Baby Boy

Has it really been over a year since my last post?? Does anyone still follow personal blogs anymore?

I have been posting regularly to Instagram, and occasionally on Facebook also, so you can find me there if you haven't already.

A lot has happened in the past year! Most notably is the birth of our third child and first son, Liam Sterling, born in the middle of June.

He is 5 months old now, and he has been the happiest, smiliest baby around! We all love him so much and are so happy to have him in our family!

20 Weeks + Sara was right!

I am 20 weeks along in this pregnancy today. That's halfway folks! Let the countdown begin!

We had our 20-week ultrasound yesterday and the baby is looking healthy. No concerns that they could see. But because of the heart defect Sara had, they are suggesting we get another ultrasound done in about a month by the cardiology specialists, just to get a closer look at this baby's heart to see if there are any congenital issues there. Mostly the doctors have told us that Sara's condition was a one-time thing and is unlikely to reoccur in other pregnancies, but it doesn't hurt to look more closely to be sure.

And now for the issue of the gender..... First of all, let me tell you that about three months ago, before we had even told Sara about the pregnancy, she woke up from a nap one day and started telling me all about a dream she had about the baby that was coming to our house. I was so surprised since we hadn't said anything to her yet! Maybe she just overheard us talking about it to each other? Or maybe she just had some sisterly intuition? I don't know, but she was telling me all about the baby and that it would be a girl and that her name was Trainer. No, that isn't a typo. :)  So for the past few months we have all been calling this baby Trainer, and if you ever ask Sara if it is a boy baby or a girl baby, she is very insistent that it is a girl. Well the ultrasound technician had a little bit of trouble determining the gender since the baby wasn't positioned perfectly, but she was able to get a pretty good shot and was very certain that Sara was right....IT'S A GIRL! 


In talking with Sara about what the baby, I'm pretty sure this is what she is imagining her little sister will come out looking like:

{from the children's book Pinkalicious}

Sara will tell you that the baby has pink hair and pink eyes. She hasn't said anything about pink skin, but I'm pretty sure she wouldn't say no to the idea. :) 

So there you have it, Sara is going to have a little sister! We are all very excited about it--except maybe Rob's dad who was hoping for a grandson to carry on the Hinckley name. Sorry Stuart! Maybe next time. :)

also known as

Sara is going by a new name, or will be around August 22nd.

WHAT?!!

Sara's nurse from the hospital called about a half-hour ago to tell us they've removed her breathing tube and a few other tubes and have moved her to "the floor" -- she's not in the ICU anymore!! What?! That was fast! .... She still has a lot of recovering to do, but apparently it's nothing she needs to be in the intensive care unit to accomplish. I have such mixed feeling about them moving her so quickly....they wouldn't move her unless she was doing really well (YAY! -- I guess Sara decided to take me up on my suggestion for a birthday gift to her daddy! {see previous post}) but being on the floor means she will no longer have a bedside nurse looking after her 24/7. That scares me a little. I'm so used to knowing there's always somebody there taking care of her! BUT being in her own room means we can spend more time with her and even sleep there if we want, and Rob's niece and nephew can probably visit now (nobody under age 14 is allowed in the ICU's, at least that's the rule right now during RSV season). Rob was at work when I got the phone call, so I called him and he's on his way home so we can go see our little girl. Hurry Robby, HURRY!!

(photos and video to follow)

Surgery's Done!!

We're sitting in the surgery waiting room, and just finished talking with Sara's surgeon who came to tell us the surgery is over and everything went as planned. They ended up going in through the left side of the ribcage instead of the front which is good because they didn't have to put her on bypass that way. They were still able to remove the pinch and repair a portion of the arch, and everything went well! Now we're just waiting until we can go back to see her. Then it's on to recovery. We look forward to taking her home soon!

Do we need a lesson in patience or something??

So it looks like the surgery won't be tomorrow morning after all. They keep pushing it back on us. Apparently they are concerned about what appears could be an infection in her intestines. Her blood work and other tests come back negative for infection, but the x-ray is somewhat suspicious, so they are putting her on antibiotics to clear up any possible infection. They will recheck the x-ray on Tuesday and if everything is all clear, they'll proceed with the surgery Tuesday or Wednesday. If not, they'll continue antibiotics for a full 7 days and do the surgery after that. More waiting!! We hate the waiting.

On a somewhat happier note, Sara had her eyes open the last few times we've been in to visit her. It was nice to see her with her eyes open, although I wonder what she's thinking! She's probably so confused and wonders what's going on!! What do babies think about anyway?

We'll post more updates as they become available. For now it's just more waiting! Thanks again for all your prayers. Keep them coming!

UPDATE:

Rob and I just got home from visiting Sara in the hospital and she is doing very well. She is very stable and we are just waiting for the surgery. At first they told us it would be tomorrow morning, but then we got a call saying it won't be until Monday! Not sure why. Maybe they just want to wait until her little heart is as stable as possible. Also, the doctors said they can probably do the surgery through the side of her ribcage instead of going through the sternum which is great. For now it's just a waiting game, but Sara seems to be holding up pretty well and the Doctors seem optimistic that the surgery will go well and she will have a full recovery and enjoy a normal childhood.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and prayers. That's really all we can do for her right now! We appreciate everyone's love and concern.

We need your prayers

We need your help in praying for our little girl. We took Sara to the emergency room yesterday because she wouldn't eat and was very lethargic. It turns out she has a problem with her heart that is going to require surgery to fix. It's actually a pinch in the Aorta, which is the main artery that comes off the heart to deliver blood to the body. The pinch in the artery was causing her little heart to pump extra hard to try to delivery blood to her lower body. Luckily her upper body including her brain were receiving enough blood, so there is no damage there. She is in the ICU at Primary Children's Hospital, and is doing better now that she's had medical attention. She'll have the surgery as soon as she's stable enough and as soon as they can schedule a surgeon. As you can imagine, it's been a rough experience to find all of this out about our little girl! Please keep her in your prayers.

Early Bird

Surprise, surprise...our little girl decided to come 4 weeks early!!

My water broke just before 7:00 AM on Friday morning, and off to the hospital we went! After a few complications (like my doctor not being available since it was the day after Christmas, and the resident doctor not checking her position with an ultrasound when we first arrived so we had to wait through 17 hours of contractions and poor progress dilating before the nurse finally realized "that's not a head I'm feeling!" -- THEN an ultrasound was done to confirm she was breech! and a c-section was performed)...

Sara Christine Hinckley was born Saturday, December 27th at 5:11 AM
7 lbs 3 oz., 18.5 inches

Mother and baby are doing well! For being 4 weeks early, she certainly isn't "preemie" sized!

So far we think she looks more like her Daddy. For the first two days of her life, she's enjoyed a lot of eating and sleeping, and that's about it!

Welcome, our little angel!

WE GOT AN OFFER!!

After having our condo on the market for just over two months now, we finally got an offer today! YIPPEE-HOORAY! The offer came in at only $1,900 less than what we're asking, and it's a cash buyer! Which means we don't have to worry about their loan falling through or something. The only down sides? Horrible timing! (or perfect timing, depending on which way you look at it). They want to close on January 16th, which is only 6 days before my due date!! BUT they are buying it for their daughter to live in, and she doesn't have to be out of her current place until the first of March, so potentially we could close on the 16th and then rent it back from them for a month or so, if they'd be up for that. So I guess we just have to decide if we want to try to move before the baby comes or wait until after. I'm voting for wait until after! But we have to make sure the buyers are okay with that first. Let's hope so!! Because otherwise it's going to be a rough month trying to pack up all our stuff AND find a new place to move into, AND have the Holidays, AND be 8 months pregnant, AND finish buying all the baby stuff we still need, AND .... did I mention I'm 8 months pregnant?? YIKES! Gonna be a busy month!

p.s. ~ I know we've been trying to sell our place and that this one-bedroom condo is just too small for us once the baby comes, but now that we actually have an offer, I'm a little bit sad! To tell you the truth, I was kinda hoping we wouldn't get any offers until after the baby came and we re-listed in the Spring. Is that weird? I mean, we're excited to be able to move into a bigger place and everything, but this is our first place, and it's gonna be sad to sell it and move out. We've really liked living here. Plus, I'm just not too excited about all the business that comes with moving, plus stacking on top of that having a baby in the middle of it which will basically put our lives on hold for a few weeks! Anyway, just getting a little sentimental, that's all.

Where'd you go?

Sorry I've been MIA recently. I've been a bad little blogger.

I am trying to get a cute photo of "the belly" for all to see, but I'm not happy with any we've taken so far. :) I just hit the 6-month mark, so I thought now would be a good time for some official belly photos. I'll try to post some soon.

As for the rest of life, it's been pretty regular. We went to an early Halloween party a few weekends ago that I need to post photos of. My family (Mom, Dad and two younger bros) came to town last weekend for a cousin's wedding. It was fun to see them.

In other news, we're trying to sell our condo! So if you know anybody looking to purchase a 1-bedroom condo in downtown Salt Lake City, let us know! We'd like to sell it and be into a bigger place by the beginning of December if possible, but with the way the market and economy are right now, we're not so certain that will happen. We've had a few showings, but no feedback or offers yet.

Something else worthy of note: Rob is currently transitioning from doing his own freelance design business into working full-time for one of his clients, Rockwell Timekeepers. It's been going pretty well so far, but deciding who gets our only car every day is an issue, especially since taking the TRAX takes so dang long. We're hoping to purchase our next place of residence a little closer to this new job to make the commute a little easier.

That be all for now. Photos (and hopefully more frequent posting) coming soon!

It's a...

GIRL!

We had our 20 week ultrasound yesterday and found out that our baby most definitely indeed has "girly parts", as the ultrasound tech so tactfully put it. :) My prediction was wrong....As you may remember, I thought it might be a boy (so much for a mother's intuition!), but we are thrilled with a little girl! I had already purchased a cute little girl outfit that I couldn't resist before we found out the gender, so I guess it was meant to be. She'll have girl cousins on both sides of the family very close in age (Rob's sister's little girl was born yesterday!) so that will be fun.

In the ultrasound photo above, you are looking at the baby from the side, with the head to the left and the spine curving in the middle there. You can kind of see the face profile. If you look carefully, just above the belly is a little open hand. The cutest part about this was she was actually waving to us! Her hand was moving back and forth, it was so cute! So the ultrasound tech wrote, "Hi Mom and Dad!" on the screen. :)

Here's another cute shot of her two little feet. Classic.

We have good news!

Yes, that's right, we're having a baby!!

My cousin had a great idea of answering all the pregnancy questions people ask when they first find out you're expecting, so I think I'll do the same.

1. "How are you feeling?" It's true, people really do ask this question all the time. I've been very lucky to not have very bad morning sickness. In fact, I feel great in the mornings! I usually feel worst just before bed. But I haven't thrown up at all and have only had a few days here and there where I just felt icky. My mom was the same way and never had bad sickness, so I guess I lucked out by inheriting those genes!
2. "When are you due?" In case the small text in the above image is too hard to read, we're due on Jan 26th 2009. I just finished up my first trimester this week!
3. "Do you want a boy or a girl?" Of course we don't have a preference, especially since this is our first. I kind of feel like it will be a boy, but Rob thinks it will be a girl! So I guess either way one of us will be right. :) A girl would actually be fun since both my brother and his wife just had a girl (congrats to them!) and Rob's sister is due with a girl in September, so having a girl cousin the same age on both sides of the family would be nice. Also, even though I'm not superstitious so I don't really believe in this stuff, a few weeks ago just for fun, my sister-in-law and I did that string test thing to see what the baby will be, and it said a girl all three times we tried it! So I guess we'll just have to wait until the ultrasound to find out for sure.
4. Which answers the fourth question, "Are you going to find out the gender?" Yes, we plan to. As my brother says, it's just as much of a surprise to find out at 5 months as it is when the baby's born! Plus this way, you can plan better and have a name picked out, etc.
5. "Do you have any names picked out?" -- I try to dodge this question by saying, "we're waiting to find out the gender before deciding on any names." But in about 5 weeks, I won't be able to use that excuse anymore! The truth is, we do have a few names on a short list that we're thinking of, but nothing set in stone. We'll keep you posted!

So there you have it! If there are any more questions that I haven't covered here, then ask away! I guess the last question is, "Are you excited?" And the answer is YES we are!!

Welcome Kaya Ann Bryan!!

My brother Paul and his wife Holly added a second child to their family yesterday. She was 6 pounds 7 ounces and 19 1/4 inches long.

Kaya sleeping. I love the little smirk on her face.

Kaya awake.

Eli meeting his new baby sister.

Congrats Paul & Holly!!
She's a cutie and I can't wait to meet her in a few weeks!!

Good News and Bad News

First, THE GOOD NEWS:



Rob got into Westminster College for their MBA program! They have a great night-school program for working professionals, so he can continue to work full-time while getting his MBA.

And now...THE BAD NEWS:
Rob got into Westminister College for their MBA program. This means we're stuck in Salt Lake for another three years!

There was talk of applying to other schools in cool areas like Chicago or California, but for some reason the applications to said cool places were never sent. Rob says he doesn't want to be a full-time student, so that's why the Westminster program appealed to him. But I want to move away to someplace cool! Rob says we'll just have to wait until his MBA program is done, and then we can move far far away. I'm going to have to hold him to that!

But anyway, YAY FOR ROB for going back to school!