Progress

Well we are still in the hospital, but there's an end in sight. They let me go last sunday, but they extended Piper's antibiotics to 10 days, which means she has to stay until this sunday. She is still on a little bit of oxygen, but is much better. The reason she's had a hard time breathing and needed to be on oxygen is b/c she caught pneuomia. The saddest part has been everytime they need to move her IV. Little infants vains dry up pretty quickly, so they need to move the IV about every 2 days. She's had an IV in each hand, one foot, and 2 different places on her head. We need this last IV to last until sunday b/c they are running out of vains. We've spent most of our days in the NICU with Piper, but we did manage to take off Christmas Eve night and Christmas morning to celebrate with my parents and brother. It hasn't felt like Christmas at all since Piper was born, but celebrating Christmas with my parents actaully made it feel like Christmas. They left this morning, but they were so much help watching Sadie while we visited Piper.

Anyway, our little girl is getting cuter and cuter every day. Here are a few recent pictures of her as well as our Christmas festivities.

Ryan, Mark (brother), and Dad putting together Sadie's dollhouse on Christmas Eve. I actually got the dollhouse from the thrift store and it didn't have any instructions, so it took some good engineering to get it put together

Sadie's reaction on Christmas morning!

Piper Jane Donohue

Baby Piper arrived Thursday morning at 8:10am as planned. The c-section was a success and Miriam is recoverying quite nicely. Piper is 6 lbs 12 oz, 17 inches long, and is doing pretty well. We feel like we are having flashbacks from when Sadie was born. Piper is needing a little bit of a jump-start to get her little body going. She has been in the NICU this whole time because she is respirating very quickly and having difficulties holding enough oxygen, so they've been watching her closely. We're rooting for her and are hoping to see signs of improvement very soon. Here are a few pictures of our beautiful little girl. You'll have to look past all the tubes and wires to see the cute little Piper under them.

Comparison

Anyone see a resemblance?? This is my lovely sister Annie just a few days before she had Maren and then me, the night before the big day. I can't tell whose is bigger but they both look pretty dang big to me. It's crazy how similar our bellies are you would have thought we got it from Mom, but she swears she didn't carry so straight out so who knows where these crazy bellies came from.

So this is it! We go in tomorrow morning to cut this little girl out! Eek! am I ready?? Is anyone ever really ready? I'm guessing no. However, my house is clean, christmas presents are bought and wrapped, and my Mom is on her way to our house right at this moment. I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be. I'm actually going to miss being pregnant. Crazy, I know. But I actually really quite enjoy it. I'm sure I'll get over my post pregnacy blues quickly and start loving having my body back to some semblance of normalcy.

This is what Ryan has been up to tonight. Putting up our new ceiling fan.

Thanksgiving pictures

Here is a glimpse of some of the Thanksgiving fun we had.

There was a whole lot of foosball, darts, and pool played especially by Ryan and my brother Mark.

Ambrie had little Schaeffer while we were visiting so of course there was alot of baby love going around.

We all had a fun night when Julie, Steve, Ambrie and Clint all came up to Mom and Dad's house. Dad and Steve kept us all entertained with their crazy talk and dreaming all night.

Julie and baby Schaffer

Kira and Sadie playing some tunes for us all

Me in all my pregnancy glory.

A day to remember

Ryan and I debated and debated if we should drive to Utah for Thanksgiving or not but in the end it came down to my Dr. giving the green light. Being only 3 weeks from my C-section date I was naturally a little nervous, but definately more excited than nervous. We headed out and had such a great drive, it was going by so fast at least for the first 6 hours that is. We were cruising along and all at once all of our red lights came on. Check engine, temperature gauge, if there are any other lights, I'm sure those were on as well. so we pulled off immidiately (luckily we were right at the Little America Exit in Wyoming). It turns out we had one broken belt and another ready to snap. Several hours later they had fixed the belts, but now they said the battery was totally shot and they'd need to drive to the nearest town to pick up another one. Another few hours went by, meanwhile we're wandering around the gas station trying to find anything to keep Sadie occupied, still the car is not ready. Finally after 6 long hours of this they give us the final report. They say the alternator is also bad and we'll need a new one and there are none available in the closest town. By this point we were all three so exhausted and long past ready to get back on the road. Thank goodness for loving fathers because we would definately have been in for a much longer and more stressfull night if it hadn't been for good old Dad. Both of our Dad's offered to come pick us up, but since my Dad was an hour closer the burden fell on him. He picked up an alternator and headed out on the two hour drive to rescue his stranded children. In the end we rolled into salt lake at 12:30am after a whopping 8 hrs at a truck stop. Although it was one of the longest days of my life I can't help but miss how blessed we were. First of all, this baby decided to stay in my belly despite all the running around I had to do to keep up with Sadie which we were all VERY thankful for, we couldn't have broken down in a better place -I'm quite possitive this was the only mechanic around for at least 20 miles, the mechanic was open until 10pm - really where else can you find that??, and Sadie had such a fun time at that gas station. She couldn't have imagined anything more fun than chatting it up with truckers and playing with all the fun toys on the shelves. She befriended many a trucker in that long day and found a stuffed cat buddy that she carried around the whole day.

The trip was totally worth the days worth of stressfulness. We had such a great time, thanksgiving dinner was everything I'd imagined, and Ambrie, Ryan's sister, had her baby while we were there! He is just adorable and got me even more excited to have our baby. It doesn't get much better than all that.

Pictures to come later.