Meet Ashlyn Rose

Well, things still are chaotic around the West household. Ella is in bed with pneumonia as I write this, but I'm starting to think that this chaos is just my new reality. When I was pregnant with Ashlyn I kept telling myself "We are already outnumbered by our children, four can't be that much harder than three". Well, folks I'm here to tell you it is that. much. harder.....like, A LOT harder. But, I really want to update the blog before I forget all the details of Ashlyn's first weeks (which will happen really soon with my mushy mommy brain).

Ashlyn Rose was born November 18, 2009 at 2:01pm at Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, IL. The last few weeks of my pregnancy were horrendous (like any good pregnancy should be). I felt like my skin was going to rip open at any moment, like her little feet were going to break my ribs and like I had to go to the bathroom all day, every day. At my Nov. 17th Dr. appointment, my doctor told me she'd take pity on me and induce me early the next morning... an offer I could not refuse! We got to the hospital at 7am the next morning and they broke my water and started me on pitocin. Everything went pretty smoothly. I got my epidural before the pain got too intense and it only took about 6 hours for me to dilate to 10cm. At around 1:45pm, just as I was getting ready to push, my cell phone rang. We weren't going to answer it at first, but Matt read the number to me and it was the kids' school nurse. Uh oh! They were calling to tell us Gavin was at school with a fever and I needed to come in to get him. Sorry, not gonna happen! Luckily, my parents were only 20 minutes away and they were able to run over and pick him up. We all had a good laugh about that. Ashlyn came out healthy and FEISTY! All the nurses were shocked at what a good scream she had from the get go. I think Matt and I had a little panic attack thinking "what did we get ourselves into?", but she eventually calmed down and was an angel the rest of our hospital stay and that whole first week. When she was about 7 days old I started to feel pains in my lower abdomen at night. The first couple times it happened I thought they were just really bad afterpains and threw on a heating pad. On the 10th day after she was born I woke up around 1am with a terrible pain in my lower right side. I still thought it was afterpains, so I got out the heating pad and tried to go back to sleep. By 2am the pain was so bad I started vomiting and thinking maybe this was something more than just cramps. Matt woke up and called our next door neighbor (she is a saint!) to come sleep on our couch while we headed off to the ER. We had to wake up poor Ashlyn and drag her out into the cold because she was still nursing and had no other options for food. I sat in the ER vomiting and trying to nurse Ashlyn with a morphine drip in my arm for about an hour before they figured out I had a kidney stone in my right side. They loaded me up with prescriptions, sent me home and told me to come back if I hadn't passed it in a week. That was a long week! It took me a full week to pass the stone. The medication they had me on was strong. It made me totally loopy and Ashlyn totally miserable. She cried for a week straight. I am grateful that we have so many loving family members and friends who helped us by bringing us dinner, watching our kids and driving them where they needed to go.

The last few weeks with Ashlyn have been a roller coaster. We have had Thanksgiving, Christmas, a kidney stone, 3 kids' birthdays, a birthday party, a baby blessing, a baptism and the flu (3 times). I feel like we haven't even had time to sit back and reflect on all the changes in our lives. Ashlyn is a bit high maintenance at the moment. I spend most of my time nursing her, trying to put her to sleep or trying to keep her asleep, which is no easy task with 3 other kids around. The other kids ADORE her. Ella is especially drawn to her. I have to be very careful where I leave her to sleep because Ella cannot resist the temptation to pinch her cheeks and kiss her and sing to her. It is really cute. Ashlyn is starting to coo and smile at us pretty regularly. She has the cutest little smile that makes her beautiful blue eyes twinkle. Abe loves to sit and talk to her whenever he gets a chance. He swears he was the first one to get her to smile. Gavin loves to hold her as often as I'll let him. He has always been so sweet to Ella and I am excited to watch him bond with Ashlyn as well. We feel so blessed to have her in our lives.