Wow! That’s all I have to say. No, not really, but to sum up the last few months that one word really says it all. Spence and I thought it would be a good idea to have another baby. 
We were very naïve. We were nervous when we had Ree (because of Chase) but when everything turned out perfectly, we decided it was now or never to finish up our family and not leave Ree as the lone caboose eight years after Chase. We found out we were pregnant with a baby girl and due at the very end of August. Everything was going along smoothly and the baby was right on track when we had our 20 week ultrasound. I however, was not feeling good. I chalked it up to my age, swelling veins, headaches, and general pregnancy, but by about 30 weeks, my blood pressure had skyrocketed and I had to go on medication. I still felt like crap, but everything seemed to be going well with the baby and I was measuring my regular 2 weeks behind schedule (my babies are always small… 5lbs and 10, 12 and 13oz were the weights of Hayes, Chase, and Ree full term. One night in my 37th week (really not that early, but early for me) I woke up in the night with what felt like a contraction. I laid there for about 5 minutes wondering if this could really be happening when another one came. I jumped out of bed and started packing a bag…I wasn’t prepared in the least. About 10 minutes later I woke up Spence and told him we had to get to the hospital because we live an hour away and Ree came pretty fast. We left the kids asleep for my Dad to come and watch and headed out. This was around 3:30am. We pulled up to the hospital and Dr. Coss was waiting out front. We headed up to the 4th floor and by 6:00 am, Kate was born. Except she was tiny. 3lbs, 14 oz tiny. When she came out, I was watching the faces of Spence, my mom, and the nurses, and it seemed as though all of their jaws dropped. I looked down at this teeny little baby and wondered what in the world was wrong. But she was strong. Her Apgar was great and she was breastfeeding within the hour. But her white blood count came back low and they had to admit her to the NICU to give her antibiotics as a precaution. I had no idea what the NICU was going to entail…if I had known I would have grabbed the baby and ran. I fed her one last time and had to hand her over to the nurses…it makes me nervous just thinking about it.
A lot of stuff happened between that minute and the nearly 2 weeks she was in the NICU (which I’ll write about when I have about 4 hours) but we finally brought home a beautiful 4lb 3oz baby and we were exhausted…physically and emotionally. Thanks in part to the prayers of many and a priesthood blessing, she passed all of her tests with flying colors and was eating well enough on her own to come home. She will be 2 months old next week and weighs about 8 lbs now. She is fussy and demanding and is about to kill her poor, old parents, but when I hold her against my cheek in the middle of the night, no matter how exhausted I am, I want it to last forever.
