Welcome Peyton Isabella!!!!

Arriving 6 days early (much to my surprise) Peyton Isabella van Leeuwen made her grand entrance into the world.

I had gone to the doctors the day before and wasn't feeling overly well and was put on sick leave until the baby was born. I left work on the 15th feeling slightly out of sorts having to leave so quickly but we had been operating on a day by day basis so that everything was in order if I left suddenly.

At 3:30 in the morning on the 16th my water broke and I started having some very mild contractions every 10-20 minutes or so. I called the doctor's office at 9am and they told me to go to the hospital to be checked out to make sure that the baby was doing okay. We arrived to a very busy hospital, was checked out and it was decided that I was going to stay. Since not much was happening, I waited in triage and the discussion on whether to start medication to help my labour along began. At 5:30 in the evening, real labour began (all on its own) and by 6 I was in my room. I received an epidural (which did not work as things progressed so rapidly - much to my dismay).

At 7:14pm, Peyton was born weighing in at 8 pounds 8 ounces (the smallest of the girls by over a pound) and measuring 20 and a half inches long. Another healthy baby girl and we couldn't be happier!

Counting Down

We have been keeping busy over here - lots of baby preparations going on (we have finally decided on a name so this child won't have an identity crisis), we survived a round of the stomach flu and attended a friend's wedding.

Danica came down with the stomach flu on Monday morning at 4am and spent the next 24 hours vomiting every 10 minutes. We almost wound up in the hospital to have her put on IV fluids as her pediatrician was worried she was becoming dehydrated. We had a 24 hour time limit and as I was packing to head to the hospital, she started to make some improvements which were enough to put that at bay.

We have two sets of good friends that are also expecting their third children around the same time as us. My good friend Donna is due only 3 short weeks after I am and since comparing bellies with other people seems to be the thing to do these days, we decided to do the same (plus we were all dressed up for this wedding).

Comparing Bellies

Here we are at 35 weeks - hard to believe that I am measuring smaller than I was at this point with either of the two girls. I think I am winning the belly contest though. The girls are so excited to have a new baby in the house - they are both hoping for a girl.

Sisters

The girls moved in together to share a room in order to make room for the new baby in the nursery. They were rather excited.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday Emily!

Happy birthday Emily! Emily turned 5 this past November and we celebrated by having 12 of her friends join us at Kid City which is a huge indoor play structure. We survived and managed to return each child back to their respective parent in tact and very tired.

Amazing

So I'm ridiculously far behind on this blog but today we went for another sneak peak of this new little one. It was amazing and while the baby didn't behave the best for taking pictures in 3D (too close to the placenta wall), we still got a great view - we could even see hair! The baby had their arm up across their face for most of the session and that combined with being close to the placenta did make it a bit challenging - some of the 3D pictures look a bit alienish but cool to us nonetheless...