I AM GRATEFUL FOR FAMILY:

FOR:
Nick--Who has a very easy-going, laid back personality. He is always so much fun to be around no matter what we are doing. He is always happy and always willing to help me out in any way that he can. (Not to mention helping anybody else out who might need it.) For believing in me. For being a great Dad to Sadie. I love you honey!

Sadie--First and foremost, for being alive! Also, sleeping good at nights...it makes being a Mom so much easier! I am grateful for her cute smile and cuddliness also! Love you my little sweetheart!

Dad--For having a fun sense of humor and personality and for having such a good work ethic. For being someone who sets a good example of doing daily scripture study as well as saying daily personal sincere prayers. For teaching me to have faith and always trust in the Lord. Love you Dad!

Mom--For having such a big heart! Always serving others and looking for ways to make others happy. For being a caring and talented person and a great Mom...I hope to be a good Mom like you! Love you Mom!

Tara--For being my best friend! For making me laugh, having a great personality, and being such a fun person! She is so crafty and good at everything she does! She is the person I look up to and know I can rely on no matter what. Love you sis!

Kyle--For being such a hard worker and having a fun sense of humor! He knows everything a person could know about electronics and is always willing to help with computer problems etc. He has a great smile and laugh that I love to hear! Love you Kyle!

Chase--For persevering through the hard times. For deciding to serve a mission despite obstacles that have stood in his way. For his laid back and fun personality! Doing anything with Chase is a guaranteed good time! It is fun to watch him crack jokes and pick on the other siblings also! :) Love you Chase!

Kayla--For being the most talented horse woman I know! For being a thoughtful and caring person. For being an amazing cook and for being such a good helper to Mom! She is a little homemaker already! For being so beautiful and believing in yourself and trying new things. Also for being super smart! Love you Kayla!

Jenna--For being such a character! Jenna has lots of spunk and is fun to be around! She is really competitive and usually beats me at whatever game we are playing (which I don't particularly like) and is fun to do any activity with. She is athletic and smart also. Love you Jenna!

Reid--For always saying things that make me laugh! He tells me about how the garden is doing when I am on the phone with him and says the funniest things! For example, when I had all the complications at birth with Sadie and she got stuck during delivery, Reid told me, "Well, none of that would have happened if you would have had some meat on your bones!" :) Love you Reid!

Cute Little Thing!

Actually she has filled out a lot! She has cute chubby cheeks and her arms and legs are starting to get those cute baby rolls! She is a lot of work (babies in general are a lot of work) but we are having lots of fun being new parents! I don't especially like being spit up on and pooped on (not to mention always leaking milk all over myself...gross) but she's so darn cute it's hard to take things personally. :o) Enjoy the pics! P.S. She has dark blue eyes as of now...We'll see if they stay that color or change. Nick has hazel eyes and I have blue/gray eyes.

Pictures of Sadie (not very organized...)

Beautiful flowers from family.

Mom, Nick, and I enjoying our Stork dinner.

Nick and I right after we were admitted into the hospital.

So excited to have this baby!

My belly hooked up to monitors. The blue one measured the baby's heart rate and the pink one measured the strength and frequency of my contractions.

Mom stayed occupied knitting baby hats. Here is her and Nick untangling yarn in my hospital bed while watching Animal Planet.

This is the craziest picture of me...You can see how unstable I look...Anyways, I was super excited because my milk finally came in!

Sadie and I.

I love this little girl.

Me rocking Sadie in the NICU. Her face is still very yellow from her jaundice.

Working on her tan.

Just chillin'.

Sadie and Nick. She matches his shirt!

Our baby girl in the beginning.

It was hard to see her like this but we knew it was for the best. She's a fighter!

In the beginning her coloring wasn't very good. She was very pale. This was after having a blood transfusion so her color was improving. She was ghost white at birth.

Snoozin' in her shades.

I love this picture. So sweet.

Every day she looked remarkably better! Tubes and wires were gradually removed to reveal a beautiful baby girl underneath! :)

Sadie and I.

Sadie holding Daddy's finger. Love this picture.

Nick rocking Sadie in the NICU. It was so special watching Nick rock Sadie. He would be so content holding her and with tears in his eyes would say to me, "I love this. This is perfect."

VISITATION RULES

I was told by the NICU staff that we are not to allow any visitors (not even family) because of the severe flu season we have been hit with over here. Sadie is lucky to be alive and we want to keep her as healthy and thriving as we can. Her immune system is weak given all she has gone through anyways, so we ask that everyone please respect the instructions given to us from the NICU doctor and nurses. EIRMC has even been closed down to all visitors under 18 and pregnant women (unless they and coming in to deliver), due to the severe flu season. This is very serious. When we start allowing visitors, here is what we will have you do:

1. Wash your hands for at least a minute at our kitchen sink.
2. Use hand sanitizer (we will provide) afterwards before touching the baby.

IF YOU HAVE BEEN AROUND SICK PEOPLE AT ALL, WE ASK THAT YOU DO NOT VISIT. IF YOU HAVE BEEN SICK YOURSELF, WAIT FOR A WHILE AFTER RECOVERING SO AS NOT TO PASS YOUR VIRUS ON TO SADIE.

Thanks.

Sadie Rae Terry

This will be a summary of what happened and I will post pictures later:

Sadie Rae Terry was born October 6th, 2009 at 3:18 PM. She weighed 6 pds. 10 ounces and was 20.5 inches long. She had complications at birth: Apparently I would normally be wide enough through my pelvic and tailbone to have a baby but my tailbone curves in more than it should making me not wide enough to have a vaginal delivery. (We found this out a little too late.) The space baby has to wiggle through is very narrow and difficult. Sadie was stuck and despite multiple efforts to pull her out using the vaccuum, she still wouldn't budge. Finally, the doctor was able to get her out while I was pushing but she had the cord wrapped around her neck 3 times. The doctor cut the cord and immediatly handed her to two nurses who layed her on my stomach so I could briefly touch her back before they whisked her away. She was chalk white, lifeless, and wasn't crying. I looked over to see what the nurses were doing in the corner of the room and saw that they were giving her infant cpr. All of a sudden I saw maybe around 10 hospital staff (turns out they were the NICU team) in the room surrounding her, talking really fast, and using equipment on her. Something was definitely not right. Nick asked the doctor (who was stitching me up from an episiotomy he did) what he could do to help. The doctor's reply was, "Just hold your wife's hand." Nick came to my side and we held hands, cried, and prayed that Heavenly Father would allow our baby to live. It was so hard. I thought, "Maybe, we are not meant to keep this baby for some reason." I was hoping this was not the case.

It turns out Sadie had a subgaleal bleed (a head bleed) probably due to the vaccuum and being stuck in me. Her head was bulging in back from all the blood. This is very rare and the NICU nurses and doctor's told us she was lucky to be alive. If we would have delivered Sadie down the street at Mountain View Hospital, she would have died. (Mountain View doesn't have a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and she would have had to be transferred to EIRMC for care.) Our doctor told us that out of the 2,000 babies he has delivered, this was the first time he had run into a subgaleal bleed. I found out that last year, a baby boy born at EIRMC had a subgaleal head bleed and died. He had 16 oz. of blood in his head and the NICU staff couldn't save him. Apparently a subgaleal bleed is so dangerous because the blood pools in one of the spaces that lies between the brain and the skull. The space is, in a sense, endless. It goes around the brain and down the spinal cord. So, if there is bleeding, the blood is not contained by connective tissue but will continue to bleed and fill up the space...it is virtually impossible to contain. Luckily, Sadie's bleeding stopped and she didn't die. She was given 2 blood transfusions after birth because of all the blood her head had absorbed from her body. She is alive due to the quick thinking and actions of the NICU team, everyone's prayers and fasting, and the fact that Heavenly Father indeed wanted her here.

We didn't get to hold her for the first 3 days of her life. She was hooked up to lots of wires and tubes in an incubator. Her head and coloring looked really bad but eventually she started to stabilize. Once Nick and I were discharged from the hospital, we rented a room from them for $30 a night so we could stay with Sadie and so I could try to nurse her once we were allowed to hold her. On Monday night, a week after her being in the NICU, we were allowed to take her home! We were so excited! We were told her recovery would be slow and that she would be in there at least a few weeks! Once again, I know with all my heart, that she has survived thanks to everyone's prayers and fasting. We love you all and although this has been the hardest trial we have ever gone through, it has also been the biggest blessing we have received thus far in our lives. Sadie is a miracle. She is our little fighter.

She is doing really good now. She is nursing a lot better and loves to be held. (Probably making up for not being held very much in the NICU.) She is so beautiful and seems to be content and happy. Her body has reabsorbed the blood that was in her head and so her head looks completely normal now. She no longer seems to have a massive headache either. She is amazing. Nick and I have grown so close to one another after having gone through this and feel that our marriage and love for one another has increased 10 fold. I will post pictures some other time, please be patient. We love you all and again thank you for putting Sadie's name in multiple temples, praying for her, and fasting for her. Your faith and love has touched our lives so much. Thank you.

Too much info?

Nick made a shelf for our food storage so we'll have room for the baby in the extra room. It turned out looking really good! I watched him as he made it and then we both painted it a sage green. (I am too lazy to get my camera which is in my hospital bag in the trunk of my car.) Anyways, I am so proud of him! Way to go babe! I always hoped I would marry a handy man!

K so I don't know if this is TMI but usually it's only the girls who blog right? Anybody have a lot of stinging when their cervix was thinning? I have been told that contractions are like really bad cramps but so far I feel a sharp stinging spasm-like pain, sometimes all day long. I am dilated to a one now...whoopdeedoo...I still have a ways to go but at least I have something to show for it, right? Anywho, I am just wondering if people's contractions vary in what they feel like depending on the individual. What do you guys think? Also, when do you guys think I will have the baby? I want exact dates. I'll send the winner some fun gift! :)

Maternity Pics

A few weeks ago Nick and I had maternity pics taken. Here are a few of my favorites. I wanted a few to frame above our girl's crib. I think these are at about 33 or 34 weeks along. Everything is going very well so far...I don't sleep as well these days but really I count myself lucky that this is all I have to deal with. I do have a hernia but as long as I don't over exert myself, it hurts very little. After I have the baby, I'll have surgery to get the hernia repaired. Even though I am due Oct. 12 (or Oct. 18 but supposedly it doesn't matter) I have set an alarm in my phone to go into labor on Oct. 4th...It seems like an ideal date...The baby will be fully cooked by that point, I can have her early, and Nick can take Thursday and Friday off and have a long weekend. Hopefully when the baby hears the alarm she'll get the memo! :)

Trip home to Washington

Kayla and Chase.

Nick, Reid, and Jenna. Reid is really attached to Nick and wants him to sit by him and play with him all the time. It's really sweet!

Little Emma Hempel. (My sister Tara's little girl.)

What's lunch without a seed spitting competition? Here the Oregon State Fair Women's Watermelon Seed Spitting Champion (my Mom) steps up to the challenge! (Her winning spit at the fair was like 38 and something feet!) Don't ask how I did...Does choking on the seed win you any sort of prize?

Jenna and I. Jenna is 14 yrs. old and is so fun! What a personality!

My family on the tour bus at Northwest Trek. It's a wildlife reserve where we see elk, bison, rams, mountain goats, birds, and all sorts of animals amongst nature. It was fun!

Nick and I.

Mom and Dad. Aren't they cute?

A cougar at Northwest Trek. This guy was in a cage...not roaming freely in case you were wondering. There were also bears, foxes, lynxs, bobcats, and more.

Nick and Jenna.

Jenna and Emma at Reid's baptism.

Kayla giving me a look. Next to her is Randy and Kenadi. (Tara's hubby and other little girl.)

Mom and Aunt Vicki.

Reid and Dad before Reid's baptism. Reid was worried he would lose another tooth while being baptized. Luckily, that didn't happen. Reid was nervous and excited for his baptism. He did so well! His baptism day was very special!

Tara played the piano...To invoke reverency amongst the friends and family waiting for the baptism to start, she would pound on the keys every once in a while...very effective in keeping the environment spiritual and holy I must say.

Missing two of my brothers and my Dad but quite the good-looking family don't you think?

Jenna holding chicken "Haley". I don't know why my family named her after me. She lays colored eggs...Maybe our baby girl will come out blue or something.

Tara, Jenna, Randy, Nick, and Kayla playing spoons. (I had lost already.)

Mom with her game pose. She is super competitive!

Randy about to tee off.

Reid would run around the course, come back and hit the ball, and then he was off again.

Tara with Emma in the wrap. Looks kinda alienish.

Kenadi riding a bear. She is so cute and has the sweetest little voice!

Randy tried showing Kenadi how to use the club but it just wasn't working for her.

Jenna waiting her turn.

Tara and Emma at Jenna's soccer game. Is that Tara's slobber or Emma's?

Jenna out on the field. She did great!

Here we are on an awesome hike we went on!

Trucking it up the hill.

There were tons of Red Alders everywhere! They were gorgeous! They are barkless and the wood is really hard. Apparently bowling balls/pins used to be made out of them.

We finally conquered the terrain and reached the top!

A Red Alder. Cool huh?

Randy looking out from the top at the scenery below.

Jenna, Reid, and I.

Kayla and Randy stopping to rest on their way up to the top of the hike. This section was actually pretty steep. We had to hold on to trees and branches to make it up. As you can see, there were tons of Red Alders on the hike which made everything so beautiful. (You can't really see how red the bark is in this picture for some reason.)