We had Delilah’s “berry first birthday” party a couple weekends back, it was the sweetest afternoon with family + friends and it brought me all the joy to celebrate our girl.  Honestly ten years into motherhood and lots of birthdays later, I am WAY more laid-back with celebrations than I used to be and almost just did a morning with immediate family — but then decided that we needed a big celebration for her l since we didn’t do one while she was in my belly with all the uncertainty of my pregnancy.  I am so happy we did, she was the first of all four girls to not cry during the birthday song (so funny that they do this!), loved trying her cake, and was in heaven crawling around the floor and looking at all of her new toys.  Celebrating her is so easy, she is such a gift to our family.

A special thank you to my sister in law for making her cookies, these might just have been my favorite yet!  The theme was adorable and perfect for Delilah who loves strawberries 🙂 A few photos from her day, I could have taken a hundred of her sitting on top of the table loving her cookies while we sang the birthday song to her so many times in a row.

And now onto the next special day as our birthday season continues — Avalon Elle on June 6th!  XO

Our Delilah June turned ONE on Mother’s Day this past weekend!  Her very first birthday falling on what is already such a special day for me felt so sweet + so incredibly perfect, she is truly my little dream come true.  For years I could not shake the feeling that there was one more person waiting to join our family and it turns out it was her all along.  Our tiny miracle, our cherry on top, our happily ever after.  We just all love her so much.

A few things about our Delilah girl at ONE YEAR OLD!!!  She loves her people.  She probably has the most stranger danger of all my girls and always wants to be close to someone she knows well, especially her mama.  She is my first true mama’s girl through + through, I like to think it’s because we went through so much together during my pregnancy 🙂 We spend a lot of time with her in the carrier or with me just carrying her close, I think that would have felt overwhelming with my first baby but this time I know how fast it goes.  She adores her sisters, they make her laugh the hardest + she always is watching them to see everything they are doing.  And one of the very best parts of this year with her has been how much her sister adore her too.  Remie is obsessed with her and was made to be a big sister, and Waverly + Avalon are forever just the sweetest big sissies and are even more little “mother hens” this time around than they even were before.

Delilah is FOUR times the size she was at birth, I look back on pictures of her at just four pounds the week we brought her home and I can’t even remember her being so small.  She has done so much better on the outside than in (an answered prayer), and is 100% perfectly healthy.  She is crawling like crazy, pulling up, says mama + dada, and has the cutest little laugh in the world.  Most days I think she looks like Avalon the most but I also see all of her sisters in her, and her bright blue eyes might just be the bluest of all four girls.  I could stare at her forever, I still cannot believe she is real + that we get to keep her.

Some favorites from this past year.

Not sure how we got to May already, but it’s here + we are living for all the spring things!  I always love this time of year so much, getting to get outside again after a long winter of parenting (mostly) indoors is always much welcomed.  Our three big girls are currently very busy with dance, Avalon is doing softball for the first time (+ is loving it), and Delilah June is getting ready to celebrate her very first birthday!!  The days are long but the years are short, it feels more true than ever right now.

Waverly + Avalon love to look at photos on this site during their lunch/recess now, so I figured it was time to jump on and share a few from 2023 so far.  Highlights so far include lots of sister time, finally moving into our master addition, and watching Delilah (the current house favorite) grow so very much! 🙂  So thankful.

This weekend we are celebrating Delilah’s birthday with a strawberry party, we cannot wait!  XO

Everything happened so fast at this point, several doctors came in and explained what was happening and then the next thing I knew I was being wheeled away alone while my husband stayed back to get his scrubs on.  The OR was bright and honestly scary — so, so different than anything I had ever experienced — part of me was terrified but another part had a peace that she was almost here and that finally, after so long, we would know why she wasn’t growing and could be well taken care of.  The sweetest man, my anestheologist, talked me through everything, my husband walked in and stood right by my side, and within minutes our fourth baby girl was born.  I heard her cry, got to see a few photos from my husband who walked over to be with her, and then within minutes watched them wheel her away.  I was so nervous about how that moment would go/feel but somehow it wasn’t nearly has hard as I thought it would be, looking back I think I was just so incredibly relieved that she was here that I couldn’t even wrap my head around the fact that my baby wasn’t laying on my chest in that magical moment like I had experienced before.

I spent the next few hours in the recovery room and then was transferred to a room, because of the C-section I was not allowed to go to the NICU until that evening around 6pm — which again, is so crazy painful to think about now, but somehow I did it and had peace in knowing that it was part of her story.  My husband finally was able to wheel me down and there she was, in the giant isolette, hooked to tons of wires and machines, but looking perfect + sweet as can be.  My baby girl.  I finally got to hold her and she was worth ALL OF IT.  I would do all the appointments, the scary nights, the uncertainty and the pain if it meant I got to have her in the end.  And we do.  We get to have a perfectly healthy Delilah June, our little miracle babe that will forever have this birth + time in my belly that is a story all of her own.  She ended up spending only 11 days in the NICU after that first day when she was born, she hit milestone after milestone and ultimately only needed to be there to get to 4 pounds.  The day she hit that mark we got to bring her home (!!!) to three VERY excited big sisters who love her so incredibly much.

Just a little while after Delilah was born we were sent a report on my placenta: it was only 1/3 of the size of a normal placenta, was calcified, and had a true knot in the umbilical cord.  I think deep down the whole time I knew that it was placenta and that ultimately she was going to fight through and that everything would be just fine, but the relief in that moment was something I hadn’t prepared myself for.  Things could have gone so differently but she did it — we did it!!!!  Words can’t explain I thankful I am for our healthy perfect final baby girl.

And some pictures of her first couple weeks with us. 🙂

It has taken me eight months to write this, I could blame it on how busy I am with four kids but really it’s because it was such a different experience than my other girls (both her birth + the pregnancy), and it’s taken me a while to process it all.  Delilah June’s birthday will forever be one of the happiest days of my life, it was beautiful + special + also really hard, but best of all it brought us her.

I have written about Delilah’s pregnancy here, after three very normal and uneventful pregancies (all three overdue + induced), I ended up with just the opposite the fourth time around.  Our baby girl was diagnosed with SIUGR at 22 weeks, and after a few REALLY hard weeks waiting to see if she would make it or grow at all, I was transferred to a high risk doctor who I saw twice a week, every week, for the remainder of my pregnancy.  I was reminded at every appointment that if she showed any signs of distress, they would immediately send me to the hospital for a C-section and to be prepared for a very premature baby who was going to be “a challenge”.  They never ever talked past making it past the current week with me and I was told to always have a bag packed, it’s still hard to wrap my head around the fact that in the blink of an eye, I was hoping for a baby who would make it to two pounds and past 30 weeks — something that would have never crossed my mind before.  Those days/weeks were brutal and so incredibly scary, but we did it!  I always have said that everything happens for a reason and I am convinced that the entire experience gave me so much perspective, peace in knowing that our family was complete, and made me so much stronger than I could have ever been before.

Fast forward to 37 weeks — and somehow, with the help of prayers, and because our tiny girl is one STRONG, resilient little lady, we made it as far as they let anyone go with SIUGR and our delivery date was set for Friday, May 13th.  I remember leaving the high-risk doctor’s office for the last time before my scheduled induction and what a surreal feeling it was after months of being there ALL the time.  The doctor who followed me through most of my appointments (and was always very real, to say the least) looked at me and said — “Sometimes in OB you can’t explain why things go wrong, and sometimes you can’t explain why they go right.  Just say amen”.  Our little Delilah is truly a miracle.

Because I was high-risk and with a different doctor than the other three girls, I had to deliver at a different hospital.  This made me sad at first (I loved the hospital + all of my birth experiences so much), but after what we went through I truly just wanted her here + safe.  We were not sure if I would be able to go through with the induction or have to do a C-section, mostly because she was breeched so much of my pregnancy, but the morning when my husband and I arrived, an ultrasound confirmed that she was not breeched and we could try for an induction.  So we did, I got hooked up to pitocin to induce labor for the fourth time — but this time just felt SO DIFFERENT.  It was quiet (we could only have one visitor, my mom), an entirely new place that just felt so foreign to us, and of course I was so anxious about all of it.  We tried pitocin and a foley bulb to help me dilate, and though it was taking forever, much like my other inductions, everything seemed to be going well.  Until it wasn’t.  In the middle of the night the nurses all of the sudden kept coming in to have me change positions because her heart rate was apparently dropping with every contraction.  It improved once I moved but then went right back pretty much every time, and it quickly became obvious that our my fourth labor was going to end in my first C-section.

Continued in Part Two, and sharing just a few photos from the last couple months of my pregnancy since through this crazy experience, we didn’t take any photos during her labor at the hospital!