Welcome Truett!!

I can't believe that it has been over a week since that day! I can't quite imagine life without him here...and honestly, he would quite likely still be in my belly today if we hadn't evicted him sooner. I'm glad we did, because he was/is perfectly healthy and was 8 lbs 4 oz at 39 weeks. Given another week or so we probably would have made it into the 9 lb range...and I'll gladly stay below that!

I like to write out the birth story, so for people who don't want to hear the details just skip past this part.

We had to be at the hospital at 7am on Monday, August 1st. I was 3 cm already so they started pitocin...3cc's. I started contracting almost instantly and they gradually upped the pitocin. I think we reached 12cc's total. The contractions really weren't the horrible 'pitocin contractions' that I have heard so much about. I feel like they came on gradually and were completely and totally manageable. I think I was still playing 'words with friends' during contractions and not really have to breath through them, although at that point I was having to focus a little bit. We walked the halls for a while to help bring baby down and I was checked at about 11am and was 5cm. Still pretty comfortable..I think I was rating my pain at a 4 or 5...but the contractions were obviously helping as I was dilating.

The contractions started coming about a minute apart..and were definitely 'good' ones...but not terrible. The nurses don't like to see pitocin induced contractions any closer than 2 minutes (maybe 1.5 min) apart, so she stopped it all together...thinking my body was probably kicking in on it's own. She was wrong..and the contractions were still coming every 3 minutes, but they were so weak that I was able to fall asleep a little bit. Josh headed out to find some lunch for himself at this point too.

At 1:30 Dr. Ebner came in to check me and break my water. I was still only 5 cm (hadn't changed since 11am). He broke the water and it was a FLOOD in my bed. I've had my water broken like this 3 times before and never felt anything like it. It made me laugh..it was weird. It was pretty much instant that I started getting real...REAL contractions...the kind that I recognize and hate:) It is amazing how much breaking my water changes things for me...it has in all of the other labors as well. They wanted me to stand for a bit to help things move along..and probably to change my bed too:) I stood up, unfortunately directly over my sandals that were sitting next to the bed, and it was another FLOOD of fluid. It just kept coming. I was laughing so hard. The nurses said they hadn't seen that much fluid in a long time and thought it was funny. They had to call housekeeping in to mop up under the bed it was so bad. No wonder I was measuring so big at all the appts!

I sat in a rocking chair while they cleaned up and changed my bed and the contractions were getting really good. I was rating them at an 8 or 9 at this point. Definitely getting intense. I got back in bed and then things got a little scary. Truett's cord was around his neck (which I knew from the 31 week u/s). During the peak of each contraction, his heart beat would be completely gone. They put me on oxygen, and proceeded to flip and flop me around (during the peak of the worst transitional contractions) trying to get his heart beat back. Although this was scary for me thinking about baby, I was more just trying to get through the pain of the contraction and all of the pushing and rolling and manipulating they had to do to me. I did think for a second that if I was only 5 cm..we had a ways to go and I wondered how he was going to handle the rest of this labor. I had c-section in mind and apparently so did the nurses as Josh tells me they did call down to the OR to have them ready in case it was necessary. It wasn't long after this when I was feeling the pressure of baby coming down.

They checked me again and sure enough I was fully dilated...and ready to go. As soon as he started coming down it took 2 contractions to push him out. At 3:09 (an hour and a half after having my water broken) he was born. He was nice and pink..even with the fact that he was strangling himself with his cord the whole time. He got 9 and 9 on his apgars and was just perfect! I was, of course, relieved!!!

Josh cut the cord, and I got to hold him right away. He was weighed in at 8lbs 4oz and 20 inches long. We called our parents...who had our kids and were very excited to have everyone meet him!!

At that point, my placenta was being stubborn and didn't want to come out. This has happened before with me (with Jessalyn) and it was not a good thing. We waited there for a good hour..which is about the longest you can wait before something has to be done about it. Unfortunately, they had to knock me out for an hour and "manually remove" my placenta. Like I said, this has happened before and the first time they didn't have time to knock me out. Let's just say that even though I lost more than an hour of the first moments of Truett's life, I was very glad to have been able to be asleep for this procedure! I remember seeing the kid's feet walk down the hall and hearing their voices as they came in..and then I was asleep. I woke up, all cleaned up with the shakes really bad. I waited about a half hour with the shakes hoping they would go away a bit because I didn't want the kids to see me like that.

Finally I was able to invite them all back in the room.

Josh was amazing as usual. He knew when he needed to jump in and help me and he knew exactly what to do. He's a pro at this labor and delivery stuff. He became an awesome photographer as well...as he had to record and photograph that hour that I was missing when the kids were meeting Truett for the first time. With the pics and video, I honestly don't feel like I missed a thing!

We were able to head home on Tuesday afternoon...to a nice homecoming with Kirsten and Mark (who made dinner!), Shara and Jake, Heath and Karole-Ann, Ashley and Alicia and Karen. What better way to introduce Truett to our crazy lifestyle:) The first night was OK...I'd say a little 'discombobulated'...as I tried to fumble through the logistics of where to change him and feed him...and just getting to know him. It didn't take long though, and we have already settled into quite a nice routine. The first 4 or 5 days he was eating every 2 hours day and night...and it took about an hour for him to eat..and burp. My milk came in on day 3 (which is early for me..so I was HAPPY!)...and that helped him transition himself to a 3 hour schedule. At this point (9 days in) he is on a 3 hour schedule...maybe giving me a 4 hour stretch at night but that is not consistent. Nursing is going great...the easiest time of it yet.

Josh took the older kids to the Soulfest each day of Tru's first week. It was awesome to have everyone (including Josh) home during the day, but then nice to have it be just me and Truett in the afternoon. We would take a nice long nap and just had time to enjoy each other. I was able to get to the Soulfest two nights that week...to see Petra and 10th Avenue North...and visit with some friends too!

Having Josh back to work has been hard. Not having to do with being a mother of 5, but more so because I just miss him! He had a nice 10 day vacation and I just like having him around. He went back to work and a week full of meetings and things that have put us back to reality real fast. Poor guy, I don't think he even held Truett yesterday:( If so, it was very brief.

I honestly was worried even to the end of the pregnancy about how Truett might affect the dynamic of our family. I KNEW that we would love him like crazy, but still...at the point of pregnancy it is sometimes hard to believe. Truett has definitely changed the dynamic here...but for the better for sure. I can't imagine not having him and just love him to pieces. He is so easy and chill...sleeps through anything (he has to!). All of the kids are loving him like crazy..it's sometimes hard to manage everyone's 'Truett holding time'. He is smothered with kisses and hugs and is in no need of attention! Of course, there is some adjusting that everyone has to work through...and of course, Owen seems to be the one with the most issues. He doesn't take it out on me or Truett really...but he really seems to be taking it out on Ethan and Luke. I think Owen is trying to figure out his place now. He's not the baby...and yet sometimes his older brother's don't include him the way he wants to be included. It puts him in an odd place...and is definitely frustrated at times. I know from experience that it takes the kids about a month to really fully adjust to a new baby in the house....and am prepared to try to be as patient as I can especially with Owen as this whole idea of being a big brother is completely new to him.

Overall, our transition to a family of 7 really couldn't be going any more smoothly. Besides losing a little (or a lot) of sleep....I feel great and have recovered quickly.

I said it again for the video camera just after delivering Truett...."I am NOT doing that again". Funny how quickly that thought changes. Not that we have plans to do it again, but like usual...I can't quite imagine NOT experiencing it all again. The thing is..I KNOW I am crazy. I hate it...I dread labor....the entire 9 months of pregnancy I dread labor. And yet...give me a sweet little newborn baby and I completely forget it all!!!

Of course, I will post a bunch of pics from the day....

LOVE him!!! We feel SO blessed to have been given another baby!!! He is amazing.

Me and a group of friends had a much needed "girls night" on Saturday. As usual, I spent the week looking forward to this time out....little did I know that they turned it into a "girls night/baby shower" for me! Being that this is my 5th time through this, it's not quite necessary to have an all out full blown baby shower so this gathering was PERFECT! Not only was it fun to be with the girls, it was also a nice time to celebrate Truett and be showered with the perfect amount of baby necessities! Besides moving a dresser into his room (from someone else's house!), I feel like I have everything I need for this special occasion! There is still some work to do as far as organizing it all, but I feel relieved that I can at least diaper the child once he's born!

I can't tell you how blessed I feel. Because of such awesome friends and family, I have not "needed" to purchase a single item! (I say "needed" in quotes like that because I did actually buy a maternity bathing suit..but I wouldn't quite call that necessity!) I have been handed down (or over?) all of the maternity clothes and have either been given used baby gear or am borrowing it for the time being. It really is awesome to have such a great community of friends and family!

While I loved and appreciated every gift that I received during our girls night, I really wanted to share this one particular thing that was made for me from one of my besties, Karole-Ann! I can't wait to get his room organized so that I can hang these up!

(ignore the very cluttered, yet very well used piano!)

(I'm noticing the notes above this photo...must be notes from the kids for youth Sunday because I don't recognize that writing:)

It was a perfect girls night. I have the best friends!

(...and what better 'baby shower' game than a friendly game of the classic 80's Mall Madness?!)

Thoughts on blogging...

It seems like the more and more people get connected through facebook, that blogging tends to go 'out the window'. I suppose it just seems redundant to post pictures on facebook, and then again on the blog...when 'most' of the people have already seen them on facebook.

One feature I love about blogger is that it gives the other posts you might like at the bottom and I find myself clicking on these from my own blog very often. I absolutely LOVE to look back and read about things that we have done and since it has been over 3 years since I've been keeping this particular blog (I think...maybe more?), there are many posts about many random things that we've done as a family.

I think as I started getting more serious into photography that I started to use the blog as a place to show my favorite pictures, rather than just to document the on-goings of our family. I also have found that I tend to not want to take pictures unless they are in perfect light situation or perfectly in focus...and just overall photographically good. These two things have actually made me write less on my blog and take less pictures..and looking back over the last few months it is kind of sad!

There are SO many things that have gone on that I could have been blogging about! I started the blog with the idea in mind that it would be more of a family journal for myself...and for anyone else interested in reading it. I think I sort of strayed away from what that initial goal was. I don't think I've posted a single picture of our new nephew Zach..and there are very few pictures of Emma on here.

So...from now on, I am going to go back to documenting the usual stuff that we do as a family. I'm not going to care if the pictures are great, or the story isn't profound or really if anyone even reads it! I'm going to post so that I can go back and read and remember all of the fun, crazy, silly things that we do as a family.

So here goes..I shall start now with a completely random photo review of April! Lots of pics..so beware:)

Jessalyn after she and I put together Truett's crib..


All the kids after making a snowman with daddy..in April.


Owen...on his birthday.


Youth Group at the Community Center.


Emma and Zach!


Zach




Ethan and Luke at football...try getting by this defense!! :)


Hike!


Daddy and Owen with his favorite lion hat..


Owen at his birthday party..


Ethan and Zach


Me..at 24 weeks preggo...growing what appears to be a giant Truett!


Jessalyn's craft for Easter..


Kids and Nana..on Easter


More pics from Easter..










Papa..


Josh


Jessalyn


Zach, Emma and Shara..


Zach and Emma


Papa taking a picture of Zach and Emma


Josh the grill master


There...a very quick random run down of this last month:)

TruJELO

We don't typically do this. And in doing it, it does sort of feel weird to both of us, but at the same time it just feels so right:) Our family has had a name in mind for the baby boy in my belly for weeks now. We actually were talking about this name before knowing he was a boy.

Again, coming up with names for our kids usually takes a long time. We both want to LOVE the name and so usually suggest names for months trying to come up with something that we both equally love. This time we have the added input of four other kids. Having three kids in school makes for many "name associations"...and our kids have outright despised some of the names mentioned because of some sort of school association. With all of that said, we kind of knew that this baby would have a name that was somewhat "out of the box" ...a bit like Jessalyn. She loves her "out of the box" name!

So what's his name?

Baby Brown #5 is ...are you ready? :) Ok...



Truett Striker Brown



Just how did we come up with this name you might ask?

One day while driving in the van with the kids we were listening to Toby Mac...this is the usual artist of choice right up there with T-Bone, Skillet and Family Force 5. On every Toby Mac album, his son (who is right around Jessalyn's age I think) does a song. They are always quite catchy and are particular faves of the kids. On the albums, his name is TruDog. I knew what this stood for, but the kids realized it on this trip in the van when at the end of a song Toby Mac uses TruDog's real name...Truett. I'm not sure who mentioned it first, but it quickly became a name suggestion for our baby. All four kids were like "yeah!!!" and completely agreed with each other. I kind of liked it right away, and as soon as possible sent Josh a text suggesting the name. He didn't say anything right away, but then later that night mentioned that he couldn't get that name off his mind and that the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. The same thing was happening to me.

Striker is Josh's mothers maiden name. Josh's mom died of ALS when Josh was around 8. We have always loved Striker and have tried with each kid to implement it in their name somehow. It just never seemed to work with the other names. Josh mentioned Striker to go along with Truett and again, we all LOVED the idea. It seems to fit perfectly, in our opinion!

We have 'played' with this name for a few weeks now and it just seems right. None of us can come up with something that we like better...or that we like at all:) So we are going to throw ourselves a curve ball, and go ahead and name this baby before we meet him!! Like I said, doing this feels a little odd to us considering we haven't actually done it like this before, but his name seems so right to us that we couldn't help but share it with everyone else!!

And really, even though it seems completely permanent because I posted it on my blog and facebook, it isn't on any birth certificate yet so if we really came up with something we all like better (highly unlikely..since we aren't even looking!) we could technically change our minds! What is it about posting on facebook that makes things so official anyway???

I think it's safe to say that Truett is official!!

Jessalyn came up with changing BrownJELO to TruJELO. I like it.

Nights of Arrethtrae (a childrens book review!)

I'm not really sure if you can really post a 'review' of a book that you've only read a few chapters of...but I can already tell that this is going to be a GREAT series. Back before Christmas I saw a review of this series on Pioneer Womans 'homeschool' page on her website. One of the other writers for that section posted a review of this book and it had me intrigued back then. We searched for the books as a last minute gift idea for Ethan and Jessalyn but weren't able to find them at any local bookstores. We didn't have enough time to order them from anywhere else so we sort of scrapped the idea. A few days before Christmas I did try calling the local Bible Bookstore to see if they had them and they hadn't heard of the series at all.

Last weekend we made a stop at that particular bookstore for Josh to pick up a few things and he came out surprising us with all 6 books of the series! Apparently, between Christmas and now, the bookstore decided that these books were something they wanted to carry and we quickly snagged the books!



The books are fictional and definitely geared more towards boys, although I'm pretty sure Jessalyn will get into them as well. She suggested that Ethan and I read the first one while she is finishing up another series that she's into at the moment, and then she plans to pick it up when we are done. It is a tale of a great King and his Son and the many Noble Nights who serve them. From what we've read so far, the Biblical parallels are VERY clear and the story of the nights is awesome!

"Journey to Arrethtrae, where these knights of noble heart live and die in loyal service to the King and the Prince. These knights are mighty, for they serve a mighty King. They are...the Knights of Arrethtrae!"

According to the CBD website, the books are geared towards 9 to 12 year olds...although, I've read some reviews that have told about how many of the older teens enjoy them as well. As you can see from the pictures, Ethan really enjoys silly/funny books. He has a stack of books on the floor next to his bed including lots of "Magic Tree House" books, and the silly "Captain Underpants" books. His bedside table always has his "go to books" for when he doesn't have a current book to read. Because he's a silly guy, he LOVES the "Whimpy Kid" books and is constantly giggling at the "Light in the Attic" book too! Ethan can read the Arrethtrae books, but I find that for him they are a little 'much' as far as his reading capability. He reads the text fine, but I think he has to concentrate a little too much to get through it and then misses out on the comprehension end. We have found that it works well with him for me to read some and him to read some..and then I can be sure that he's 'getting' it. There are also study questions at the end of each chapter with questions guiding you to look up scripture to find the specific parallels.

Ethan and I are eager to read a new chapter each night! Jessalyn is eager to read them and get to the 4th book "Lady Carliss".



Here is a link to the actual Knights of Arrethrae website.
http://perfect-praise.com/index_files/Page2253.htm
(for some reason I'm having a hard time actually creating a link for this...if you just google it, you'll find it!)

"One wedding, 4 rehearsal dinners"

This was pretty much the first thing Josh said after finding out that baby #5 is another boy! Of course, I'm sure he was feeling grateful for another healthy baby as well, but as a man and the provider for this family, he can't help but think logistically like this! It's true though.

I was not one bit surprised to see those 'boy parts' on the ultra sound. Had this baby been a girl I would have been HUGELY surprised. There was a part of me that was hoping for a girl ONLY because of how much Jessalyn wanted a sister. I would have loved to see her squeal, or more likely scream in delight...instead we saw her scream the words "NOOOOOOO". But, in all honesty, she has a GREAT attitude about it.

I know that she was praying daily for this baby to be a girl but I also know that she understands that God has a plan for us as a family and for her specifically and that she does trust in His plan. After her initial tantrum...that was immediately followed by big smiles and the relief of having another healthy sibling...she has come to terms with the fact that she is just gonna have to deal with being the only girl.

She knows that this is actually a great benefit to her. She knew this all along. She has always gotten privileges that the boys don't get..like her own room. We have stressed even more the fact that she really is our "miracle girl"...because honestly, looking at our pattern, it seems crazy that we have her at all! Josh and I have told her over and over that WE are glad that she gets to be our only girl and that she and I have to stick together being the only girls in the house. She is good with this. She even says that having brothers is really cool.

I am relieved to know that everything, as far as we can tell, looks normal and that he cooperated enough to give us a clear view of his gender. I am excited to add another crazy boy to this family! I can say this..he's gonna have to be a tough little guy to survive the antics of his big brothers! I have a feeling he's going to learn things quickly and strive to keep up with the big boys as much as possible. It will be an interesting adventure for sure!