Cayden is a gaelic name, it means Spirit of Battle.

OK, I have to first say something that was discussed in the comment section of the blog. Someone asked if I got paid for the ads on the side of the page. I do, only it's tricky because you only get paid so much per view, and you have to make a certain amount (I think it's 100 dollars, but I could be wrong) Right now I think I'm at 40 cents, lol. I don't know if I'll ever get to the 100 dollar mark. I don't know if the money resets every so often or what. But if you guys want to "pay" me in a way, you could sign up for swagbucks using my referral link, and then use it. Swagbucks is a search engine (I use search engines a lot.) It pulls from Google and Ask.com, so it's a pretty good one. Occasionally while you're searching, something will pop up saying "You just won x amount of swagbucks!" (You can win one up to 500 I think. The most I've won at once has been 2, but people have won 5 and 10) For every swagbuck YOU win, I win. They also have codes and code hunts via their blog and facebook page that you can get and enter. These are tricky, as some are hard to find, and they often expire quickly. There's a handy toolbar which I love, because it's super easy and fast for me to search. Anyway, you search, win swagbucks, and then you can go into their prize store and get some prizes. Their prize store is pretty big, and the prizes are obtainable. I've been on swagbucks for maybe a month, and I've traded my swagbucks in for two giftcards, a 25 dollar one for restaurants.com, and a 5 dollar amazon giftcard. Together they cost me 90 swagbucks. The thing to remember about giftcards though is ALL of them (with the exception of the starbucks giftcard.) Are only redeemable online, and a few of them cannot be combined with each other (The amazon giftcards though, can be. So you can buy and use as many as you want!) Also, the giftcards take 7-10 business days after you order them to be sent to you, so if Grandma's birthday is a few days away, and you want to use your amazon giftcard to buy her something, it's not going to get to you in time.

I know people are wary about getting something for nothing, but honestly I wouldn't use it if it were a lot of work or I got a ton of spam. I've gotten 3 emails from swagbucks in the month that I've used it, one was welcoming me, the other two were to verify that I ordered the giftcards. If you search a lot, it really IS a good thing. And you can help me out too!



That's my referral link, so if you click that and sign up, I win whatever you win!

The second thing you can do to help me out is, I'm looking for a certain stuffed animal. My son has picked it as his favorite and carries it with him everywhere. Of course, I can't find it in stores, and on ebay and amazon, it's like, 30 bucks (and the thing is tiny! A little bigger than a beanie baby!) It's a ty pluffie called Wades the hippo. If you see it in stores, or cheap on a website, PLEASE let me know. We have two but he gets dirty SO fast, and I want to have extra in case we lose one! Plus, one needs to head to Grandmas! Here's what he looks like:


I thought since my son's birthday is coming up, I should talk about my pregnancy/birth experience in this Whatever-Wednesday. I know a lot of you guys have children, and you can feel free to share about them. If you don't have kids, but maybe a special child in your life, a godson or daughter, a friends baby, a niece or nephew, little brother or sister, ect. You can share about them too!

My pregnancy is what I like to call accidentally on purpose. My husband and I were engaged, and I knew I wanted to be pregnant shortly after we married. Call me crazy, I know I'm young, but my main goal in life has always been to be a Mom. My biological clock has been ticking since I was 12, ha ha. I know some women dream of being lawyers and doctors and that's fine and good, but I always dreamed of being a Mother. The world needs mothers just as much as doctors and lawyers.

Anyway, my husband and I are both overweight. From everything I read, it SHOULD have taken us a long time to get pregnant. So, while we weren't actively trying, after we got engaged, I figured, while we probably should start trying, there wasn't any point to try not too. I really honestly didn't think I'd get pregnant. I figured even when we started actively trying, it would take months.

Go figure, I was wrong. I bought my wedding dress. Two days later it hit me that I hadn't had a period yet. I'm constantly skipping and late and all that jazz, but I took a test just in case. I was about to throw it away, when that little line appeared.

I took probably about 10 more tests, including going to two clinics to get one done. I just couldn't believe that I was pregnant. We couldn't return my wedding dress, so we bumped the wedding up and planned a small, beautiful wedding in about a week. It was better than probably any big wedding I could have had. During my first appointment, I kept waiting for the doctor to tell me I was wrong, that I wasn't pregnant. But I got to see my little guy, bouncing around on the screen. It was totally weird to see something hit you from the inside and not be able to feel it.





We opted to get a 3-d ultrasound done, which was amazing and I would recommend it to anyone. The place we went too was awesome, we could invite a whole bunch of people, they had a HUGE couch and a HUGE TV to watch it on. We "gave" it to our Mother's for Mother's Day, and my whole family was there when we found out I was having a boy. They were unable to get really good facial pictures because I was still semi-early in my pregnancy (20 weeks) so I got to come back a second time, for free. I got all the pictures put on a disk, as well as some printed, and both a vhs and a dvd of both sessions. It was well worth the 100-something dollars we paid. The first picture is the 20 week one, the second two are 30 weeks. I cried when I saw his tiny hands. I dunno why the hands did it for me, but they just did.









My whole pregnancy was pretty easy. I had VERY mild morning sickness that went away very quickly. I didn't really get any of the problems that often plague pregnant women. My three main complaints were I had LOTS of swelling, back pain, and horrible heartburn. I got hit with a heartburn attack on Mothers day that woke me up at 4 am and kept me up, vomiting and feeling just yucky. That first mother's day was cursed. My in-laws showed up SUPER early, earlier than they were supposed too, my husband got called into work, leaving me alone with them, I was feeling horrible, and to ice the cake we had a horrible storm, with a couple tornado's touching down, and my mother in law nagging me to leave, even though I was in no mood to move, and my family was on their way, and if a tornado were to hit, I don't think the safest place to be would in in a car trying to outrun it. The weather ending up getting better, my family showed up, helping out with the in laws, and my heartburn FINALLY went away in time to enjoy an amazing lunch.

The then end of my pregnancy hit. Any woman I think who has been pregnant will tell you, the beginning is OK, the middle is the best, and the end is some sort of sick torturous waiting game, where you just feel done, and every pang makes you wonder 'is this it? Is it over YET?'

That's when we got hit with bad news after bad news. First, I ended up in the hospital for non-movement, and just about had a heart attack when they couldn't find a heartbeat. Luckily they brought in an ultrasound, and he was OK, but it was probably the scariest few minutes of my life. My husband had fallen out his truck a few weeks earlier, and I insisted he go to the doctor. The doctor said there was nothing wrong, but if it was still bugging him in a few weeks, they'd send him to get a MRI. I told him he should have insisted on a MRI then, because with the baby coming we just didn't have time if he needed surgery. Well, turns out, he had torn both his ACL and his minicus, and needed surgery. Then, we found out shortly after that (and this may be TMI, but I've found after you've given birth, you're pretty much open to sharing whatever, so. Sorry.) I was going to need a c-section, because I was too small down there, and Cayden was too big. He wasn't dropping down in order to put pressure on me to dilate. My doctor said she'd let me go until the day after my due date (October 4th) But if I didn't go into labor by then, I would need a c-section.

Oh, it doesn't end there. A couple days before my husband surgery, we got hit with a HUGE windstorm. We had hurricane force winds, which left a LOT of the state without power. Including my husbands surgery center. They had to push the surgery back to the 20th of September. Two weeks later, I would be having my own surgery. To say I was a wreck was seriously an understatement. My husband had his surgery, and it was horrible. He was way worse off than we thought he would be, and I was little to no help (I was 9 months pregnant, so I was good at getting him things and running around, but when it came to helping HIM move, I was big and bulky myself, and so, it was a struggle.) He actually ended up falling in the front yard when he was trying to get in the house right after his surgery. He had a nerve block which left his leg completely numb. Not really being good on crutches, he tried to put his leg down on the ground and it of course didn't support him, and he fell. Luckily, because of the nerve block, he didn't feel anything, but I had no idea how to get him up. He also ended up spiking a fever and almost needing to go to the ER, which good thing THAT didn't happen, because I would have no idea how to get him into the car. We both ended up being exhausted and not sleeping much that week, Jeremy because he was in so much pain, and me because I was so pregnant, and sleeping on the ground or our crappy couch (my husband couldn't make it up the stairs to bed. I wouldn't leave him down there by himself because he hesitated to ask me for things when he was in the same room, I knew if I were upstairs he'd just wait till I came down, and he needed help doing EVERYTHING. I didn't want him to wait for a pill, or food, or to go to the bathroom.) I finally decided (against my husbands orders) to bring down our mattress. I waited till he fell asleep, pulled it off the bed, and wrestled it into the hallway and before I pushed it down the stairs yelled "Don't yell at me!". He tried to yell at me, but I told him the worst that would have happened is I would have gone into labor, which I wanted to do, and it was already downstairs, so yelling would do no good.

Jeremy took a week to recover. We ordered P'zones Thursday, and I started not feeling good. My heartburn was back and I was throwing up. OK, I thought, hold off on the pepperoni until Cayden gets here. Friday I still wasn't feeling good. I called the Doctors but they told me it was just end of Pregnancy pains, and to let it go. I had a doctors appointment on Monday, so I didn't worry about it too much. Saturday however, I couldn't eat or drink anything without vomiting, and I was having pains in my upper back. Into the hospital I went, where they told me I had a stomach bug, and having irritability contractions due to dehydration. They pumped me full of IVs and told me I could stay overnight and see the on call doctor in the morning, or go home. I thought I'd get more sleep at home, and I had an appointment with my own doctor on Monday, so I decided to go home. Big mistake. Before I even made it to the car, I was throwing up again. Still, we went home. Where Jeremy and I got no sleep. I was up screaming all night, I was in so much pain. At around 8 AM I think it was, I finally decided to go back to the hospital (don't ask me what made me wait so long, to this day, I still don't know. We had been waiting for the doctor to call back, and she never really did.)

We had to wait for my Mom to come get me, I knew I couldn't walk into the hospital, and there was no way for Jeremy to push me in a wheelchair on his crutches, and she flew to the hospital. I was mean to the nurse (which I feel badly for now. My Mom's a nurse, so I know they don't have an easy job. But this woman wanted me to register before I laid down, and I was like, uh uh, that ones not happening hon.)

Turns out, I had pancreatitus due to gall stones, which the nurse told me was comparable to giving birth naturally (I don't know, I've never given birth naturally. I will say I have NEVER been happier than when they gave me drugs. Oooh the pain was gone instantly.)All that "heartburn" I had been having were actually gall bladder attacks. Which would explain why ant-acids did NOTHING for me.





I know, I look amazing. I have been up all night and just been cut open, cut me some slack!

Cayden came out at 3:10 PM, weighing 8 lbs 10 oz, had hair on his 14 inch head, and was 21.5 inches long. He was gorgeous, but the bad news didn't end. He was having issues breathing, and I got to briefly touch his leg before they whisked him off to the NICU.

Luckily, again, it all worked out. They said by the time Cayden got up there, he was fine, and I got to hold him only a short while later. He was gorgeous, the most alert baby I've ever seen. The following picture was taken probably not even an hour after birth.





We still had hurdles to get through. That Monday my husband went to the doctor because he had an extreme pain in his leg. Turns out he had two blood clots, so, that was fun. I ended up needed two more surgeries (I had a stone stuck in one of my ducts that had to be removed before I had my gall bladder removed.) So, it was a fun ride. At first, I told everyone no more babies. It was too hard. But, of course, that went away a few weeks later, and I've had baby fever since. It's so wonderful, but also so hard to watch your baby grow and get bigger and change and do all these things he or she didn't used to it. On one hand, you want your baby to stay little, on the other, you want to see the people they become. I've learned that you've just got to enjoy every moment you have, but seriously, you blink, and it's gone.

Cayden is the best thing I've ever done, and he's the best part of me. It may sound totally cliche and corny, but that boy is my heart and soul.






Some of my favorite pictures (in various order):