First Bath...

Day 9: Yes. We didn't bathe Betsey until she was 9 days old. They are so clean when they come out of the womb in the water, it just didn't seem necessary. She had her hair washed a few times, but no full on bath until Saturday.
The girls wanted to be in on the action, so the three all squeezed into the bathtub at once. Betsey wasn't in love with her bath experience, but she smelled yummy and I love her hair when it's not all weighed down by the baby hair grease.

Fresh from the tub. Her hair is only curly when it's wet...but so was Ruby's and she did wind up with a really cute loose curl.
Her hair is SOOOO much lighter than the other two at this age. It's just kind of a mousy brown color, lighter at the root. We'll see what that means...but in case you think her head of infant hair was going to stick around, you're likely wrong. She'll probably follow the other two to baldness until like 18 months. Anyway, there are her wide eyes! A little cross-eyed too!

Day Five...

Day five was mostly just sleeping and sun bathing. Alice and Oma did a bunch of puzzles on the floor sitting next to Betsey when she was awake. The sunshine really helped her move her bili. Her hair is so light compared to the other two. Too bad she'll probably lose it all and be bald for a year like her sisters. I'm in love with her...

Who does Betsey look like?

I don't know why this question is so uninteresting to me. Everyone asks it, and I'm totally indifferent about the answer for some reason. However, when Sommer came to visit, she wasn't satisfied with my "I don't care" answer, so we had to do some research. I didn't feel like digging out the CD's with archives of Ruby's first pictures, so I only had a few to choose from. I think if I could find pictures that were more similar poses, she'd look a lot like Ruby...but since I found that bottom right one of Alice, I have a feeling that most will say she looks more like Alice.

Anyway, like I said...I don't really have a fascination with this like most people do. I know she looks like a Pierce baby (meaning Chris and Rebecca Pierce), and that she will change a lot in the coming weeks. If I jumbled up all the images of Ruby and Alice as infants, it's likely I wouldn't accurately be able to separate the two...but they look so different now! I don't even thing that Alice's baby pictures look like Alice at all. Weird. Anyway, what is your vote? Sommer wants to know...lol, no really...most people ask me and it would be nice to know what the verdict is since I'm not really coming up with an opinion.

Also, to correct myself in a previous post...my mom DOES have a dimple. Whoops!

Dimple...

There are serious dimples on my mom's side of the family. My mom has two, but they skipped me and my siblings entirely. I wasn't ready for the picture, but we'd been spotting this dimple since day one, and I wanted to capture a shot of it. Thankfully, I was sitting in front of her adjusting the camera settings, so I was able to grab this shot. So...is that really a dimple? It looks like it to me! I hope so!

Day Four

Okay, more big girl fun...

Almost all of our kid movies were stolen out of Chris' truck like two months ago. BUMMER. Anyway, so we scrounged around and found "Twelve Dancing Princesses," which the girls hadn't seen in ages. Alice didn't even remember it. After the movie was over, they got dressed up and wanted me to do their hair fancy so they could play their own version of two dancing princesses. Aren't they so beautiful!?

I know I posted about how they like to "extracise". My mom had the brilliant idea of buying them a children's workout DVD as a little gift for them after the baby was born. THEY LOVE IT! It's just 20 minutes long and simple enough for them to keep up with. Super cute, my mom did it with Ruby once, and I plan to join in on the fun once my body is done healing.

Jaundice stinks...

We had quite a go around with jaundice when Ruby was a baby. The memories of that horrible drama definitely made it hard to get the call on Sunday night (day three) from our midwife, who had come to the house for her three day check, that her bilirubin levels had reached 19.0. AHHHHHH. I was told that she would be recommended for hospitalization at 20, so I was pretty freaked out because I REALLY didn't want to be in the hospital for any minute, let alone revisit the horrible week we had there with Ruby.

Chris had to go back to work in the morning, and my mom is preferred at night time anyway, because she doesn't sleep in a coma, so Chris moved upstairs to the guest room and mom moved into the master bedroom with me, just across the hall from our nursery.

Betsey had been sleeping like seven hour stretches, and that was only making her weight loss and jaundice worse, so we had to wake her every three hours, take her temp, document her diaper treats, feed her as long as she'd eat at the breast and then pump all the rest out, add some formula and force feed her mass quantities of fluid.

It was good to have a second go around of this opportunity, because we didn't really take Ruby's situation as hard as we should have and I was resistant to the suggestion to supplement and give her a bottle, as she was already struggling with her latch. This time, I wanted to keep her from the hospital at all costs, and I was familiar with the process enough to know that we had to do everything all the way in order to keep us all home.

My mom and I did the routine all night, it went well, though of course she laid awake on the lights from 11:50-2:20 and I didn't want my baby to be chilling in her room in the dark with no one to look at, so I sat with her and we just looked at each other, I was grateful she was so peaceful and okay to be on the lights, because that's where she needed to be.

We were told to expect her level to be higher in the morning after our best efforts, but we were thrilled she was down to 18.7!! That meant that she wouldn't likely go back the other direction, and that she had already peaked.

So another 24 hours. My midwife promised me that we could discontinue the light torture if we got her down to 15 by the following day. We had a beautiful, sunny day, so we kept her on the light bed on her back, and undressed her and heated the room up so she had full sunlight on her abdomen. It was so counter intuitive to put my tiny baby in full sun for like eight hours...but she slept like a champ and I knew she was kind of getting double lights, and that it would make a huge difference.

IT DID! She had her levels checked the following morning and they were down so perfectly to a 14.6!!! I could have never done it without my mom's help! THANK YOU MOM! It was nice for Chris to have a break too, since of course he'll be my excellent helper for months to come (if she ever gives us any trouble).


Day three: Here are some pictures of Betsey before the jaundice routine started. She sure has a jaundice tan, right? On her third day of life, Opa, uncle Braden and cousin Mason came to visit. The visit ended with me in tears over the jaundice scare, and nurses helping us get her set up on her little tanning bed.

She was lucky enough to cuddle with Oma for awhile before her solitary confinement began.

I have other kids too...

This blog is going to be apologetically heavy on the Betsey for at least a month. I waited a long time for her, and am fully prepared to overdo documenting her perfectness.

However, I had to post these pics of my two big sister beauties. I shot these really quick while my friend was setting up for the baby pics, after she took our new family pic.

Betsey's first photoshoot...

Betsey was so lucky that a friend of mine was generous enough to come take beautiful pictures of her when she was three days old. Just posing her and trying to keep her asleep was basically doing me in, so I really, really treasure these pics of my little one that I would never have had the energy or eye to take myself.

Jennifer is going to start a business in the next year shooting just newborns under two weeks of age. She is in her portfolio building stage and gave me permission to plug here that she will do shoots for free for a small number of people who have babies that age who want to come to her space in Puyallup for the shoot. She has great props and a true love for little tiny ones. I love her passion for this specific genre of photography. If you want to know how to contact her and you meet the above criteria, let me know! It's such a great deal to get beautiful pictures for free (again, for a limited time for a limited number of babies).

Anyway, here are some images she captured. I'm not posting the best or my very favorites (not entirely true...the sibling pic and the feet pic are favorites) because I want to reserve them for her birth announcement.



Our new family picture with all five of us in it! Betsey, who sleeps all day long, was awake and not feeling this part of her shoot. We'll try again for a better pic of all of us with Betsey happy and showing her cute face in a few months, but I love this one for now! It's my family!

Happiness is being a big sis...

I almost said, "happiness is having a sister," but for this sister-less girl was always happy with four brothers, so I have to say based on my experience that happiness is definitely a blessing that comes with being a big sister.

Here's Ruby holding Betsey. She wanted so much to be trusted to hold her sister while standing up, and she's definitely capable of doing so. She also likes to walk around holding her, which so far hasn't made me nervous at all. She's just super sister...such a helper and so in love with our baby.I have to say that Alice is the most smitten sister in this house. She will literally beg to hold the baby, and then proceed to sit on the couch by herself and just hold and cuddle her baby for like thirty minutes. It's really amazing. I guess it goes along with her general personality, as she has an uncanny attention span and can focus on something she enjoys for long periods of time without losing interest. Anyway, she's just thrilled with her new role and big sis.Here's a pic of our baby on day two of her little life...

Betsey's Nursery...

Seeing the nursery actually completed was a huge miracle and represents a lot of work by Chris, me and my mom and dad! Chris and my dad painted it, then Chris and John (Mimi's husband) hung the crown molding (yikes, didn't get a pic of that), Chris had to transform the changing area, which was ugly brown wood with laminate counter top and it didn't have the nice legs he added either.
I reupholstered the chair, covered the window valance things, painted the white behind the wall decal, framed the pics of her namesake, Great-grandma Betsey, made the quilt and the Betsey pillow from previous post, and my mom and I did the bed skirt and seat cushion. My mom took white bumper pads and added the ric rac for me. I bought the sheet.
Chris is making me this shelf as I post, and it will be mounted on the wall by the chair, low, so that little ones can access the books.

The fabric choices didn't really meet up with my vision, as I bought them online, and my planned red and teal room turned into a pink and blue room because after piecing together all the fabric choices from like five online retailers, it wasn't worth making the return. With all the distractions we had during my last trimester, I had to reign in some of my plans, like the window treatments for starters.

Anyway, with it all put together and done, I am happy with the overall picture and thrilled with the little one we went to all the effort for.

Betsey's Carol Pierce...

a picture of her on day one...

The birth story, written on her birthday...

Baby Betsey arrived today (March 18th) at 12:33 AM at our home in Puyallup, WA. She noticeably weighed in as my largest baby at 9 lbs. 10 oz. and was long like the others, 21.5 inches (but I swear, she was longer...they can't really force her legs straight yet).

I started feeling like maybe I was in labor around 8PM, but didn't figure I was right until around 9:15. Our friend Ben Reed came to the house and Chris gave me a beautiful, comforting Priesthood Blessing. Around 10, I decided that even though they were super low key contractions, they would be helping my body progress, so I wanted my midwife, Ann Olsen on the way. She got here around 10:30 and about 10:45, I was 7 cm. I was shocked, because I wasn't feeling even like the contractions were so rough that I couldn't talk through them. I got in the tub shortly after, and by 11:22, I was getting more serious and not socializing as much. My midwife broke my water.

The girls both were awoken around midnight and they joined my cheerleaders (Ann, her assistant Alyssa, Chris, my mom and Mimi) around the tub. At 12:20, my midwife checked me and the baby was coming down, but I had a little lip of cervix on the left side and so I turned onto my side for a contraction or two. At this point, I REALLY did NOT want to be doing this. I never say these things out loud, but in my head, I was wishing I could tell someone to just do it for me. It's amazing to me now that there were only 13 minutes of total torture, because it seemed longer. I just kept thinking that this was harder than it was with Alice, and that thought wasn't giving me lots of desire to keep going.

It was very hard to push her out, but I guess since it took less than 13 minutes, it wasn't THAT hard. I really, really, really wanted her the heck out of me and that thought kept me going. I remember when I knew the last little toe had slipped out of me that I was there, and it was immediate relief in every way. I exclaimed, "HALLELUJAH!" and grabbed my baby and put her on top of me. She was so sweet, really bruised (still is, her poor little face), covered in vernix and she was BIG!

She coughed a little and started to fuss and eventually cry. I haven't asked what her APGAR scores were, but I think she looked perfect right away, and didn't have any concerns about her well being. She cried a lot that first hour, it was wonderful. Around 3AM everyone left and Chris and I slept with the noisiest little thing until around 7AM. She ate and I laid her back down in her crib and actually got to sleep from like 8-11AM.

The girls are super excited about their little sis, she is being held by Alice right now. She just came down with some fresh, self-inflicted scratches, as her hands cannot be removed from her face.

Her name...

After a very small indecision, I settled on her full name: Betsey Carol Pierce. Betsey after Chris' grandma and Carol after my dear friend and aunt Carol Biddle, and Grandma Betsey's little sister, who was an instant friend of mine when I had the privileged of knowing her during the time of Grandma Betsey's passing. Chris was close to his grandma Betsey and has felt strongly about that being our baby's name. He also remembers his grandma talking fondly of her little sister, and enjoying knowing her when he spent time with them both during his childhood. It was his idea to use the middle name Carol, after we spend an evening at my parents house with my aunt Carol a couple of months ago. We just really love her and wanted to honor our child with a name that held significance for both sides of our family.

The only debate was just that I love not having a middle name so that I can really be Rebecca Hamm Pierce. I didn't feel any name would ever mean more to my third born daughter than her own name, Pierce, and I so love being a Hamm in forever, so part of me just wanted to go that route.

Still, the decision was mine, and in my gut I couldn't for whatever reason resign to just Betsey Pierce. No other name was worthy, so Carol it is! While discussing my quandary with my mom, she said "sounds like you should just use Carol, there might be some reason you don't know about that it would be a special choice," I just decided, "yes. Carol it is".

Pictures...

Here is a picture diary of the whole experience...lots and lots of pics. THANKS MIMI!!