the best day of my life...

i wanted to post this on october 5th but like always i did not make it on time. Izabel Jean just turned three...i can not believe three years have come and gone so fast. well, really 3 and 3/4 years because i count being pregnant part of our bonding time. i always knew i wanted to have children and many of them. being the "perfect mother" has been my lifetime goal (trust me, i know i am not close to perfect but i strive to be).

2004 was a busy year, first, jeff asked me to be his wifey, then the wedding, then in november i had my third and final surgery for cervical cancer. it was a scary time, one doctor told us stage two, close to three but in the end the oncologist said it was early stage two. going into surgery that day in november we did not know if all the girly parts would have to be removed or not....i was so worried. while i most defiantly did not want the cancer anymore i was mourning the perhaps loss of having our own children. luckily all was taken care of and i kept my girly parts.

2005....i drowned my sadness in almost not being able to have children and worrying that maybe we still may never be able to get pregnant in exercise. i became obsessed....i was even "fibbing" to jeff about my work hours because i was spending three hours (at least) a day at the gym or running. yes, i had the second best body of my life** in october i had my first miscarriage after actively trying to get pregnant since my surgery, it was not so devastating being as i didn't even know i was pregnant yet. then on december 25th i miss carried for the 2nd time. this time i was devastated, i was 7 weeks along and knew i was pregnant.

2006....somehow after two years of trying and two miscarriages in three months we conceived izzy. at this point i was seeing a high risk doctor and after many test discovered my body does not produce enough folic acid. those first 12 weeks i worried so much about this baby growing in my womb. i would leave my spin class as soon as my heart rate went up past 138...i held my breathe with each and every cramp. which were just my uterus stretching to accommodate this baby. so at 8 weeks when jeff and i heard our "it's" heartbeat for the first time i cried and continued to do so for the next four weeks. (my poor husband) at 13 weeks we started to tell our closest friends and on mother's day we told the grandmas. at 20 weeks i was not concerned if we were having a girl or a boy....i just wanted to know all the baby's organs and limbs were there. however, once i knew we were having a daughter i was elated. at that moment we knew you would be izzy jean. (at the time using elizabeth instead of izabel).

of course my due date came and went and i forced jeff to walk several very slow miles each night in hopes of izzy's arrival. i also ate lots of jalapenos....yeah none of those old wise tales work. my labor started on october 4th, after tracking the contractions for 5 hours we headed to the hospital with contractions every 5 minutes. after the routine checks we were sent home with pain meds because with each contraction i thought she would pop out of my spine. at 5:30 that next morning my water broke and off we went back to the hospital, five days after my due date. labor was tough...okay that is putting it mildly, it was miserable. this close to 8lb baby (as my doctor thought) was sunnyside up and all my labor was in my back. *** after almost 4 hours of pushing, a nurse straddling me and jeff a shade of very white (though i have to say he was an amazing birth partner all three times) our first daughter was born at 9lb 4oz and 22" long. because of her size izzy needed a bottle of formula to stabilize her sugar count and my exhaustion from 4 hours of hard labor jeff was the first to hold her.

flash forward 3 years and here we are with three girls and yet, every time i look at izzy i know she will always hold a special place in our hearts. she changed our lives, our marriage and our began our family. happy birthday izabel jean....mommy and daddy love you bunches!

**first was five years earlier during my last year in college.....i was broke and ate beans and tuna fish and ran 40 miles a week.

***two out of three of the girls were like this....annie was by far the easiest birth because she was in the canal correctly without help from the ole doc.