The biggest surprise……

Introducing Eleanor Nicole Shepard!

Our sweet girl surprised us 1 month early!!!!!!!

This is why I have not blogged recently.  :)

I can’t wait to share more with you all. 

Eleanor is perfectly healthy…..just teeny tiny! 

Lots of love to you all!  I will be back very soon with more!

xo,

Amanda

Freezer meals, bladders and other interesting things.

So is anyone interested in the countdown to Eleanor? 

Only 27 days (give or take) till we meet our precious girl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yipppppppeeeeeeeeeee!

This pregnancy could not have flown by any faster.  I can’t believe we are already so close to meeting her.  I have enjoyed being pregnant so much!  I just get overwhelmed thinking about how amazing this truly is.  What a miracle pregnancy is.  How amazing God is!  This time last year we were desperate for any sign of good news about being pregnant or our fertility.  I can’t thank God enough for this miracle. 

*Last night I did my first load of laundry for Eleanor!!!!!  I washed some of her clothes so they would be ready for her anytime.  Today I am going to wash her blankets and sheets.  I have told myself, I am going to do a few things in her nursery everyday till she gets here.  It makes it seem less overwhelming! 

*Update on the broken glider:  Target took the broken glider back and are shipping us a new one.  If this next one arrives broken…….this lady just might lose it!!!! haha!  I read several reviews on their website of other customers saying their gliders arrived broken too!  Target needs to get their act together. 

*We also ordered her dresser!  Those are the last things we needed for her nursery!!!  So hopefully I will get to show you all pictures of a complete nursery very soon!  :) 

*Ok….so you know how pregnant women fill up their freezers with meals for when the baby gets here?  Well, I honestly don’t have time to cook.  I believe God sent the Schwann man by our house last night! ha!  He never comes to our house.  They have lots of good looking, healthy freezer meals.  He is coming back by on Friday, and I am going to order us lots of stuff!!!!  haha!  Kudos to all of you freezer-meal-cooking-ladies out there!  I don’t know how you have the time….but I want some of it.  :)

*I think my belly grew some more over night.  It feels heavier and I think I see a few faint stretch marks.  (nooooooooooooo!)  I made it this whole time, and then at 9 months they have to appear.  I guess it doesn’t matter if you use tummy butter or not.  Because I have faithfully. Boo.

*I’m so thankful that someone has given me a breast pump to borrow!  However…..i got really stressed when looking at it because I have no idea how to work it!  haha!  Tim told me to put it away!  He said we will figure it out later.

*Lately I have been dreaming about soda!  I want soda so bad sometimes.  Something is wrong with me!

*I wake up 4 times a night (on average) to pee.   It all makes sense when they showed us a picture of what my bladder looks like right now in our child birth classes!  It is smashed like a pancake!  Oh yeah….and E’s head is bouncing up and down on my bladder too. 

Okay….well before this posts gets any longer (or more boring…for all those who don’t care about pregnancy stuff!)  I will wrap it up here! 

I hope you’re having a fabulous day so far! 

xo,

Amanda

Maternity Photo Sneak Peak!

Happy Monday Morning!

I hope you had a beautiful weekend!!!!!

I sure did.  I am all better from my kidney stone incident.  I feel back to normal…..I guess as normal as I can feel at 9 months prego! :)  ha!

I wanted to share a sneaky peak of our maternity photos!!!!!  I was so nervous about them….I’m sure you remember my outfit quandaries.  But we had the most talented and sweetest photographer!  Goodness we loved her! We are definitely NOT the most photogenic people, but she makes anything look good!  We love her!  If you are in the Springfield area, you will not find a better photographer than Kinsey Mhire!  Thank you Kinsey! 

Random news:  We ordered our glider for the nursery from Target, and it arrived BROKEN!!!! Boo.  We were so bummed.  Now we have to return that massive box. 

I hope you have a very blessed day!  Lots of Love!

Amanda

2 Prego Ladies!

One of my very best friends came in to town last week!  Jade and I live about 16 hours apart. The funnest part……is that we are both pregnant and about a 1 month difference in our due dates. 

She is having a baby boy named Justus!

We had so much fun talking all things pregnancy and comparing bellies and prego woes! 

I’m so sad I won’t get to see baby Justus when he is born.  Hopefully I will get to see him a few months after though. 

Eleanor & Justus talking to each other. 

Guess what I realized today? 

This Sunday will be exactly 1 month until Eleanor’s due date!!!!!!!!!!!

Yippee!

Can you believe we are in the final month countdown? 

Tonight I went to Wal-Mart and got some things to put in my hospital bag.  I’m so so so excited and so ready for her to get here! 

I’m almost a momma!!!!!

Strollin’ with the homies

Baby stuff is abounding at our house!  At one of our showers, our family went in and got E her stroller! 

Husband put it together immediately at the shower! 

It was the stroller we picked out when we were registering…..

Remember…..Tim just HAD to HAVE the hot pink stroller!!!!!  haha! 

And the hot pink highchair, bouncer, sippy cups, swings etc etc etc. 

I think E is going to have her daddy wrapped around her finger, don’t you?

Then when we got the stroller home……Miss Maddie went for a ride.  So far she has tried out all of Eleanor’s equipment! 

I can’t wait to go on family walk/jogs together this summer!!!!

ANNOUNCEMENT:

38 DAYS UNTIL ELEANOR’S DUE DATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my!!!!!  It’s getting REAL.  We know she could actually come at any time and we are ok with that.  Even though everything is not perfect in her room.  But that is ok. 

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend so far! 

xo,

Amanda

jelly bean wishes!

Hi everyone!  Thank you for your sweet words and advice on my last post!  Last week was soooooo crazy!  I am on my way to feeling better. 

Tim and I are both in turbo mode right now!  We are determined to keep our house looking great…..just in case of early labor.  haha!  We are going to pack our bags this weekend and install the car seat. 

I have been craving soda like CRAZY lately!!!!!  So this morning I got a small coke from McD’s and it really hit the spot!  I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

Here is my 32 week pictures!  (2 weeks late….i’m now 34 weeks!)  ha! 

That’s how I roll. 

I have mentioned this before…..but getting Tim to take pictures for me is ridiculously hard! So, I pretty much just take what I can get!  :) 

A few things I am thankful for right now:  I don’t have any stretch marks or anything swollen (yet)!!!!  I hope it stays that way. 

Oh….I totally forgot to set out my Easter/spring decorations this year!!!! I’m so sad.  I definitely can’t forget next year with Eleanor!  I want to make sure I decorate for all the holidays with E.  I haven’t even bought any jelly beans yet.  Our choir at church is putting on two back to back productions of our Easter musical this Sunday!  I sure hope I can make it through both of them.  Speaking of swollen……I might get my first swollen feet Sunday! haha!  :)

Last week was our breastfeeding class! We learned so much!  I hope I can remember everything when the time comes.  They gave us a book to take home….so I can keep studying up on it.  I don’t know if Tim and I are just ultra silly or what…..but him and I kept giggling through the whole class!  We would look around and none of the other couple would even crack a smile!  What is that?  The instructor had a stuffed boob if that tells you anything. I think Mr. Tim is going to be an amazing helper when it comes to me figuring out breastfeeding!  He stays calm and remembers everything we learn.  Next week is our child birth class!  I’m sure we will be giggling through that too!

I hope everyone is having a great week so far!!!! 

Butterfly kisses & jelly bean wishes!

xo,

Amanda

Our crazy happenings!

Well, I have had a very eventful past few days! 

Wednesday evening we were at the hospital attending a breastfeeding class.  We learned a ton and had a good time together.  It made us so anxious for Eleanor to get here! 

We get home from our class and I started feeling funny.  It felt like I was getting a UTI.  I knew those are common in pregnant women, so I wasn’t surprised.  Well, as the hours passed it became more than just UTI symptoms.  I started feeling extreme pain in my lower back.  I actually didn’t think it was labor pains…..but thought it was kidney pain.  (I have had a kidney stone in the past and it felt the exact same.)  I tried so hard to just endure the pain, but it got almost unbearable.  Tim put his foot down and said we were going to the hospital.  We weren't sure if we should go to the ER or Labor & Delivery.  Tim ran in the ER to ask, and they told us to go to L&D.  We got checked in and they started to see what they could find out.  My urine showed no signs of a UTI or infection.  They checked Eleanor to make sure she was ok.  And thankfully her heartbeat was just as steady as ever!  They gave me a pain pill (which only took the edge off) and had me drink a ton of water.  They thought if it was a kidney stone that it would take care of it.  Well, the pain wouldn’t go away so they wanted to do an IVP x-ray to check out my kidneys.  In order to do this x-ray you have to lay completely still on a table for over an hour…..so they gave me morphine.  This was my first time having morphine…..and it was awesome! haha!  My pain was gone, at least for a few hours anyway.  (I was so nervous about having morphine with Eleanor, but I trusted the doctors and nurses.)  During the IVP they didn’t find anything wrong with my kidneys.  So, they sent us on home.  It was about 9am now.  We had been there since 2am!!!! 

I felt decent on the drive home.  Tim stopped to get me a plain biscuit to munch on to see if that would help me feel even better.  By the time we got home I started feeling bad again.  Tim and I tried to lay down and finally get some sleep.  But things didn’t work out quite so well for me.  I began to have excruciating pain in my lower back again!!!!  I felt so helpless since the IVP didn’t find anything and my urine didn’t show anything.  I thought I was just going to have to endure this awful pain.  I tried everything at home to help the pain.  I started to go a little crazy since I was also sleep deprived!  It was nutso. 

Tim woke up and said we were going to the hospital again.  I didn’t want to go and spend anymore money since they didn’t find anything the first time!   L&D said if we came back to the hospital we would have to go the the ER next time since Eleanor checked out ok.  We get there and they said it would be a 4 1/2 hour wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Words cannot describe!!!  I was balling and Tim was fuming mad.  He was trying to control himself and not lash out at the front desk people.  But he was not about to let me sit in the ER that long in such pain.  We sat there awhile and I was so embarrassed at how I looked and that I was crying uncontrollably.  I could feel people looking at me.  To make a long story short, my mom was able to pull a few strings since she knows some “high up people” at the hospital.  They were able to get me in very quick.  Thank you momma!!!! 

At the ER they gave me some more morphine (yay!) and started doing more tests.  They did an ultrasound on my kidneys and found out that I actually did have some sort of an obstruction in my right kidney.  They also found I had some blood in my urine, an infection and my white blood cell count was low.  Well, after all that, they said they were going to have to admit me to the hospital for the night because I was pregnant.   They wanted to monitor Eleanor, help me control the pain and then figure out what the obstruction was in my kidney. 

I had never stayed the night in the hospital before, so I was a little nervous.  And mostly I just worried about Eleanor the whole time.  I didn’t care what happened to me…..I just continually wanted to know if she was safe.  They got me into a room on the  L&D floor.  Then they sent a kidney doctor to come talk to us.  He said I had two options.  The first was to do surgery the next morning so he could find out exactly what was wrong with my kidney.  The second was to send me home with pain meds and hope I get over whatever was wrong.  The doctor said that either option there was a risk of going into early labor.  I was so scared about that.  Tim and I talked and prayed about our options and we decided to do the surgery. 

The next morning they came to get me for surgery around 11 am.  Everything went ok.  The doctor found that I had a matrix stone in my right kidney and some sort of obstruction.  He put a stint in to help with the obstruction.  Eleanor did awesome through the surgery!  They kept me there just a little longer after surgery to monitor Eleanor.  I was so proud of her…..she was a champ through everything. 

I finally got to go home Friday evening…..PAIN FREE!!!!!  (well, for the most part!)  I have to go back in two weeks and they will take the stint out.  They gave me meds for my recovery time. 

Saturday I rested all day in hopes that I would feel good enough for our maternity pictures.  Thankfully I did and we got to keep our appointment!  However, I didn’t get to plan out our outfits like I had hoped! haha!  But I think I like what we ended up going with. 

Sunday, my pain was not so good.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe it’s all just catching up with me.  I have heard that stints can be uncomfortable too. 

I’m just hoping and praying that me and Eleanor will continue to recover good…..and that she stays in there for a few more weeks!!!!! haha! 

This did give me quite the scare about her coming early!  Tim and I decided that we are going to pack our hospital bags this week!!!!! :)

I have got the BEST husband in the world!!!!!!  He has taken such great care of me.  I am so thankful for him and love him more than I can say! 

I hope our maternity pictures turn out ok!  Tim and I are so silly and are not the most natural in front of cameras!!! haha!  But we had an amazing photographer….so I’m looking forward to seeing what she does with our silliness. 

I guess to wrap up this reallllly long story…….

WHAT ESSENTIALS SHOULD WE PACK IN OUR HOSPITAL BAG???

WHAT SHOULD WE LEAVE HOME?

IS THERE SOMETHING YOU WISH YOU WOULD HAVE HAD OR KNOWN ABOUT BRINGING? 

Thank you for all your advice! 

Lots of Love!

Amanda