I Wish I Could Freeze Time

We feel so blessed that our little baby boy arrived! He is an absolute dolly! We named him Troy Grant Cardon - after Trevor's best friend and former councilor when he was Bishop, Troy Bair (on a side note, the girls have been calling the baby Troy Bear...they came up with it on their own!). He made his way into the world on June 23, 2011 at 5:15 weighing 7 lbs and measuring 19 inches long.

Everything is so perfect. Our baby is so sweet. The girls all love him so much. There is nothing better than bringing a new baby into the world and into your home. I wish I could freeze time. Our kids are all such good ages -- I want to remember these days forever!

The pictures of my pregnancy were usually taken by a small child with my cell phone, so you'll have to excuse the quality, but I wanted to document my journey.

My first clue that this baby may be a boy was how differently I carried him. I usually show quite a bit by the time I'm 15 weeks, but I wasn't showing much at this point still.

22 weeks

27 weeks

30 weeks

D-Day! 39 weeks

I've delivered all my girls early - and each one came one week earlier than the last. Naturally, I thought that I'd be having this baby early too! But he was a stubborn little man! At my 38 week appointment, I hadn't made much progress and I was pretty miserable, so the doctor said he would induce me on Monday, June 20. I got up and went to the hospital, but I just didn't feel good about getting induced....so I went home (but only after the doctor stripped my membranes). Within a couple hours of returning home, I started having regular contractions. After 6 hours of contractions every 2-3 minutes, we went to the hospital. I had only made it from 1 cm to 2+ cm in all that time! So, the doctor sent me home. I ended up having contractions for 18 hours...and then they stopped!

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty miserable. I was having horrible back labor and my children were bored to death ("Why can't you just take us swimming?" "Let's go to the park, Mom!"). I pretty much sat around and wished I was dead! Anyway, the doctor had told me that I should come back on Thursday morning to the hospital to be checked and started on pitocin. Wednesday night I drove the girls out to our friend's house, the Jones', so that Trevor and I could get to the hospital at 5:30 on Thursday morning.

At 6:30 am the doctor started the drip. By 2:30 pm I hadn't made any progress, although I'd been having regular, strong contractions for 8 hours! With all my back labor and lack of progress, the nurses were telling me that the baby my be posterior, or that the doctor may send me home again. Well, when the doctor checked me at 2:30, he broke my water and things finally started to happen! I got my epidural a little bit after that and a few hours later our little Troy was born.

Lucky for us, my mom arrived within 2 hours of Troy's birth. She stayed for 10 days! It was so nice to have her here...she entertained the girls, took care of the baby, cooked, cleaned and let me rest a ton!

I love this picture of Troy and Audra! She is so in love with him.
As she told me, "I just want to learn how to be a mother!"

Grandma swam with the girls almost everyday.

Now my mom is gone and we're on our own here in Texas :( Luckily, I feel really good and the baby is really good, so we are going to pack up our grip and head west for the rest of the summer. On Friday night we'll be starting our 26 hour pilgrimage to Utah for a week. Next we'll drive to Plumas Lake, then on to Orange County, and finally up to Camarillo. We're super excited to see all our our friends and family - and to get out of this hot place for a couple of months!