More Pictures from the last post....

I can't wait to show Braxton and Jack this picture when they are older...they are too cute!

Jazi's Surprise Birthday Party

We went to Jazi's surprise birthday party on Friday. We all got to hide and jump up when she came in the door. She had no clue and it was so much fun! All the babies got to see each other. I stole this picture from Jay and Jess's blog too...because we never remember to bring the camera. The funny part of this picture is that Jack always scratches his head and when we put him next to Braxton he started scratching Braxton's head.

Braxton, Jack, Elise, and Jade

Elise's 1st Birthday

Braxton got invited to his first birthday party for his sweet cousin Elise Richards. He couldn't really do much other than wear the hat and I don't think he liked that too much. But, we all had a great time. I stole the second picture from Jay and Jess's blog. Happy Birthday Elise! We lover you and we had lots of fun!

Braxton's 2 month old pictures!

I never got to post these, but here are Braxton's pictures at 2 months old. He will be 3 months on Monday! It is going by so fast!

Blake Is Famous!

Blake is finally getting to be on TV. He has always wanted to be a sports announcer, but I guess this is close enough:

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=5684295

He woke up that morning with the text on his phone and told me that he was going to call KSL. He was hoping to get Braxton on TV, but that didn't happen. He was so excited to report this breaking story!

Braxton's First Valentine's!

Well, we had a great Valentine's Day. It didn't start out very fun because Blake had to work all morning and into the afternoon. But, we decided to leave Braxton with a babysitter for the first time and go on a little date for our first Valentine's together. Last year, I was in Ohio for a class for work. Shelby, Landon's girlfriend, agreed to watch Braxton for the night. We went to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse in Park City. We had the best steak I have ever tasted! We has sparkling cider at our table when we got there and they have me a beautiful red rose.


Braxton got to have Shelby has his Valentine this year because Landon is off on his mission. The whole family took care of him and snuggled him all night. They said he was a very good boy and they wanted to keep him!

Braxton Gets His Shots....So Sad...

Poor Braxton yesterday wouldn't stop crying because his little legs hurt so bad. Doesn't he look so sad. We got him doctored up though and feeling much better.

Yesterday Braxton had his 2 month checkup with Dr. Erickson. He is a growing boy! He weighed 12 lbs 13 oz. He has gained about 4 pounds since he was born. He was 24 inches long! So he is in the 70th percentile for weight and the 80th for height. The doctor said to start feeding him every 3 hours instead of 2 hours. We will see how that goes. The saddest part was that he had to get his shots. Blake stayed in the room with him because I couldn't bare to watch. I cried outside just hearing him cry. The rest of the day he screamed and cried because his little legs hurt. I felt so bad for him. He is feeling better today and I think he slept off the pain. He probably had never really felt pain before and didn't know what was going on. I felt so terribly bad for him. Thankfully, Blake stayed home that day and helped out. I had my weekly staff meeting and had to go into the office. Blake said Braxton screamed and cried the whole time. He looked really stressed when I got home. Luckly, he got to go to the Lakers/Jazz game last night to make him feel better. Anyway! I'm glad to know that he is healthy and growing! I can't ever tell if he is getting bigger. His newborn and 0-3 clothes aren't really fitting anymore because he is so long. He is skinny though so the bigger clothes fall off of him. I don't know what to do! He ripped one of his sleepers the other day because it was too short.

Braxton Can Smile! YAY! Videos of Us Trying to Get Him To Smile... Hours of Entertainment!

Mommy and Daddy Try to Make Braxton Smile...

Daddy Tries to Make Braxton Smile early in the morning...

Smiles from Grandma and Grammy...

Braxton Says Hi!

The First Few Days!

Here are just some pictures of Braxton's first few days home. I didn't get too many because I was completely stressed and druged up still. This was definately harder than I ever imagined!

Homecoming!

After staying in the hospital for 4 days they let us go home! I must admit that I kind of liked staying the hospital and being waited on! Braxton slept in the nursury at night though and it was sad to not have him there. But, I'm glad that we got some rest. Our second night there, Blake said he wanted to keep Braxton there with us. Little did he know that Braxton would be wide awake until 2 in the morning. So, Daddy had to stay up too! About that time, the nurse offered to take him...Blake decided he was ready for some rest! We had so many visitors that they put us in the biggest room on the floor. It really wasn't too bad and it was so sweet to be in our own little world with our new little boy. We had some precious moments with him there. I loved feeding him in the middle of the night. The nurses would bring him in crying and I would feed him. It was so sweet there just me and him. Nothing could be sweeter!


Finally on that Thursday we got to leave. We had Braxton's outfit all picked out. Trudy told me that when Blake came home from the hospital when he was born he wore a red sweatsuit. So, that is what we got little Braxton. He looked so cute. Blake had to add the Utah onesie underneath to complete the outfit. Our favorite nurse Renee helped us get the carseat to set up and off we went to do this parent thing on our own!

Cozy in the Car Seat!

Finally we got him dressed...I think his outfit is a little big!

Getting in the car!

We both look so tired...and I still look huge!

Yay, we are ready to get out of this place and go home!

Getting the pants on!

Our Visitors

Great-Grandma Williams










Cousin Kim










Dr. Smith














Auntie Mae










Cousin Laura, Auntie Mae, Cousin Caroline, Cousin Jason










New Cousin Jack - They are 5 weeks apart!











Aunt Elle - Braxton's 7 year old aunt!










Future Aunt Shelby











Grandpa and Ya-Ya










Grammy

About to give birth!

Wondering what I looked like right before I went in??? Here it is! I was huge!

Our New Addition!

We welcomed our new little boy, Braxton Blake Tracy, into our family on December 8th. He weighed 8 lbs 10 oz and was 21 1/2 inches long.

Our Labor Experience :

The Beginning - Sunday, December 7th:

I went into the hospital to be induced. I thought that everything would be just fine and I would get my epidural to stop any pain. Little did I know, I was in for the worst pain I have ever felt. I was already having contractions, but I had not been feeling them. They were just small ones and I was still only dilated to 1 cm. They gave me medication to help me dilate first. It worked a little bit, but was working very slow. I slept through the night minus nurses coming in every half-hour.

The Next Day, Monday, December 8th:

At 5 am, they gave me second dose of medication to help me dilate. At that time, they wanted to start the medication to help me start "real" labor, but I still wasn't dilated enough. Later in the morning, I started feeling a lot of pain and was ready for epidural. But, right when I told the nurse this, our doctor came in to break my water. He wanted to try it even though I had not had the pain medication yet....bad idea! He attempted and failed because it hurt so bad that I was screaming. I'm not a wimp and I can take a lot of pain....but, this experience tested my limits! Meanwhile, they had tubes and oxygen on me, I looked like I was in some serious condition. Blake was not doing well seeing me like this and it was really getting to him emotionally. He said that he just kept going into the bathroom to pray to give him strength. To add to his struggle, the doctor came in to give me my epidural. They positioned me to put it into my spine and hit a nerve! OUCH! I just felt this horrible pain shoot all the way out to my whole left side. Then he kept hitting it because he said sometimes they can get past the nerve...not the case here! So, they had to take it out and do it again. This time it was still pretty painful, but they barely got it in. Apparently, I do not have much space for it in my spine. Blake could not even watch him put it in the second time after hearing my screams the first time. I did not know what was going on! Now, all this may make our hospital sound horrible, but it wasn't the doctor's fault. It is just some people have special problems that cannot be foreseen. Our doctors and nurses were great...really!

Finally, I have medication....or so we thought:

Later that morning, our parents came in to visit and see how we were doing. Previously, the doctor had speculated that we would have the baby between noon and 4pm. Towards the end of their visit is when I started really feeling the pain. I was going more into labor and they were trying to get me more dilated. But, I was still feeling pain. The nurse kept saying that I would feel pressure. I kept telling myself that it was just pressure and that I would have to deal with it. As time went on, however, I had a feeling that it wasn't just pressure. Each time the nurse would come in she would ask me my pain score from 1 - 10...I really got sick of this question. Anyway, I just kept feeling more and more pain. My contractions were every minute...so it was pretty much non-stop. They wanted to give me more of the medication to help me start going into labor so I could push, but I was still not dilated enough. The baby kept going to sleep because he was getting stressed out from all the contractions. I think maybe he just wasn't ready yet. However, it was too late to turn back now! Well, it turned out that the epidural was working everywhere, but where the pain really was. I could feel it all because (we think) the baby was sitting on a nerve that was blocking the medication from getting through. So, as the hours drug on, I just felt more and more pain. They gave me a ton of drugs in hopes that something would get through, but it just wasn't working. Blake was getting so upset because I was just crying and crying wanting the pain to stop. We just kept hoping that I would dilate enough to start pushing. That time would never come.

Things start to turn around...:

Blake was back in forth praying to know what we should do. He just couldn't really handle all the pain he was seeing me in and was having flashes of me being in a serious condition. It really got to him and he almost fainted on time. He asked Lex to give me a blessing. The nurse had asked everyone to leave the room about an hour before because I was really getting bad. And, it was hard for me having all those people see me in such bad pain. I just wanted Blake there to comfort me at that time. Lex came in and gave me a blessing which I cannot remember what it said. But, then, amazingly, I fell fast asleep. When I woke up, I had this feeling like he was just ready to come, it was time and I knew it! Right after that, Dr. Smith came in to see if I had dilated anymore. But, it turned out that I my cervix was swelling and my dilation was getting smaller. So, he said I had about a 5% chance that I could deliver normal, but that he would recommend a C-Section. I said LET'S DO IT! So, the pumped me full of more drugs and off we went for the surgery.

Finally we get our boy!

Blake got dressed in his little surgery outfit and I was out of it because of all the drugs they had given me all day. I was shaking uncontrollably and felt nauseous since I hadn't eaten in 24 hours. They rolled me down the hall and got all set up. Blake got to watch the whole thing and hold my hand. I kept asking him if he could see him yet. Finally, I faintly remember hearing Braxton cry and them holding him up to me. It was a huge blur because I was out of it. Blake and I were crying and crying. Blake said I kept asking if he was ours and if we were going to be able to take him home. I couldn't believe he was here and he was ours. I don't remember what happened after that. I know our families were anxiously awaiting getting to see the baby. But, Blake wouldn't let them until I got to really see him and hold him. He knew that I would want to see him first. He wasn't sure if I had because I was so out of it. When I finally came too, I just started crying because I was so sad that I couldn't remember anything. But, right then they brought him to me and he was the most perfect thing I had ever seen. I just couldn't stop looking at him. He had my lips and everything else his dads. He even had hair! At first we thought it was curly, but it was just wet. I still can't believe how perfect he is!

This was the hardest most painful experience I ever had. But, having our sweet baby here has been completely worth it. We had everything planned out in our heads before we got there on how it would all go...but, nothing went as planned! It was so great to have family there to support us the whole time. Even though they ended up in the waiting room for hours (sorry!). It just felt like this was all meant to be and this is the little son that I was suppose to have at this time. We love him so very much and we can't get enough of him!

P.S. Please excuse any grammer errors. I don't have much time to check these things right now! Sorry!

To My loving and beautiful wife

Emily i just wanted you to know how much i love you. You are truly the greatest. I don't think there is a wife out there who did more during your pregnancy, such as work, cleaning house and other chores that were probably difficulty like carrying our boy for 9 months. But i have to give it to you. You rarely complained and just did what needed to be done. I love you so much and just wanted to give you a shout out, cause you deserve it. I know that Braxton is in for a treat when he is held by his mother on MONDAY THE 8TH. Our doctor told us to come in Sunday night at 9:30 to start the inducing. YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Love you EM