and the story goes from there...

To finish off my series on Daniel and I, I have a couple more special pictures to share...

While I was pregnant I was completing my last year at OU for Early Childhood Education and Daniel was completing his first year of medical school. It was a very, very busy and eventful year for us. We were both reaching a very big personal goal of ours while starting a brand new chapter in our lives as parents. One door was closing, while a million more were opening. Looking back I am so proud of both of us for remaining so dedicated and doing so well in school while having other big things on our mind (you know, like that little person growing inside of me). Without Daniel's love and strength and support there's no way I would have been able to do it. This picture was taken the day I graduated college, 6 months pregnant with our future little sooner <3 This little boy is 100% sooner born and bread.

And this my friends is our very first family picture. There are simply no words to express this moment. You can read my birth story here if you want to hear about this chapter of our lives. Who would have thought ten years ago, when we were only 14, that this is what the future had in store for us. Our story is far from being completed... but so far... I'd say we're on our way to our fairytale happy ending.

Happy three year anniversary love (yesterday). I love you more than words can express and I can't wait to see our what the next ten years has in store. 

Three years ago today, rehearsal was done, dinner with all the special people my life was over, and I was at my moms house with the best friends a girl could ask for trying to stay calm and rest up for the big day. That was nearly impossible, because I knew when I woke up in the morning I would be marrying the love of my life.

For our one year anniversary we went on a cruise with my brother and sister in law. It was the absolute funnest thing I had ever done! I had never been to the ocean before and neither of us had been on a cruise so this was a whole new, fun experience for us to share with each other. We ate way too much food, played BINGO with hundreds of other tourist, shopped, rode on a catamaran, snorkeled, laid by the pool, and watched the sun rise and fall together. It was 110% stress free and gave us time to really enjoy each others company before Daniel would start med school. We also knew that we would soon want to start a family so having a getaway like this was something we really wanted to do before then. It was the absolute best getaway possible.

A couple months after our cruise Daniel received his white coat and began his journey through medical school. Medical school was something that Daniel worked so hard for and seeing him start that journey was one of the proudest moments of my life.  This man surprises me everyday with how amazing he is and his love and compassion for people blows me away. He doesn't want to become a doctor because they make good money.... he wants to be a doctor so he can help the people who need it. If doctors got paid the same as teachers, there's no doubt in my mind that he would still do it. That is probably one of my favorite things about Daniel. How again did I get so lucky?

This picture is so, so special to me. This was taken Christmas Eve 2009, two nights before I found out I was pregnant. At this point we had been trying 6 months to conceive. I know that time is nothing compared to what many couples go through but it was still very hard for me. Month after month I "knew"  I was pregnant, but would end up being really disappointed each time. It was really, really tough. And this may be possible TMI, but we finally resorted to ovulation test in hopes that we would finally be able to start our family.  At the time this picture was taken I had a slight suspicion that I was pregnant simply because of the extreme exhaustion and headaches I was having... but tried hard not to get my hopes up again. Well the day after Christmas came and though I had originally wanted to wait a few more days before I took a test I just couldn't do it because this time something felt different. I woke up first thing in the morning, took a test... and waited patiently for what seemed like forever. When a faint line showed up I was ecstatic! I had planned out all these ways I wanted to tell Daniel but those all went out the window and I went and woke him up with the news. We were both really excited... but since the line was faint we wanted to make sure.... so I ended up taking two more test and sure enough they all had two lines. This was the day we had been waiting for and a day I will never forget. Our family of two was now a family of three.

Well here goes nothing...

So after much convincing being done by my friends and family... I figured I would give this blog thing a try... we'll see how it goes... and how long it last :)

With the craziness that has been the last two months I haven't got to talk and share my birth story or any of that fun stuff with anyone so I figured I'd start with that.... I think that's like a requirement of new mommy blogs :)

So we went in for my induction on August 30th at 12am.  Before heading to the hospital I loaded up on my last meal... a turkey sandwich and potato soup from McAlisters.. yum-o! Back to the hospital...  Well we got there at midnight where they got me all set up in a room and all hooked up to the machines. At about 1am the process started. They checked me and I was dilated to 1 1/2, 50% effaced, and apparently having contractions that I couldn't feel. They then started me on the pill that would thin my cervix... and told me to go to sleep to get some rest... UM HELLO?? I'm having a baby in less than 24 hours... do you really think I'll be getting any sleep??  Needless to say, I got a total of 1 hour of sleep that night.  Starting at about 4am I started having a pretty constant back ache but still nothing major... just enough to make me uncomfortable. The doctor came in at 7:30am... dilated to a 2, 80% effaced, and the baby's head was very very engaged and ready to go. She went ahead and broke my water and that's when the roller coaster began! Almost immediately I started having major contractions (even without pitocin!). They were pretty constant and strong.. ps... back labor SUCKS. From this point until the epidural set in it's really kind of a blur. I remember laying on my side, clinching Daniels arm so bad that I was sore the next day, getting a little sick, and getting really frustrated at any sort of noise in the room during contractions (apparently this included Daniel... who I told to be quiet multiple times).  I think it was at about 9:30am when I was dilated to 4/5 and got my epidural :)  From there on things were a breeze! I visited with family, ate some ice, rested a little, and chit chatted with the nurses. At 10:30am the nurse checked me and told me I was at 10 and ready to push! UM WHAT?? It's only been an hour since I was at a 5.... and 3 hours since I was at a 2... isn't this process suppose to take a lot longer?!  Well needless to say the process started and was nothing like I pictured it being from the many episodes of A Baby Story that I had watched. It was easy... no pain, really calm, not a million people running in and out of the room, no screaming... just me pushing and soaking it all in.  Well I pushed for an hour and during that entire hour Dax had the hiccups!!! It was the weirdest thing hearing them on the monitor and feeling them while I was pushing. Everyday for the last two months of my pregnancy he would get the hiccups at least once a day and now he had them while I was pushing. Needless to say we were all pretty entertained by them. My contractions began slowing down so they gave me a small bit of pitocin to get them going again (I almost made it the entire time without any!). The doctor had been in a Csection while I was pushing and got in there shortly before Dax was born... she didn't expect my labor to go so fast.  Well at 11:30am, 4 hours after the beginning of real labor, Daxton Ross Freno was born!! 8lbs, 19 inches, and lots and lots of dark hair! We, including the doctor, were all really surprised at how big he was. They immediately laid him on my chest and that was the best moment of my life! Seeing him for the first time was unlike any other feeling I've ever had. He looked great, scored a 9 on the APGAR and seemed to be a happy and healthy newborn. We let the family come in and say hello, but then the next hour was spent in the room with just us, me, Daniel, and Dax, our little family. That hour alone right after he was born was simply amazing and something I'll always treasure.
After that hour was over he went to the nursery to get a bath and do the other routine things. It was there that they realized he was having a hard time breathing and the test and observation began. He spent several hours in the nursery on oxygen while the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong. Late that evening the doctors decided that he needed more care than they could give in the nursery and moved him to the NICU. It was almost 24 hours before I got to see him again. For the first day he was fed through IV b/c of a tube they had in his mouth that drained fluid from his lungs. I finally got to feed him a bottle on his second day in the NICU and when he was 4 days old I was finally allowed to breastfeed him again. After lots of test the doctors decided that he had TTN, Transient Tachypnea of the Newborn, which is where there is fluid in the lungs and apparently only 1% of newborns get. There was also some sort of infection which they were never able to figure out exactly what it was but treated it with antibiotics thru IV's for 7 days.  So what caused all this trouble???  THOSE DANG HICCUPS WHILE I WAS PUSHING!  Those precious little things we were all laughing and giggling at for an hour caused all this trouble.  Well for the next week Daniel and I made the 20 minute drive to the hospital every 3 hours to feed Dax.  Our schedule was pretty much, drive 20 minutes to the hospital, feed him and cuddle him for an hour, drive back home another 20 minutes, be at home for an hour, and then it would be time to go back to the hospital. We would do this starting at 8am, and do the last feeding at 8pm. Needless to say, it was an absolutely exhausting and tiring 7 days. The night before he was released we got to "room in" at the hospital. They gave us a room to stay in with Dax at the hospital so our first night with him we wouldn't be alone. It was amazing and I def. didn't sleep much all night... instead I made up for some much missed cuddle time :)   Then, on September 6th, we finally got to bring our little man home and start are life together.