Things I've learned so far from being a Mom

1. Having a messy house is not a big deal
2. How to have ten minute showers
3. How to get ready for the day in half an hour
4. Walks preserve sanity, even if they must be taken in Walmart
5. Giggles are the sweetest sound in the world
6. Pacifiers are a blessing and a curse
7. It is possible to function on less than 5 hours of sleep
8. Shots are traumatic for both mom and baby
9. Hairspray for Lily's hair is not a good idea
10. It's ok for babies to cry
11. I finally understand how much my mom loves me
12. Being a mom is a blessing!!

I'm so thankful for the blessing to be a mom. It's definitely challenging, but so worth it. Lily is growing and changing so fast. It has been fun to see her learn new things!! I will post again soon with updated pictures and what we've been doing for the last four months!

*Lily Jean Loubet*

So it's been quite awhile since I've posted!! We have a new addition to our family! Lily Jean Loubet was born on February 3rd 2011 and weighed 7 lbs 15 oz! She is an angel and we are so happy to have her in our family:) Labor was not as horrible as I thought it would be. I thought that I was going to have a very long delivery, but fortunately my water broke at 7am and we had the baby by 11:55! And may I just say that I. Love. Epidurals. Man, those things are from heaven!! It made the labor experience so much more pleasant. I was able to talk and joke with Luis and just enjoy being with him before our little one arrived. After it wore off was a different story, I had a pretty hard recovery. Since she was so big, and I'm so small...she tore me up pretty bad and I lost a lot of blood. They had to stick a catheter in me after the epidural wore off and I was so swollen that they couldn't figure out where it was supposed to go in. That was a pretty horrible experience! I was so glad that my mom and Luis were there to help me with the baby and everything. My mom stayed with us the first week and then Luis missed work for a few days and helped me after she left. After Luis went back to work, I got the baby blues pretty bad and my mom came back up and took me to St. George for another week to help out. I didn't realize how hard the baby blues were going to be. I would just start crying for no reason and after I got started, I wouldn't be able to stop haha. It was a lot worse when I didn't get any sleep. I was also really struggling with breastfeeding. I got Mastitis in my left breast twice, and then because I was taking antibiotics, I ended up getting a yeast infection in my left nipple so it was really painful to breastfeed on that side. I was at the point where I would dread her waking up because I knew she was going to want to eat. Then to top it off, she started eating every two hours! I was so tired and sore that I would just cry every time I had to feed her. Finally, my mom told me that if I absolutely hated it, that I could formula feed. She said it was more important for me to love my child than for me to breastfeed. I really really wanted to breastfeed because I know that it's a lot more healthy for the baby. And being a dietetics major...they stress breastfeeding like crazy. How could anyone who studies nutrition, not breastfeed their child?! But I finally decided that I needed to be emotionally healthy to be able to love and care for her the way that she needs. Luis and I prayed about it and I felt reassured that she would thrive even if we switched her to formula. After I made that decision I felt so much better. I didn't have to be the only person to feed her! So that's my breastfeeding story. It still bugs me when people ask me if I'm breastfeeding, I feel like they are judging me when I tell them no. But in the end, that decision was between me, Luis and the Lord and I know that she is going to be just fine even though I decided not to. I'm feeling a lot better now and think that I'm finally over the baby blues. I still get really down and cry when I'm tired, but I would do that even before I had Lily haha. Anyway, here's some pictures of our sweet heart! Most of these are thanks to Kayla haha!

I'm not sure how she got this picture of her smiling but I love it!

All wrapped up like a mummy!! She hates being swaddled. She loves her hands and arms up above her head, but if we don't swaddle her then she sleeps horrible. It's for her own good and our sanity haha!

Aunt Mandi!

Her hair is crazy, I love it!! This is her hair after her bath.

Aunt Kayla and Uncle Niels came to Provo last weekend and came to see Lily. They had a lot of fun playing with her hair. Amazingly, she slept through the whole thing!!

This is Niels' Gordon B. Hinkley hair-do haha poor child.

Niels is going to be such a great dad! Already teasing haha.

Kayla kept me company all day and it was so fun to hang out with her:) She also made a bunch of cute little bows for Lily's hair!

I love this picture:)

We have to put socks on her hands or else she claws her face up pretty good.

Lily cuddling with Grandpa!

We're starting her out young. She's going to be a BYU girl!

On Valentine's Day, Luis went to Macy's and got me a bouquet of flowers and brought home a rose for Lily. He is such a great dad:) Lily was our Valentine this year!

My mom bought these pj pants for me in the hospital and then got Lily this Valentine's day outfit. I didn't realize it till that day, but we were twinners!! Her onesie matched my pants! And I still look pale and horrible even 11 days later haha.

I didn't realize what a transition having a baby would be. Obviously I knew it would be hard, I just didn't realize how hard! My whole days consist of taking care of her and then trying to eat and take care of myself in between. It's like a full time job that I never get a break from and don't get paid haha. But I can't even imagine not having her in our lives. It's almost like she's been here forever:) And when she smiles--like a real one, with eyes open and everything-- it makes the long nights and tears totally worth it:)

It's a Girl!!

It's a girl!! We had our ultra sound a few weeks ago and I forgot to post. We are both very excited. Here's all of our ultrasounds. The first one is showing that she is a girl...hope it's self explanatory enough:)

This is her cute little arm:)

Foot:)

And here's all of her. I'm already in love:)

I also decided to post pictures of my growing belly since I haven't yet. Here is me at 17 weeks...still not showing.

And here I am at 22 weeks, I blew up a little bit bigger haha. It's a working progress. Having the ultrasound was definitely the coolest thing that has happened so far:) It was so fun to see her wiggling around and whatnot. The ultrasound tech showed us her face and she had her mouth open like she was trying to eat me haha. It was a lot of fun. She's still kicking me a ton which is fun too:) This little girl has definitely got us wrapped around her little finger already. Up until the ultrasound we both said that we would be okay with either a boy or a girl, but after we found out it was a girl, we both admitted we wanted a girl haha. We are both just so excited:)

State Fair!

For date night we decided it would be fun to go to the State Fair!! We watched a hypnotist show and pet some sweet animals, it was fun! I also had my first funnel cake. Luis was surprised that I had never had funnel cake, so he made sure that I got one. It was pretty good:)

A giant rabbit! He didn't like to be poked though.

We also go to pet some sheep, they were cute!!

So that ends the day at the fair.

Boredom...

So basically I'm just really bored and wanted something to do. I should probably be doing homework but I just don't want to. So far school has been going well. My world religions class is definitely my favorite. My teacher is really sarcastic and he makes his lectures easy to pay attention to. Which is a good thing since it's at 8 in the morning! I like my other classes too but they're not quite as entertaining. Last weekend Luis and I went to St George to get his car fixed. It was a lot of fun to hang out with the family. We went on a date with Nate and Danae, went to the lake, and froze corn. I was excited to go to the lake since I haven't been boating in quite awhile. My dad told me that he would take me for a spin in the tube and be really careful. At first I didn't really want to because I was worried about being pregnant and all. But then my dad kept saying, "No, I'll go as fast as I take Shaylie!" So I gave in. He definitely did not go slow! I was feeling like everything was ok though until the very last run around, I think he was getting bored and decided to gun it or something. But that is when I decided that my fun was over! It was fun to watch everyone else do tube wars and wakeboarding, etc. Monday was Labor Day and every year on Labor Day my family freezes corn. I was actually really surprised that this year it only took us about 3 hours! It's a good thing that everyone is getting married haha, more helping hands! I think we bagged about 100 bags of corn for the year. It was a lot of fun:) Luis, Niels, Kayla, Emily and I all worked in the kitchen downstairs and watched episodes of the Office while we worked. Definitely the best year of corn freezing haha. What else can I ramble about? Well, Luis and I had our 3rd doctor's appointment last Thursday and I felt like a complete retard. All month I thought that our appointment was on Thursday. I even received a phone call from the doctor's office on Tuesday reminding me of our appointment on "Wednesday"...and I thought, "Oh that's nice, they called two days in advance this month!" So we missed our appointment on Wednesday...not Thursday haha. I felt like such a ditz. Luckily, they were nice enough to squeeze us in on Thursday afternoon. Can I just say that I love our doctor? I really love our doctor. She is so nice and doesn't ever make me feel dumb for asking questions. She makes me feel like she actually cares...I would definitely recommend her. I only wish we could stay here for all my babies to be born. Or she could just follow us wherever we move to haha. Well anyway, we listened to the baby's heart beat again and it was going 160 beats per minute! The normal for 18-20 weeks is around 120-160 she said. But it was really funny because there was a lot of static on the Doppler...which I was thinking was indigestion on my part or something but it turns out that the baby was moving a ton which was causing the static. She just started laughing and said that we've got a "wiggly little thing". Haha she said it's high heart rate was probably due to how active it was at the moment. I think every time we've gone to the doctor, the heart rate has been on the high end though, so I'm not too worried about it:) We get to finally get our ultrasound on Friday at 2:30. We definitely could have gotten it sooner but the doctor's office forgot to put the order in, and so that was the only time they had available:( It's ok though, we're just super excited to find out what we're having. I'm mostly excited that I can finally stop calling it "it". It will be nice to use the words "him" or "her" haha. Everyone keeps asking me if I'm feeling more one way or the other. I can honestly say that I am not. I started out wanting a girl so bad. I even named the baby Madison and referred to it as "her" all the time, which made Luis laugh. Then I decided that I kinda wanted a boy so that all my other kids could have a big brother. Now I'm kind of thinking I want a girl again just because I think it would be so fun to dress up a cute little girl. I just don't know. I guess it's a good thing though, we will be so ecstatic with whatever we are blessed with:) Sigh, I just wish I didn't have to wait till Friday! So I have kind of another funny story, as you can tell I'm very bored! On Saturday Luis and I decided that we were going to go to the temple. I was actually talking to my mom about this a few months ago and was like, "Mom, every time we plan to go to the temple, something goes wrong. Either one of us is sick, we forget, something comes up, or we just plain talk ourselves out of it. It's hard! And we live right across the street!" My mom's response, "Well Rachel, don't you know that's Satan?!" Haha well we were determined this Saturday, we were going to go. We were both dressed, I had ironed my temple dress, and we were on our way out the door. Then Satan brought out the big guns! Luis broke into hives all over his face! I'm not really sure what he was allergic to...but he was sneezing and had a runny nose and then his face just blew up. Then to top it off, he was trying to kill a spider on our ceiling which he missed and it started falling toward his face, so he screamed and fell off his chair onto my leg. Needless to say, I have a large bruise on on my leg. We ended up skipping the temple because Luis's face didn't clear up until about 2, at which time the BYU game started. Satan is a crafty fellow, that's all I can say. Well, I guess I better get to bed. Here are some pictures of our lake trip that Kayla so generously shared with us:)

Luis learning how to wakeboard! He was so close!

Mandi, Krista and Luis

I win!

Haha I was so excited:)

Me and my mommy. They made me hold the flag so I wouldn't feel left out...

Me and Luis...I do not look attractive in this picture...

Sistas!

Stewart Falls!!

All summer, Karli and I have been planning on going on the Steward Falls hike. Well, we finally did it! And it was so much fun:) We met at Subway and had dinner and then embarked on our journey. I was the only one who hadn't been on it before and both Karli and Luis told me that it was a very easy hike. Practically like a nature walk. Haha they were wrong!! It wasn't bad, but it wasn't a nature walk! Haha we had fun and the falls were lovely.

Karli and Garret:)

The whole gang!

Garret decided it would be fun to run under the waterfall. I think he was kind of cold afterwords.

Haha...crazy man.

Back to School

School starts on Monday and I'm actually really excited. I've been going crazy being alone with nothing to do in this apartment all summer! I'm trying to finish up my GE's since I'm going to have to transfer to another school. I'm taking D&C, Survey of World Religions, some Political Science class, and then Independent Study I'm taking Physical Science and Humanities. I'm hoping it's not going to be too difficult, and that nothing goes wrong with the pregnancy to screw up school. Luis talked me into taking the political science class because it is one he wanted to take. It introduces different careers you can go into with a political science major. It overlaps 15 minutes with one of his other classes, and so he's going to show up 15 minutes late every class and sit with me. That should be fun:) Luis is taking a bunch of Political Science classes this semester and if everything goes ok, he's going to graduate in December. I'm so jealous haha. We'll see how our first week goes, I'm really excited to finally start doing something!