Allison: Birth Story

Life's been a little sweeter since July 19th. I mean, how could it not be with a cute little face like Allison's?

We knew that we wanted to be a little more prepared for this baby's arrival given that we were literally not prepared at all for Katie's arrival two years ago, so we had a bag packed and car seat installed two weeks before we knew our C-section date. Thankfully we never needed any of it early as she passed both of her non-stress tests before her delivery. 

On the night before our C-section, we spent plenty of time together as a family of five. All the kids knew that the next day they were getting a new baby brother or sister, so they spent a little extra time giving my belly some loving. We asked them one more time what they thought baby was going to be, and all three said that it was going to be a boy. Early in the pregnancy, Brayden said he wanted it to be a girl, but did eventually switch it to a boy. Ashley was pretty dead set that it was going to be a boy because she "already had a baby sister". And Katie just says whatever Ashley says, so we weren't surprised that she said boy. 

Aside from getting up (on purpose) at 11:45 for one more snack before my no-food-after-midnight cutoff, I actually slept pretty well. I was a little bummed that we couldn't have our C-section in the morning, but Dr. Haller had a surgery that morning, so we were slated for 12:30 the afternoon of the 19th. 

We were able to get the kids dropped off at daycare and give them one more big hug before our lives all changed forever. We did some last minute picking up around the house and before we knew it it was time to head to the hospital. 

We not so patiently waited the few hours in the labor room until everyone was ready for us in OR. As I was getting my spinal, Dr. Haller and all the staff in the room were asking if we had any guesses on what baby was. I told them I would love for Brayden to have a brother, but I would be so happy if it was a girl as well. Dr. Haller said that everyone there was betting it was a boy since they had had so many boys born that week already. I laughed as I told them that Eric would say that that would mean baby was definitely going to be a girl. As soon as my spinal was done and Eric was able to come into the room, Dr. Haller asked Eric what he thought baby would be, and mentioned the part about them all thinking it was a boy due to all the recently born boys. Eric literally said, "I'm a numbers guy, and if there's been that many boys then we are definitely having a girl." 

Eric and I held hands as we patiently waited for them to get baby out. They told us that they were almost there, and they had a little trouble getting her out of my right side, which is where baby lived about my entire pregnancy. As Dr. Haller pulled baby out, she said "dad you were right, it's a girl!" I've never seen Eric smile so big and breathe such a big sigh of relief as he did. After everything that we've been through on our journey to parenthood, it was so good to see this last pregnancy have such a beautiful outcome. 

Allison Danielle Schackmann was born at 12:51 PM on July 19th. She was 7 pounds and 13 ounces (our heaviest baby yet) and 19.5 inches long (tying Katie for our longest baby). And speaking of Katie, Allison is almost a cut and paste of Katie, it was crazy how much Allison reminded us of Katie, so much so that we still are occasionally calling Allison Katie or Kate. 

But at this point, Allison was still nameless. We had had a few names for each sex that we both liked coming in to the hospital that morning, but we definitely didn't have a clear favorite. We actually didn't even give her her official name until the day after she was born. And to top it off, Allison wasn't even on our original list of names we liked. But it seemed to fit her and we both liked it, so that was a weight off of our shoulders to finally have a name for her. 

The kids came Saturday morning to meet Allison, and I loved seeing their reactions to meeting her for the first time. They were all very excited to see Eric and I, and Katie wanted to come right up on the bed with me. Brayden and Ashley gravitated towards Allison though, and she was instantly smothered in kisses by Brayden and love pats by Ashley. 

Ashley won out on getting to hold Allison first, and seeing her smile down at her warmed my heart with love.

And then it was Brayden's turn, and if I had any doubts about him being the absolute best big brother to her (which I didn't), he would have squashed them right then. You could see how in love with her he was. 

Katie was a little a lot less interested in Allison. But I won't hold it against her, it was a little overstimulating in that hospital room. She didn't seem too excited and didn't want to hold Allison by herself, pretty much clinging to me or Eric the entire time. I would like to say that when we got home on Sunday, she immediately wanted to hold her and gave her all sorts of hugs and kisses, so she came around to her baby sister pretty quickly. 

We stayed in the hospital until Sunday around lunch, and for a while we were thinking we would be there even longer since Allison refused to poop. The nurse practitioner ordered an x-ray just to make sure everything was ok, and thankfully it was. And at some point in the wee hours of Sunday morning Allison finally let one out. 

We were ready to be home, and we have been adjusting well to being a family of six. The kids are still absolutely in love with her, as are Eric and I. We can't wait to see what life has in store for us with Allison in it!

Katie: Birth Story

I've finally had some time to sit down and really type out Katie's birth story, and how she got here a week earlier than we had planned. 

Her birth story starts with my doctor's appointment on May 26th. I was scheduled for a non-stress test that afternoon, with a planned C-section scheduled for June 3rd. During my non-stress test, Katie was not wanting to move around much once they put the monitors on my stomach. She kicked the whole  way to my doctor's appointment, much like the last non-stress test I had two weeks before. Stubborn child we have on our hands!

They had me drink some ice water, and that got her moving around. The nurse came in and said that things were looking good, but they wanted me to stay hooked up for five more minutes. It wasn't long after that that I noticed the screen where baby's movements and heartrate are monitored showed that her heartrate had dropped to 89. I brought that to the nurse's attention, and she had me roll over to my left side and left the room. She came back a minute later and said that they wanted me to go over to the hospital and repeat the test over there. She also told me to go ahead and have Eric meet me there.

So to the hospital I went. I really didn't think much of it at that point. They wheeled me up to a labor room, which happened to be the same room that Jordan was born in almost a year before, and hooked me up to their monitors. Katie was moving more at the hospital, but I did notice that her heartrate was still having some dips down into the low hundreds. 

Eric made it to the room and I think my emotions finally got the best of me. I broke down crying to Eric. I was scared that they would send us home. I was scared that they would tell us we were having our baby now. I was so scared of losing this baby after having almost made it to the end. 

The nurse came in while I was crying, and made the comment that she was surprised how composed I looked coming into the hospital, and she had wondered how I was really feeling. She did reassure us that the non-stress test did look good, and she thought that the lower moments of 120's were just baby's resting heartrate and not necessarily dips in baby's heartrate. We talked about how there were still some lower dips as well. She left to go call Dr. Haller and see what she recommended we do.

When she came back, she said that Dr. Haller was on her way in and we were having the baby that night. 

Woah I wasn't prepared for that!

I mean, we literally had nothing ready. Just the night before I had packed a few clothes for myself in our hospital bag. Eric had nothing packed. We had nothing packed for the twins. Nothing ready for the baby. We didn't even have the infant seat in the car (though we had installed the base that weekend before). 

All sorts of things raced through my mind. I wanted to do one more fun thing with just us and Brayden and Ashley before this baby arrived. We were planning on going to the Aikman Wildlife Adventure that Saturday with them. 

I thought about how I had wanted to spend my last night with just the twins giving them all my love and attention and helping them prepare for what would be happening. The last time I saw them before Katie was born was dropping them off at daycare that morning with a quick hug and kiss and wave goodbye out the window. 

I wanted to take one more belly picture. I wanted to weigh myself one more time. I wanted to measure how big my belly had gotten. I wanted to attempt to do a few low key maternity pictures with Eric, and maybe the twins (though my expectations weren't high with that last thought ha!). I wanted to mentally prepare myself for this huge life change that we were about to undertake. And suddenly all those things were taken away from me.

Now we were making phone calls to our parents, having my mom and dad go to our house and get things for the twins, while we had Eric's mom and dad go to our house and get things packed for us to bring our bag and car seat to the hospital. Oh, and to let them all know that their newest grandbaby would be born that night! We also got to video chat with Brayden and Ashley for a few minutes and let them know that I was having our baby that night. Ashley gave us the cutest little surprised face with her hands on her cheeks and everything ha!

They started prepping me for my C-section, and a little before 7 Dr. Haller came into the room asking if we were ready to have our baby! As they wheeled me back to the operating room, one nurse mentioned how much I must mean to Dr. Haller since she decided to come in on her night off to do my C-section. She wasn't even the doctor on call. We really lucked out having her as our doctor through our entire journey to having a family.

My C-section went flawlessly, and at 7:21 PM, we found out that we were now the proud parents of another baby girl! Katie Jo Schackmann weighed in at 6 pounds 7 ounces and was 19 and 1/2 inches long. Much like her older sister Madison, she has some of the longest fingers and toes I've ever seen on a newborn. 

(And as a side note, Dr. Haller told us that Katie had a lot of her cord down by her head, which is probably why we were seeing the drops in her heartrate. There was talk of potentially trying to do a VBAC since I only needed a C-section due to the twins being transverse. But she let me know that if we would have attempted that, I would have needed to have a C-section anyway due to the location of her cord. It's safe to say that I'm so glad Dr. Haller made the call to just have Katie that night instead of waiting. There's no telling what could have happened if we hadn't just delivered that night.)

Needless to say, we were in love from the moment we laid eyes on her.

We were lucky enough to get to have visitors during our stay, and Katie enjoyed cuddles with her aunts and uncles, as well as grandma. The rest of the grandparents weren't able to make it in during our hospital stay, but got to meet Katie soon after we got home. 

Now that we are home and nice and settled in, we just have to figure out how to function being officially outnumbered. It's going to be a wild and crazy ride, but we are here for it!

Jordan's Birth Story

I wish I could say that when I went to my 18 week appointment and they told me that our baby's heart wasn't beating I was surprised. But I wasn't. I had had an uneasy feeling about that appointment all day. I tried to remember the last time that I had actually truly felt him move, and I was drawing a blank. Sure, there were times that I thought I felt him move, more than likely convinced myself that I was feeling him move. But I obviously wasn't. And at around 3 PM on June 1st, my worst fear came true. 

Dr. Haller tried to listen with the doppler in the exam room, but I could tell she wasn't finding anything. My heart was sinking. As we went into the ultrasound room and I was met with a still baby on the screen, I knew that he was gone. I flashed back to images Ian, who also laid still on that ultrasound screen for me too. I honestly couldn't believe that this was happening to us again. 

I was able to call Eric and he came as soon as he could, which wasn't near fast enough. I had a lot of time to cry and think as I waited in a back exam room for him to show up. So many thoughts crossed my mind, but the biggest one was why? Why was this happening again. Again we would be going to the hospital to have a baby, but wouldn't be bringing it home. Again we would be going to the cemetery a few days later to bury yet another child. It's probably not hard to imagine that after all of this, Eric and I just felt pretty numb to all the pain. 

Yes, we were both incredibly sad, how can you not be? But after hearing such devastating news now for the third time, I guess our hearts had put up a barrier to not pull us down as deep as we had gone with Ian and Madison. This time was a little different having Brayden and Ashley. I honestly welcomed the distraction that caring for them provided. It kills me to know that they will never know yet another sibling, but I am also thankful that they are still too young to really understand what is happening, so Eric and I have time to explain everything to them as they get older.

We made the decision that at 6:30 on June 3rd we would start my induction. Things progressed slowly at first. I didn't really notice anything resembling a contraction for a few hours. I received my first pain medicine probably around 9:30 or 10 as my contractions worsened. I would guess around 11 or 11:30 my contractions really escalated. I'm pretty sure I got another round of the same medicine I had for pain at first, but this time it wasn't really helping. 

At this point Eric had moved his chair over beside the bed so I could squeeze his hand during the contractions. They were getting stronger and longer. This time was so different from Ian. I don't remember having any big contractions at all with him. I gave birth to Ian without any nurse or doctor in the room, he almost popped out of me without me having to do a thing. But oh this time, this time I was in pain, and a lot of it. I remember telling Eric that if the pain lasted much longer I was going to need an epidural. 

The nurse got the go-ahead to give me a different pain medicine- one she warned that would probably make me very sleepy. I'm pretty positive it did absolutely nothing to help my pain. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was about to give birth to our son. 

Before I knew it Dr. Haller was in the room. Not that I really saw her, because my eyes were glued shut from the pain. And at 1:01 PM, I gave birth to our fifth baby, a son, Jordan Kenneth. 

He was so different from Ian. Even though I gave birth to him a week later than I did with Ian, he was actually a younger gestation, measuring only a little over 15 weeks from the ultrasound where we learned he was gone. Where Ian was red, Jordan was almost white, and his skin seemed see-through. He had extra fluid around his head and body, which they told us was common for a baby who had been passed for that long. Oh but he was perfect.

Ten little fingers and toes, and the cutest little knuckle wrinkles I'd ever seen. No picture I took of them did them any justice. 

By this time, that medicine that the nurse said would make me sleepy had taken over. I was beat. I soaked up as much as I could of Jordan. I gave him kisses, told him how much I loved him. But I was struggling to stay awake. We said our final goodbyes to him, but our time together would never be long enough. As I was eating lunch after they took him away, I was basically falling asleep mid-bite. I don't know how long I slept, but I do know that sleep finally overcame me. 

I woke up and everything that had happened had truly seemed like a dream. That's one regret I'll always have, that I don't know that I really appreciated and took in all that I could with Jordan because I was so tired from that medicine. My other regret is that I never got a recording of his heartbeat. At my appointment just days before I had had my phone out and ready to hit record once we heard it. But it never came, and now I'll never have it. If I could go back I would make sure to record it the first time they played it for me. That's a mute point now though. 

To lighten the mood a little, I wanted to let you in on how Jordan got his name. Not long after we found out we were pregnant with him, we started talking names. We weren't going to find out the sex, so we needed to have a girl and boy name ready. We had decided on a girl name pretty quickly- Katie- but we were having trouble with a boy name. 

Eric told me that he had a brilliant idea. We already have a (Tom) Brady, who is the GOAT of football, he said. So now, we need another GOAT, a (Michael) Jordan. I vividly remember just rolling me eyes at him. I told him that I wasn't really fond of the name Jordan, but he really didn't care. From that moment on, our baby went by "Katie Jordan" when Eric talked about it. 

After learning that our baby was gone, we once again talked about what we were going to name it. Selfishly, I wanted to save Katie for if we had another living daughter. We threw around the back up name we had for Ashley, but that didn't really stick either. Then Eric said, "I know it was kind of a joke before, but what do you think about Jordan?" 

And at that moment, I knew that Jordan was perfect. It was, after all, his name from the very start.

We laid Jordan to rest next to Ian and Madison on Sunday, June 6 at 2 PM with our parents and siblings by our side. I can't adequately put into words what it is like burying a child, not to mention three of them, but I will tell you that it sucks. No parent should ever have to go through this, and we've done it three times now.

I have so many questions for God, so many "why's". I doubt I get answers, at least not while I'm here on Earth. A dear friend's sister, who lost her son a little over a year ago, sent me this quote from Mother Angelica and it really hit home. 

Why, my child- do you ask "why"? Well, I will tell you why. You see, the child lives. Instead of the wind he hears the sound of angels singing before My throne. Instead of the beauty that passes he sees everlasting beauty- he sees My face. He was created and lived a short time so the image of his parents imprinted on his face may stand before Me as their personal intercessor. He knows secrets of Heaven unknown to men on Earth. He laughs with a special joy that only the innocent posses. My ways are not the ways of man. I create for My kingdom and each creature fills a place in that kingdom that could not be filled by another. He was created for My joy and his parents' merits. He has never seen pain or sin. He has never felt hunger or pain. I breathed a soul into seed, made it grow, and called it forth. 

Sweet Jordan, it gives me peace to know that God did create you for a reason, and that now you are rejoicing in Heaven with the angels and your brother and sister. You never knew pain, or sadness, or sin. Only love, so much love. And while I would give anything to still have you growing inside me, I am comforted by the fact that you are growing up with Jesus by your side.  

Brayden and Ashley: One Week

How oh how can our babes be one week old already!? I'm pretty sure that that was the fastest week of my life, and I know that the weeks are only going to fly by from here on out. So here's to trying to soak it all up!

Up first is their birth story. We got to the hospital around 5 on February 14th to get prepped for my c--section. I was a pretty nervous to get the spinal, but it really wasn't as bad as the epidural was when I had Madison. I got back to the operating room and Eric joined us. That spinal sure did it's job as I didn't even notice that they had started the procedure.

It wasn't long after that and I heard the wonderful cry of our third baby, Brayden Michael Schackmann, at 7:59 AM. I couldn't wait for them to come put him on my chest. Little man has a tight grip. They said that he grabbed hold of the suction hose on his way out.

One minute later at 8:00 AM Ashley Marie Schackmann was born. Little miss swallowed some amniotic fluid on her way out, so unfortunately I wasn't able to get skin to skin time with her. I'm glad I couldn't see what was happening with her, but Eric said it wasn't that bad. They had to suction out her lungs to get the fluid out. As they were wheeling me out into recovery they did let me see her and put her up to my face for a minute.

As I was in recovery with Brayden, Eric was able to go to the nursey to see Ashley. By this time she was hooked up to IVs and had a CPap machine on to help her breath. I was still unable to go see her, but Eric did go down quite a bit to keep her company. She had the CPap for about 4 hours, and then was moved to a nasal cannula.

I did finally get to get up and go down to the nursery to really meet her, and that's when she officially got her name (we were between two and I wanted to see her before I decided). Holding her was the best thing ever.

Brayden got his first bath in our room on Friday night. He was not a fan ha!

Ashley finally got to come stay in our room around 11:30 on Saturday morning. She was still hooked up to her IV until late that night/early Sunday morning. Seeing her wire free was so great!

Ashley got her first bath in the nursery on Sunday. She also was not a fan of the bath. The two that we've given them at home have also been received with cries and screams from both of them. Let's hope that gets better!

Sunday evening we got a big surprise. The nurse that cared for Madison, Abby Warden, was working, and was able to switch to get to take care of us and Brayden and Ashley that night. We hadn't seen each other since the night Madison was born. It was wonderful catching up with her and getting to have her be a part of the twins' birth story as well.

We were finally able to go home on Monday (which happened to be my 30th birthday!). Leaving that hospital room with these two was such a good feeling. I'm glad I got to spend that evening at home with our little family.

And here's a few more pictures from our hospital stay that I don't want to forget!

The rest of the week at home was so nice getting settled into a routine and figuring out how to be parents. We've had some rough nights, but that was to be expected. We've also had some amazing nights where we felt rested waking up. I'm hoping those nights continue!

In their first week they celebrated their first Valentine's Day, met their grandparents and aunts and uncles, and even met one of their cousins (who looks SO big next to the two of them). We've been soaking in the baby cuddles and continue to be amazed at the two little humans that we created. We also had our first doctor's appointment. Brayden is almost back up to his birth weight of 6 pounds 7 ounces at 6 pounds six ounces on Friday. Ashley is also gaining up to her birth weight of 6 pounds 2 ounces at 6 pounds even. We had our first blowout (by Ashley) and Brayden's first time peeing all over once his diaper came off. I wish I could say it would be the last time for both of those things, but I know that would be a lie.

I have so many more thoughts to write down. Like how their birth has me reflecting on Ian and Madison. Or how I didn't think I could love someone as much as I love them (and their daddy). But I'll save those for another day. For now it's back to some baby cuddles.