Visitor 5000

I added a free counter to the blog that tells us how many visitors we are getting. I started the counter at 4500 because according to Google Analytics, that's about how many visitors we've had since we started the site. One of the downsides of the counter is that it doesn't filter out visits made by us, so the numbers do get a bit fudged.

As you can see, the number is fast approaching 5000, and that's a bit of a milestone, so I'd like to celebrate the person who becomes "Visitor 5000". If anyone visits the site and notices that the counter reads 5000, please let me know, and you will be publicly heralded, with your name and fame becoming a part of "Them Bournes" history, for ages to come.

Great Big Sister

Not only does Emma look bigger now that we have a tiny baby in the home, she's sure acting bigger too. She loves being a big sister, and she's doing such a great job at it. She loves to help out wherever she can, especially during diaper changes and bath time.

One of the sweetest things she does is sing Ashley a little song to help calm her down when she's crying. Sometimes it really does the trick. We love to hear her include "A-shuh-ley" in her bedtime prayers, and we're just so proud of how well she's handling all the changes going on in our family right now. Ashley gives her the same blank stare that she gives everyone else for now, but I'm sure she'll be laughing and following her big sister around everywhere she goes soon enough.

Early Start = Late Nights

In no way do I want to come across as being critical of the good folks at Early Start or Healthlink when I make this post. I think it's a great resource for parents of new baby's and young children, and they've been a great help to us with both of our daughters. I just have a couple of stories from the past week that I thought would be funny to look back on.

I guess the first one isn't all that funny, and we definately had some legitimate concerns with Ashley's health that we wanted resolved, but it's a good example of finding something out the hard way.

We found some blood in Ashley's diaper the day after we brought her home. It wasn't a poopy diaper, just "void" and a bit of blood, so we called the Healthlink people to find out if it was something we should be worried about. The nurse on the line asked if Ashley was experiencing any other symptoms from a list they had there, and in minor ways, it appeared that she was. The most concerning one was that she seemed to feel pain when I would gently touch her tummy below her belly button. That, coupled with the blood in her diaper, were reasons enough for the nurse to suggest that we take her to the emergency room at the Children's Hospital. We did, and my parents met us there to watch Emma for us.

The long and the short of it is, after a five hour wait (which seems really long when you've had almost no sleep for days) the Doctor's told us that everything was completely normal. I guess the blood in the diaper is caused by the hormones that are transferred from Mom through the placenta and during nursing, which trigger a false menstruation in baby girls. It's normal during the first week of the baby's life, although not all baby girls experience it, including any baby girls I've ever known. The tummy pain turned out to be gas, and completely unrelated to the blood in the diaper, so we were sent home happy to have a healthy baby, yet a little discouraged about the potential sleep we might have gotten, had we been a little more educated.

The next night, as I was holding Ashley, I noticed that she was breathing really rapidly as she slept, and had done so several times since birth. I decided to time her breaths per minute, and she consistantly hit near or above the 70 mark, which seemed a little high to me. I called the Healthlink people again, just to find out what the normal breathing rate was for newborns, and it turns out that my suspicions were correct, it was a bit high. I had taken her temperature before I called, and it was fine, and she didn't seem distressed in any way, so I had no real concerns other than that she had had brief exposure to my Dad, who had been suffering from what he thought at the time was pneumonia, and I wanted to be sure that this wasn't the early signs of a serious lung problem.

Well before I knew it, the nurse on the line had called the paramedics, and a few short minutes later we had a fire truck and an ambulance parked outside and a living room full of 3 fire fighters, 2 EMS technicians, and 1 perfectly healthy baby. It turns out that rapid breathing is also normal as babies get used to actually breathing air during their first few weeks of life. The EMS technicians checked her out and offered several times to take us to the Hospital if we still felt concerned, but we were never all that concerned in the first place, so we declined and sent them on their way. Another late night.

Again, I want to say that I think Healthlink is a great service to have, and I'm glad that there are people who stand by and are trained to help keep our babies alive and well. I just feel like a paranoid parent everytime emergency staff get involved and it turns out to be something minor like gas, or hiccups, or infant periods. When it comes to your own children though, it's always better to be safe than sorry.

T.E.A.M. Bournes

One of the names we originally tossed around when we found out we were most likely having a girl again, was Heidi. With Tammy's Norwegian roots, and the high probability of the girl having blonde hair and blue eyes, we thought it would be a good fit. Another good reason for the name Heidi would be that we could use the "Them" in "Them Bournes" as an acronym of all our first names, much like Marc Gilchrist does with his site. The down side of using Heidi is the high probability that I would never remember the order of the "e" and the "i".

When Ashley was born, we just thought she looked like an Ashley, and so Ashley she became. Now the question is, do we forget the acronym thing, or change the name of the site? We could go with T.E.A.M. Bournes, which is an ok substitute, and a pretty accurate pecking order, but there's something about M.E.A.T. Bournes that sounds so much better. It's still up for review, and will probably never change, but visitor input is still appreciated.

Ashley Sariah Bourne

The day finally came, and we now have a new baby girl in our family! Ashley was born on the 12th of February, 2008 at 8:17am (10 days overdue). She was a gooey 7lbs 4oz at birth, and she measures 19.5 inches long. For being a day later than her older sister, she's still a pound lighter and two inches shorter than Emma was at birth. She has the same cuteness in her face though, and the same head of thick dark hair.

We've spent the past couple of weeks wondering if the baby was ever going to come on it's own, and sincerely hoping that we wouldn't have to go through another induction, and dreading the prospect of having another C-section. This past Monday was Tammy's 41 week appointment, so Sunday was spent fasting and praying, and my Dad and my brother assisted me in giving Tammy a priesthood blessing, all of which really helped our confidence level.

We went to the appointment on the Monday, and they told us that they were going to issue the induction papers the next day as Tammy was already 9 days overdue. Tammy had been having irregular contractions all week, so we left the appointment and went to the mall to walk around and see if we could get things moving a bit. Right before Tammy had gone into labour with Emma, we had walked around the mall and when we went to the food court, we ran into the Wolffs, and soon after we were in the hospital having a baby. We joked that perhaps we should try that routine again, to see if it was the secret recipe for success. Well we didn't see the Wolffs at the foodcourt, but we did see a lady that Tammy used to work with, who was there with her family, and sure enough, the contractions started coming every 5 minutes or less. We scarfed down the rest of our meal, raced home to get our birthing things, dropped Emma off at my parents house, and then headed for the Foothills hospital.

We got there at about 8:00pm, and by that time the contractions were about 3 minutes apart and getting stronger. We didn't spend long in the triage unit, since there were certain risks involving Tammy's previous C-section, and since we were already 9 days past due. Tammy's Mom and her sister Kimberly drove in from Carstairs and joined us in the delivery room where we spent the next 12 hours helping Tammy power through her contractions.

We had been at it for about 6 hours, with expectations that everything was progressing along at a decent pace, when the doctor told us that Tammy was only dialated 2 to 3 cm. It was at this point that Tammy started seriously considering having an epidural, but her Mom talked her out of it, and the doctor suggested using a combination of nitrous oxide gas, and some fentanyl that Tammy would take intravenously instead. We decided to give that a try before going all the way to the epidural, and we're so glad we did. The fentanyl really took the edge off the contractions, without slowing them down or leaving Tammy incapacitated as epidurals tend to do.

I was so proud of how well Tammy dealt with the pain and how well she kept her focus. The nurses were impressed as well, and recommended that Tammy star in a birthing video, but I want to talk to our agent first. My stomach was turning on me all night, so I stepped out to use the washroom, and when I came back, Tammy was pushing. The doctor's and nurses were rushing around trying to get set up, because the baby was finally in a rush to come into the world. I found it funny that we had been there for 12 hours and still managed to catch the staff off guard.

After only 12 minutes of pushing, Ashley was out and I was balling. I was so happy for Tammy. She delivered our beautiful baby exactly the way she wanted to. We were both amazed that, even though she could feel a lot of pressure during the actual delivery, she didn't feel any pain, especially since there was a need for some signifigant surgery afterwards.

She lost about a litre of blood during the whole process, which led to an extra days stay in the hospital, and frequent checks on her blood pressure. We were lucky enough to get a private room, and outside of a couple of ornery, war-time nurses and two fire alarms, we had a pretty decent stay there. I wasn't allowed to stay overnight at the hospital, so I stayed at my parents house with Emma, which helped her not miss Mom too much.

We brought Ashley back to my parents house on Valentines Day, to pick up her big sister and visit with some cousins, and then we headed home. It's been a little hectic here since then, but everyone is doing great, and we're all just so happy to have Mom and Ashley home.

Overdue

As of today, the baby is now considered overdue. I guess it wouldn't be a Bourne if it wasn't a little late. We had the same scenario unfold with Emma when she was born. It took eveything short of dynamite to get that girl to finally come out. Tammy has been experiencing more birthing symptoms than she ever did with Emma, so we're taking that as a good sign, and hoping things progress quickly towards a natural child birth over the next few days.

No matter how much time the baby does give us to prepare though, I still can't see myself handling the delivery very well. This sort of thing really stresses me out, but I'm grateful that I'll at least have Tammy there to help me through it.