faster. when i started this blog, i made the decision that within the first year of it's life i would chronicle the birth of the kiddos since i have never actually written them down before. so here is lily's. i am sure that this will not really be of much interest to the rest of you (sorry) but i want the kids to know their story.

from the very beginning lily's pregnancy was harder than the rest of the kids. i think it was a combination of me just being older and my body being tired of stretching. i hurt all the time and was exhausted most of the time as well. and of course my favorite pregnancy companion, heartburn, was along for the ride and started way earlier than it did with the previous three. thank heaven for zantac and i am so glad that it made it onto the approved o.t.c. meds list! i could not have lived without it. towards the end the heartburn was so bad at night that the medicine was virtually useless. therefore i spent the last month sleeping upright on the couch until around 2 or so and then i would wander upstairs to bed. bella and brooke were both early, two weeks and one and half weeks respectively, so i was convinced since it was my fourth i was going to come super early. i had myself so convinced of the fact that the last two weeks of my pregnancy i would wake up in the morning mad and depressed that i had made it through another night without going to the hospital. it also didn't help that several nights i would start regular contractions and then they would just magically disappear. i tried a lot of the old wives tales to try and induce labor with no luck. finally at my 40 week appointment (i scheduled it a few days early) i broke down into tears, sobbing to my doctor that there was no way i could go another week. she made a call to the hospital and said that she could get me in for an induction on sunday, which was four days away and was one day after my due date. sad, but grateful for an end date i went home and took brooke pajama shopping at kohl's. i have such a vivid memory of waddling through the store holding back tears and feeling completely sorry for myself. i went home and made arrangements for the kids on sunday. bedtime came and i pulled out the change of clothes and shoes for the kids thinking to myself that it was a waste of time. i wouldn't need them just like i hadn't needed them for the last week......wipe away another tear.....choke back a sob... laid down on the couch and tried to get to sleep. contractions started sometime around midnight and didn't stop. i was so excited that if i could have leaped for joy i would have. we made the middle of the night phone call and dropped the kids off at niki and aaron's; racing to the hospital. the ride was like deja vu. with bella and brooke i also went into labor in the middle of the night, raced through the fairly quiet streets and they were also on a thursday morning. isn't that strange? all of our girls were born on a thursday morning.

the labor\delivery nurse really sets the tone for how things are going to play out. if she's good at what she does and has a compassionate nature, a lot of the stress is relieved. if she is not competent and has zero compassion, she just makes the whole experience way worse than it needs to be. my first nurse was not so great. it took her forever to get my iv in and when she was finished she told me that she would be right back to change the sheets. "what??? change the sheets??" i looked at larry who looked over to the side where my iv was and the shock in his eyes told me we had a problem. i peeked to survey the damage and saw that my sheet and the pillow my hand was resting on were soaked in blood. what she did i have no idea but my iv hurt the entire time it was in. thankfully a shift change happened before i had to see a lot of her and my next nurse was delightful. the only thing that annoyed yet amused me at the same time was larry. sounds harsh, but let me explain. i had been in love with the name lily for months and larry hated it. so he decided to throw some new names out at me while i was in a slightly incapacitated state. the nurse and doctor just kept laughing at us because no matter what he said it was met with an immediate no and he would flip through the name book and shout out the next one he saw. he did that for hours people!! tell me you wouldn't find that a little annoying. i had never met the doctor that delivered lily before but she looked just like halle berry. it was uncanny. she was really sweet and knew that i was uncomfortable with the fact that i didn't know her so she hung out with us quite a bit to calm my nerves. another weird tidbit is that all of my girls were delivered by a female ob and brendan was delivered by a male.
the actual delivery went well except lily was a lot bigger than the rest of my kids so i had to push more than the usual four times. she was beautiful and perfect and by the end of the day larry had worn me down enough that she was actually sade for about 18 hours. but then i went to fill out the birth certificate and just couldn't write that name down. she had been lily to me for months and i just couldn't give the name up. i called larry who was on his way to the hospital and told him that i couldn't name her sade and he (tired of the name debate) told me i could name her whatever i wanted. so lily grace hahl is the name i penned on the all important document. i think the name fits her perfectly.

one thing that shocked us about lily was that she had blue eyes. that was a major anomaly for us. the rest of our kiddos had been born with jet black eyes. larry and i would just stare at those beautiful eyes postive that they would change before too long. but 2 years later they are not as blue as they were but they are far from brown. i am curious to see what color they decide to be.

from precious little one on her blessing day to this.....

outgoing, adventurous, curious, loves to be cuddled, spunky 2 year old. happy birthday lil's! we love you!!