Nana!

Clark cuddling with his Nana


Look at that thumb!! I don't know if he'll keep doing it, he doesn't find his thumb all the time or seem to need it, but it looks so cute when he's got it.

It's been wonderful to have my mother here ("Nana" to the kids) to help out. I'm always in danger of post partum hemorrhage since I've experienced it with all three. If I stand up too often or for too long, I can tell it puts me right back to how I felt right after he was born, so it's a real PAIN to not be able to do everything yet. I went for a walk with Soren and Cora in the stroller on Wednesday, feeling pretty good, but for the next two days I had to take it very easy as the bleeding had picked up as well as perineal pain. It was such an easy birth, why is the recovery so hard?!?! In any case, thank heavens for my mom, who is getting lots of exercise in our house :-)

Clark and his siblings

Clark has found his thumb! (and Cora has found her inner fish) He doesn't always find it, though, so he'll occasionally take a binky (pacifier) too :-)

Soren always asks to hold the baby, but it lasts about 5 seconds and then he says, "heeyaah" (here) and gives him back.

Do they look related? Actually, Clark looks a lot like all of them did as infants, it's fun to look at all of their baby pictures and compare.

Clark Elling Olson

He's here! A little delayed post here, email and facebook got the news first :-)

Clark was born June 15, 2010 at 9:39am. Here's the story, which I wrote on my iPod in the hospital and haven't quite edited but I need to get it down somewhere before time gets more away from me!---

2am I woke up to a contraction. It was pretty strong so I looked at the time and waited to see if another one would come along. 6 minutes later, another one. For about 40 minutes I timed contractions which varied from 3 to 10 minutes apart, so I woke up Brad. We sat up and talked while timing contractions, I also finished packing my hospital bag. After 2 hours of contractions I called Tena, it was about 4am. She came right away and we were off to the hospital. (BTW, the evening before we had just happened to take a dry run drive to the hospital!)

We arrived around 4:30am, by then the contractions had slowed down a bit. In triage the nurse checked me and I was dilated 5cm and completely effaced. Even though my contractions were slowing down I was far enough along they admitted me and I got all hooked up in my room. Around 6:30 they started me on pitocon to keep the contractions going and I was also given an epidural, so I didn't even make it to hard labor before I got the pain relief! So the labor went well, moved along quickly so that I was ready to push by about 9:30am (about ten minutes before I was talking to my mom on the phone to let her know I was in labor but had to get off in the middle of a huge contraction and all the sudden lower pelvic pressure!!) I could feel my contractions, but of course the epidural took away most if the pain. It took all of 5 pushes during 2 contractions to get him out. The doctor and nurse were great. Clark came out just fine and crying right away. I held him right after and he stopped crying almost immediately, but the nurses had to take him away to clean etc. (in the room) and boy did he wail! He was 7 lbs. 13 oz. and 19 3/4 inches long. Not bad for being 9 days early! He was born at 9:39am.

I did not hemorrhage as with the last 2, although they did give me meds just in case, as I did start to bleed more than the norm. Soon after his birth I got very nauseous and dizzy. They gave me some kind of major anti- nausea med (after I barfed!) that made me SO tired and loopy, pretty much for the rest of the day.

It took awhile to settle on a name, but we liked Clark- mostly for its Superman assiciation :-) and it just fit him. Elling is a family name on Brad's side. While the girls were visiting(since Mom isn't here yet, we had Judy and Elisa come down and help out with the kids--also Superwoman Penny in our ward organized to have the RS sisters bring meals for the next week, bless her!) one of the volunteers came in for something and was asking about what names the girls wanted for their new brother. Cora randomly says, "we can't name him Travis because that's my boyfriend's name, but he's not my boyfriend anymore because I don't go to that school anymore..." classic Cora :-)

Bare Belly

A little partial nudity here... But it's so fun to see the big belly before the baby inside shows up in the real world. Here I am 37 weeks/9 months pregnant!!!


I don't really go the pool bare-bellied, I just pulled up the top for the picture! I'm not a real believer in public belly-showing in any form, be it pregnant or flat-tummied :-)

Blue Bonnets

So we really tried to get pictures of our kids in a field of blue bonnets. They're the Texas flower, I think you can't really consider yourself a Texan unless you've got SOME pictures of yourself or your children surrounded in the lovely purple blossoms, so these are about the best of our attempts. I need a faster camera man, trying to catch any good child moment is pretty tricky...

Belly

I'll get an actual "belly shot" one of these days. I've noticed the girls love seeing pictures of me when I was pregnant, and ask who is in my tummy and love knowing which pictures are of them in there. So I can't fail to have a few in case this next one cares to see himself pre-birth!! It's been a good pregnancy. I really can't complain, even though I often do :-) It's hard, but it could be so much worse, so I count my blessings that it's gone so well. I'm pretty sure I had an actual contraction today, but it was just one. I sometimes get in a mode where I ignore my belly and just do what I need to do, like today I cleaned the windows with Cora, she really wanted to do it and there is not WAY I would say no to a child who wants to clean. Lots of carrying Soren here and there-- or chasing him down in the store like today and holding him while he kicked and arched etc. In any case, I think the reason I haven't quite reached the weight gain I did with Isabelle with any subsequent pregnancy is because I haven't had quite as much sitting and resting time. And in the end, that is good! The exercise is necessary--of course unless I go into labor heaving that boy around, but so far I just have a sore back by the end of the day :-)

Hey, I think this was an actual blog-type entry instead of just picture captions. Nice. Well, for me anyway, anyone reading might not have gotten this far :-)

Baseball in the Backyard

We have this little backyard, but luckily our kids are little enough to play no-damage-to-the-neighbors baseball with tennis balls :-)