2+1=3

We've been asked a couple of times now what the girls think of Hannah Kate. Well, maybe more than a couple of times at this point. The problem here is that the very people who have been asking this question are likely the very readers this blog retains. At this point in time they have all been given a blow for blow answer making this blog entry entirely superfluous...and yet I am going to write it anyway, and hopefully you will follow along, if for no other reason than...the pictures.

For weeks now we have been working on prepping the girls about the immanent arrival of their "baby sissy." They know what babies are. They knew Hannah Kate was going to be their baby sissy, and they knew that baby sissy was in mommy's tummy. They also knew that mommy was going to the doctor and he was going to be taking Hannah Kate out of mommy's tummy so we could bring her home and let her sleep in her crib and play with her toys and...well, you get the idea. For a while I spent some time totally mesmerized by how well they took all of this. They didn't seem phased at all by the idea that there was a baby in mommy's tummy and soon she would be coming home to live with us. My mom's a lamaze teacher, I grew up with this notion, talking and learning about it, and I have to admit that whenever I would watch Hannah Kate rub her arm across the inside of her womb I would think...yep...totally weird. It seemed like the very idea should blow their little 2 and a half year old minds. And yet...never phased.

Of course, the more I thought about it the more I realized, there's really no good reason why they should be amazed. Their world is full of crazy impossibilities that we tell them are reality every day. Hey look at that metal box, it's different then other metal boxes in that if you get in it it will take you some place else. This metal box over here flies in the sky, and this one shows magic pictures. So sure, why not, babies live in mommy's tummies and then get taken out.

Wednesday was too hectic to try and add the little beautifuls into the mix, so we waited until Thursday to have Nana bring them up. Evidently they were good and ready to see us by Thursday. Thursday morning at 4 in the morning Emma Jane woke up screaming for mommy. She whined and begged to see us (along with Parker) all morning until they arrived. When they got here we could hear them squealing with delight the whole way down the hall. Parker came bounding in. So excited I am pretty sure she actually did pee her pants. She just started giggling madly, running around the room, unsure of whether to stop and stay with mommy, daddy, or baby sissy. I think she spent the entirety of that trip and every subsequent trip to the hospital, giggling.

Parker couldn't be happier with the situation. As I am writing this blog I am now sitting at home, and the sheer joy has yet to dissipate. Parker has always been a little high on life, and right now it couldn't be better. Mommy and daddy are home and they have brought a baby with them. What could be better? Oh, Nana is still here? Oh yeah, life is a amazing.

Emma Jane's attitude on the other hand has proven to be...a little different

As I mentioned, Emma Jane was the one who woke up at 4 in the morning screaming for mommy, you could hear her in the hall calling out for mommy, you would think she would come running in and bounce right into Mary Jane's lap. You would be wrong. Instead Emma Jane refused to acknowledge Mary Jane at all. She gave her the cold...cold..."arcticly" cold shoulder. She wouldn't give her a hug, or a kiss, she barely acknowledged me, and any time we asked her anything she would scream and cry and say "No, Nana do it." You wouldn't think someone so small could rip your heart out, and cut it into little pieces so easily, but she can. When it comes to Hannah Kate, Emma Jane was a extremely excited to see her and to hold her. (Not as excited as Parker, but frankly, I don't think anyone could ever be as excited as she was/is). When things started to get a little crowded in the room and I took Parker and Emma Jane out for a walk the first thing Emma Jane did when the door closed was to start crying for mommy, so I know she cares, but Emma Jane was determined to punish us, especially Mary Jane. And she did.

Friday's visit was better and worse. Parker was the same screw ball high energy this is wonderful bundle of joy. Emma Jane was warmer to Mary Jane, but significantly meaner to me. I guess she decided to pick on the guy who hadn't been sliced into, and I guess that's fair. Although....I miss my Emma Jane. Daddy's little girl decided not to be daddy's little girl on Friday or Saturday (as mentioned above we are home today--more about that later--and she is being a bit better today).

All that said, we're pretty happy with how well they seem to be handling the change thus far. It is clear they are both excited about Hannah Kate.

Hannah Kate, on the other hand, seems pretty bored with the girls. She just slept through all of it.

The adventure continues

Okay, I will admit this was a long time coming. I meant to do another post last night, but baby things kept us busy. But anywho here we are now. For those of you who have yet to hear the story, I will warn you...there isn't much to tell, but, as is usual for me, I'm going to make it take significantly longer than it needs to.

In some ways things started Tuesday night. Mary Jane was having more contractions than usual, and both of us began to wonder if we would show up to our c-section appointment in labor.

And sure enough we showed up the next morning and found she was having a suspiciously large number of contractions. The nurses getting Mary Jane checked in looked at the monitor and asked whether we wanted to try and have this baby the good ole fashioned way. Our answer? Ummmm maybe?

The decision didn't stay in our hands for long. They quickly did a check and found she wasn't dilated at all. So with enough time for a quick picture it was off to the operating room.

The doctors took Mary Jane in first to give her her epidural. This left Jason all gowned up and chomping at the bit waiting to get in. A feeling he remembered all too well from two and a half years ago, when Parker and Emma Jane were ripped untimely from their mother's womb. Fortunately while Hannah Kate was about to be ripped from her mother's womb it was not in an untimely fashion. And while Jason was once again impatiently waiting outside the door to the OR room his expression was less :( and more:

Twenty long minutes later, Jason was brought into the OR where found a bunch of doctors, nurses, PA's and what not, huddling around his wife's body holding sharp instruments and getting ready to cut open his wife. While this had clearly been the plan for months now, there was still something surreal about this fact, and the fact that he was going to just ignore this and have a seat next to her face as though this were a normal part of life.

From there things happened rather quickly, or at least they seemed to to the person who was not strapped to a table, numbed from the stomach down, and being sliced into by friendly-yet faceless medical professionals. For all the people strapped to a table, arms splayed to their side, it can be assumed things were happening at a significantly slower rate. Basically, Jason and Mary Jane were living in two different time lines.

However you count the seconds the time eventually came when Hannah Kate arrived. Faithful readers have already seen the very first picture of her (and some of them even complained about it...ahem...Liz....cough, cough) so here is a second, less goopey, yet still authentically "just born" picture of her.

Okay, maybe only slightly less goopy. She still looks like a dusky zombie baby, in search of brains in this picture, but hey...this is what modern tech has given us, the ability to share everything...even the things people really don't want shared. You think this is bad, just wait till you see the pictures of the placenta.

There are no pictures of the placenta

Give me some credit here

Crimeny.

On a side note, Parker and Emma Jane have become big fans of seeing pictures, and when they came in asked to see some. When Parker saw the above picture she informed me someone needed to "clean the paint off Hannah Kate."

Drama:

We wouldn't be us if we didn't include some drama into the whole experience, but I will go ahead and tell you now the drama was all much ado about nothing. Some of you have asked about my initial text, the one that just said "She is here, details to follow" and still others have seen some cell-phone pictures that appear to include wires and what not. Due to this I have been hit with a number of question regarding health and wellness of baby. She is fine. So what's the story there? Well, you asked, but as I have already said, it's much ado about nothing.

When Hannah Kate was born she was retracting a bit when breathing, which, for those of you medically ignorant people out there who, along with me, require a bit of translation, just means that she was having a little more trouble breathing than they would like. She was doing the breathing just fine, but her sides would go in a bit much and her nostrils would flare, and her sats were a weeee (and I mean a tiny) bit lower than they would like. Turns out this happens a lot for bigger babies after c-sections. They don't get the benefit of having all the liquid squeezed out of them durning the birthing process. It usually takes them a little longer to get it all up and be happy campers. To be on the safe side they like to bring such babies down to the NICU for observation for a couple of hours. And that is exactly what happened to Hannah Kate. Jason following her out of the OR in an isolate, while Mary Jane was wheeled away in a separate direction was an annoyingly familiar scenario, but there was never any real worries or danger.

Perhaps the scariest moment came when Jason realized they would be wheeling that isolate right by the waiting room where Nana, Granny, and Paw Paw were all waiting. He actually stopped the doctors and said, um...can we go a different direction here, because if we walk by the waiting room with this isolate you're going to have three more patients in this hospital. They laughed for a moment, but he said, "no really, this family has a long, distinguished, rich history of visits to the NICU and I don't think they can handle the sight of one more." Jason was astonished to find they in fact really did not have another route, and so he ran into the waiting room and told them how completely okay everything was...he's pretty sure they only pretended to believe him, but it was nice of them to pretend. Thankfully their hearts pretended too, and all collectively decided not to arrest.

Once in the NICU Jason got to help clean "the paint" off Hannah Kate, eventually Nana came back, and they all just generally hung out. Things were so low key that one of the nurses took the time to snap this picture of Jason making silly faces at Hannah Kate. He felt she should learn about silly faces first thing, especially as she seemed so adept at making them. As you can see, the nurse in the background was thrilled with this behavior as well.

All told Hannah Kate was only down there for an hour-hour and a half. And it wasn't long until she was back in the room with Mary Jane looking like this:

Which is pretty much how she looks now, only she's a whole bunch more orangey, which is still not a big deal and something we'll talk about in a later post. For now it is time to wrap things up.

But wait you say, what about Parker and Emma Jane? Have they met Hannah Kate? Do they like her? Have they thrown any spectacular temper tantrums? Are they being cute as buttons? What about more pictures of Hannah Kate? What about visitors? What about that orangeyness?

All this can be saved for future posts, and can be considered reasons to come back soon. (very soon, as someone has already begun loading pictures to the computer and is likely to begin working on another post while mommy and baby nap)

Blessings,

Thank you for your prayers,

Jason, Mary Jane, Parker, Emma Jane, Hannah Kate Broge

Hannah Kate Exits the Womb!!

I love this picture.

I am going to keep this brief for now. Hannah Kate is here, and in case you are living under a rock and haven't heard, here are the stats:

8lbs 12.7 ounces

21 inches long

born at 1:55 PM

Mom and baby are Healthy!!!

Yes, that's right...7 pounds more than the girls weighed when they were born. Let's think about this for a moment. If you quadrupled Parker's weight when she was born you still wouldn't be as big as Hannah Kate. If you added Parker and Emma Jane's weight together and then doubled it you would still be nearly two pounds less than Hannah Kate. This girl is a giant.

It's awesome.

I won't bore you with long stories and details now. Just a quick couple of pictures and some stats. Come back tomorrow and I will give more pictures and a longwinded story...if you like that sort of thing.

God is good. He has blessed a greatly, we give Him thanks and praise.

Blessings,

Jason, Mary Jane, Parker, Emma Jane, AND HANNAH KATE

TODAY

TODAY

T Minus 2 and Counting: or How 4 Ear Infections, 2 Cases of Strep Throat and a Whole lot of Medicine Can change your Day

So this is it, or, that is, this is almost it. The week "of".... On Wednesday the doctors are going in after Hannah Kate, cause at this point in time she is showing absolutely NO signs of coming on her own. The girl is holed up in there like the last spoonful of peanut butter clinging to the sides of the jar. Seriously, have you ever tried to get all the peanut butter out of the jar before throwing away. I mean ALL the peanut butter. Impossible. They design those containers to be so deep, and so wide, with such a narrow opening that it is not possible to get it all. You just end up cramming your hand uncomfortably in there and getting it all peanut buttery, and then you take it out and find that all you have to show for it is a sandwich with not enough peanut butter on it and a sticky hand that you don't have time to clean well enough before rushing out the door and off to work, then you spend the rest of the day wondering why everything smells like peanut butter. All this is to say....she doesn't seem to want to come out at all.

We have a theory about this. It is a simple theory. It goes like this. Hannah Kate has ears, and with those ears she hears...everything and she thinks...that place is loud. I think I'll stay in here, where it's warm, and muffled.

Whatever the reason, she's still in there and all indications are the doctors are going to have to go in and pull her out. Which while the same as last time is amazingly different at the same time.

In all seriousness, we're pretty excited. We feel incredibly blessed to be here. That said it's also kind of surreal. We keep waiting for it to sink in that we are less than 48 hours from the C-section.

As it drew a bit closer we (read Mary Jane) suddenly realized that we were running out of days where it would just be the four of us (Mary Jane, Jason, Parker, and Emma Jane). In fact today (Monday) is it. The last one. So we set up these grandiose plans that I would come home from work early and we would go do a bunch of fun stuff with the girls and make the most of it.

Little did we know that today would start a couple hours early with the girls (who have been oozing snot for almost a week--and I mean oozing...the stuff has been coming out of their nose, their mouth and their eyes....ick) crying and complaining their ears hurt. So we spent the wee hours of the morning bonding...the four of us....on the couch...watching the monkey show while they sobbed pathetic sad tears half mixed with snot until the doctor's office opened and we could get them in for an appointment. Luckily we got one pretty much first thing this morning. And do you know what? We must be pretty good parents, because our kids got a 10 out of 10 on their ear exams. Which is to say that on a scale of 1-10 she said their ear infections were a 10. All four little beautiful ears were full of...welll...you get the idea.

After that Jason headed to work and Mary Jane headed over to the doctor's office for a last check before Wednesday's fun adventure. Mary Jane has been sick the last few days as well and as she related her symptoms the doctor he decided, almost on a whim, to do a strep test and guess what...she has strep. Then she mentioned to him that Jason has had a sore throat for a couple of weeks and has had strep throat a bunch this last year and the doctor, in his ever friendly manner, suggested that Jason needed to get his hiney (hiny? hinney? how do you spell hiney?) over to a doctor's office and get a strep test. Soooo rather than get home real early to begin the family shenanigans Jason stopped at a Walgreens Clinic place thing and wouldn't you know it...he has strep throat too.

By the time Jason got home Mary Jane had despaired of us doing any of our fun adventure activities, so Jason ignored her and packed the fam in the car anyway. They headed to Oberweis where they proceeded to stuff themselves with milkshakes.

Once hopped up on sugar and able to ignore the extreme fatigue caused by their various illnesses they hopped back into the car and went to a playground, where, because Jason and Mary Jane are wise parents, they spun their girls around on a merry-go-round. (clearly nothing bad can happen when two sick two year olds are filled with milk shakes and spun on a merry-go-round....please don't call DFS).

Fun was had by all. We then came home, took baths, ate a late dinner, read books, said prayers, sang songs, gave squeezes, kisses, eskimos, butterflies and a blessing (don't even pretend to skip any one of those) said goodnight and then Mary Jane and Jason proceeded to clean the house. Why did they clean the house you ask? Well, obviously because family is coming into town to help out tomorrow and it is important we get all the work done before they get here.

Anyway. Baby coming real real soon (as the girls might say). While I will be the first to admit that we haven't always been prompt with the updates, I think it is safe to say we will have something to say in the very near future, so feel free to head on back.

(oops...gotta go, Parker is coughing right now)

Full Term

37 5/7 weeks ago, Jason and I had NO idea our life would be heading in the direction it is going- mainly a baby that will be making its appearance no later than 11 days from now. And now we can't believe we are here. This week at the doctor I got a hug and a congratulations for making it this far. Baby #3 is showing absolutely no desire to leave the womb. She is at an estimated weight of what the girls weighed when they were about 5 months old too. I have been off of almost all the medicine I was taking to keep her in now for about a week with no change in anything so that is good. Because I had a C-section with the girls, I have one scheduled for this time. In case anyone is wondering, its on March 23 at approximately 1:30 pm. While part of me is hoping not to have to have the C-section ( no one really wants to have their abdomen cut open if they don't have to right?) I am so thankful to have made it this far.


We think the girls are as prepared as we can make them. We talk about the baby all the time. Parker's main concern is, naturally, that the baby will not take her toys and that the baby will not sleep in her big girl bed. She goes around the house confirming what toys are hers. Emma Jane is particulary fascinated with other babies (real and fake ones) which I am hoping will work in my favor!!


Our wonderful wonderful small group threw us a little shower a couple of weeks ago so that I could experience a baby shower while the baby was still in the womb. It was great for so many reasons not the least of which being the baby the shower was for wasn't in a hospital somewhere already. The theme was "Southern Bell-y" thus the reason I had such a lovely hat and hoop skirt on in the picture. We got a War Eagle diaper cake which was fantastic too.

Fabulous Diaper Cake

Guess the belly measurement game

The most flattering outfit ever...

Parker with a mouth full of fried chicken

Emma Jane really wanted to wear the hat

Sooo... the next blog post will hopefully be about the exciting and incredibly uneventful boring(yes, boring is a good thing) birth of Baby Broge #3!