Hayden and Jaris

Wow Hayden is almost 5 weeks old now!  Where has time gone?  We are settling into life as a family of 5 and I am enjoying life as it is.  Jeral is such an amazing father, I love appreciated how he has stepped up to the plate and taken on watching and playing with Kenzie and Jaris more, so I can focus on Hayden.  The big thing for Hayden and I is getting the whole breast feeding routine down.  Since I did not nurse Kenzie and Jaris this is new territory for me. I will post pictures of the kids at a later date!

This week we met with a speech therapist to assess Jaris, and we also had his hearing tested.  The hearing test came back great!  Jaris hears very well and his tiny ear canals have grown as he has and are a normal size.  So we can scratch hearing issues off the list of possible reasons why Jaris does not like to talk, why he disengages, why he hyper focuses, and why he does not handle groups of people well etc.  The next step in this journey is to go back to our GP and get her to refer us back to the pediatrician who will refer us where ever we need to go.  We will continue with speech therapy once we get in.  Right now we are on the wait list, our appointment last week was an assessment to see if we needed speech therapy or not!  And we do!!!!!

When we got all the genetic testing back just over 2 years ago saying that genetically there was nothing wrong with Jaris we breathed a huge sigh of relief, and honestly at the time I thought okay Jaris is fine life will proceed as normal, and for a while everything appeared to the "normal".  Jaris was progressing and for a while he even had more audible words than Kenzie, and then it all stopped and his quirks started to be more pronounced.  Our experience with others in regards to Jaris and his quirks has been two extremes.  From a few we have been nudged to look into Autism Spectrum Disorders, or Pervasive Degenerative Disorders.  Then from a few others we were strongly told not to have him labelled.

I have cried many tears as we have started to think about the future and what it all holds for Jaris.  I have cried wondering how will I breathe and manage the stresses that come along with having a husband who has a disability in regards to his brain processing what he hears, and then having a son who will need lots of extra help.  I have cried because no matter what, Jaris is one of our three miracles and not knowing at times is just as challenge as knowing the answers.  At least with knowing we can come up with a plan, not knowing means a bunch of trial and error that may or may not be what Jaris needs!  Yet with all the tears, and unknowns right now at the end of the day when he smiles with the dimple in his right cheek, and I look into his blue eyes I know God will hold us through the unknowns and months ahead of us as we walk down the path of figuring this out for Jaris and for us.  Ultimately though what matters is we love our Jair-Bear.

No parent desires for their child to struggle in life and yet that is something that we will not be able to prevent and protect them from.  Being human means facing struggles and journeying through them.  Being a parent means helping your children as they journey through their struggle and yet not necessarily sparing them from having to journey through the tough stuff, and that is the hardest part.

Photo Shoot Photos

Chilling in a wagon

First Family Picture with all 5 of us on the outside!

I totally think Hayden looks like his older cousin James here!

Hmmm is he going to be a motorcycle riding boy like his daddy?

Learning to be gentle with her baby brother

My beautiful baby girl!  

First family picture with all of us (well we are all there just Hayden is still growing inside)!

Kissing her baby brother!

Best Friends!  I am so happy that they get to grow up together!

This could have sent me into labor I still got to do things like this for 8 days before labor got going!

I think this is my favorite picture of Kenzie from the day we met Heather and Bernie for my maternity photo's

Looking like a hot curvy preggo mama!!!!

Simply adorable need I say more!  I hope Hayden has curly hair when his hair grows out!

The glorious tummy!!!!  I actually miss being pregnant (do not read into this there are no plans to have anymore than three kids)

Our Three miracles!

Posing for the camera!  Funny we we get professional photos she will not smile and then when mommy pulls out the camera she smiles!

Giving Baby Hayden Kisses!

This is what Jaris thinks of mommy taking pictures!

Don't let the smile fool you she has her grumpy moments and her tantrums yet I love her  no matter what.  Even when I want to pull my hair out!

Mommy I am almost ready for food!

Daddy chilling with 2 of 3 kiddos this morning!

8 Days Old!

Yesterday we took the kids to Kamloops for Hayden's newborn photo shoot.  I thought I would put up on the blog the photo the photographer put up on Facebook.

It is strange thinking that yesterday was my induction day and yet we are all home with an 8 day old baby boy!  At his check up today he was 9lbs exactly, thus 1 oz bigger than his birth weight!  And I was worried he was not getting enough to eat.  That is the one thing I did not worry about with Kenzie and Jaris as they were both on formula.  Despite hemorrhaging badly again when I gave birth to Hayden I decided to stick out the breast feeding because of a promise I made.  So far so good!

Anyways my kids are adorable and I love them all so very much.  Being a mom to two 2 year olds and a newborn is challenging some days.  Kenzie is having the thougher time adjusting, in part because she is so used to be mommy's girl.  There have been more tears and more time outs in the last few days than in the week previous!

Hayden Ezra

Were do I begin?  Well first I want to introduce you to Hayden Ezra the newest addition to our family!  He arrive on August 13th at 3:35 pm (12 days early and a week before the planned induction date).  He weighed 8 lbs & 15 oz, and was 21.5 inches long!  

We went to the hospital to be assessed on Sunday August 12th (Jeral's birthday), and I thought they would be sending me home, however I was wrong the on call OB admitted me.  My contractions were not super painful yet they were close together and it looked like I was going to get going.  So we called my good friend Karen and she came to join us for the day as she was one of my support people.  Well instead of labor ramping up it go less and less, so I thought I would get to go home for the night. I was wrong.  I had to stay, however I sent Jeral and Karen home so they could sleep at least.  In the morning I got up and started packing my bag back up and then went and started getting dressed when my OB came in to assess me, and well without contractions for a good part of the night i had continued to dilate (I have no idea how that works), and he decided to break my water.  I had yet another shocked look on my face!  I thought for sure I was going to get to go home.

Jeral brought the kids to come and visit before my pain got unmanageable it was so nice to get to see them for a bit.  When I am not with them i miss them so very much.  Then Karen and I went for a walk to ramp things up.  I had forgotten how painful labor was.  I availed my self of the shower to help with the pain and was hopeful things were progressing, yet the opposite is what happened, I stopped dilating, actually I closed up a bit.  Which apparently is what happened when I was in labor with Jaris.  So bring on the Oxytocin!  Apparently I needed very minimal to send me in to over drive and in 1 hour I went from 4 cm- 10cm!  That went quick!  I recall begging for pain medication, I wanted it all and I even contemplated being cut in half just to end the pain.  With every contraction I had to remind myself to just make it through one more, I can make it through one more!  I would not have made it without Karen's help.  Seriously she was my rock, and exactly who I needed to be with us through one of the most amazing experiences of life.  At one point I was rolled onto my back to find Hayden's heart beat and to be examined and well I said I needed to push and Dr.Upton barely made it there to catch Hayden as he shot out in one 

Because Hayden came out so quickly his lungs were wet and so was his tummy and because of that he stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated.  Talk about being scared! I was in the process of hemorrhaging while this was going on and felt utterly helpless as I just wanted to be with my son.  He had to be in the nursery over night so they could keep an eye on him.  I hated not being with him.  I went to visit and feed him and was told to get as much rest as I could, and they would bring him to me when it was time.

The next morning he was allowed to come to the room with me which was so nice!  And then I hemorrhaged again, so not pleasant.  However since I have great blood I managed to not need a transfusion just have to take iron for the next 60 days!!!!!! Thus we got to come home yesterday!  I think I will leave it at that for now.  Lots of other stuff went on however I think that will be for me and Ellen to process.

Three Roads Converge into One Road Creating Our Family

Here is a little sneak peak of what we were doing yesterday as a family!  We met up with Heather and Bernie from Captured Memories Photography at Haney Heritage Park in Salmon Arm to take pictures of Krahn Baby #3 - also better know as Hayden Ezra!  They also took pictures of our kiddos too.

I am just over 37 weeks now with 15 days left to my induction date of August 20th.  Hayden seems to be very comfortable and I have a feeling he is going to stay put until he no longer has a choice to come out!  I look at the collage above and am reminded of how amazing my life is.  I have a husband whom I love and adore and who loves, cherishes, and adores me.  I have two healthy adorable children, with an ever growing tummy holding #3 inside.  This picture sums up everything I need and will ever truly want.  A family!  

There was a summer many years ago that all I longed for was a life partner to share the ups and downs of life with.  It was the same summer that I had 12 weddings to attend in 12 weeks. I think I was able to go to 8 of them.  I was so happy for my friends who were getting married, and at night though I cried because I wanted some too!  Little did I know that a year later Jeral would come into my life.  I will never regret waiting for him.  We do not have a perfect marriage, we have a work in progress, yet one in which we know we love each other.  Then after getting married we had to journey the who fertility road, talk about testing a marriage.  As friends and family were having kids we were excited for them and privately we ached for our own.  We had our close friends who we trusted with our tender hearts in this area, and well my then counselor Joy witnessed the gut wrenching tears and sobs many times.  

Then came the road to adoption, and road we held off on until I was read to handle someone asking deeply personal questions.  We had decided that being connected by biology and DNA was not what would create a family for us.  We knew the love in our hearts would created a bond with our children that would be stronger and longer lasting than any blood ties.  And I was ready to walk away from every carrying a child in my womb, after all carrying them in my heart was and is way more important in my opinion.

While on the road to adoption Jeral decided he really wanted us to give the fertility clinic a try, thus the second road/journey came about, and on the same day we signed off on our home study we did the simplest procedure and least costly one that we could do at the Kelowna Regional Fertility Clinic. I never expected it to work.  After all I have friends who have done the same procedure many times over and it has not worked for them.  So I busily kept getting our profile ready for the Adoption Agency we were going through, and did not clue in that I was more so than normal hormonal and grumpy.  Well it worked and Jaris was created.  Looking back if we would not have traveled the fertility clinic road we would not have MacKenzie.  If I would not have gotten pregnant we had been picked like 8 weeks after we gave the adoption agency our profile for a baby boy, and if we had not been honest about my being pregnant then we would have two boys.  

So back to the adoption road, after we were picked and then unpicked for the little baby boy we closed our profile.  My heart just could not handle all the ups and downs.  And I was almost in the second trimester so  it was time to shut it all down anyways.  So a side not while I was pregnant with Jaris God kept telling me that my daughter was safe inside her mother's womb.  I naturally thought that meant I was pregnant with a little girl.  When we found out we were having a boy I was first and foremost happy that we had a healthy little boy, and then just thought well I heard wrong and that is okay I am human and fallible.  Two weeks later while I am in Abbotsford I get a phone call from the adoption agency about meeting a birth mom who had our profile and who really wanted us to considered adoption her child.  I immediately emailed Jeral as I was at a silent retreat and asked him to pray about it and we could talk about it when I got home on Sunday.  While praying and asking God for clear direction I felt as thought God was saying that we got to make the choice, he was not telling us what to do.  I got a little mad I wanted to go home to Jeral and say God told me this is the door we are supposed to walk through.  Instead I kept getting you and Jeral get to make a choice and either choice I will bless.  However one day as I was showering I did feel God tell me that if we chose to adopt this child this was the daughter he had told me about.  I told one person my spiritual director for the weekend.  Well December 21st MacKenzie Joy Krahn was born, our daughter.

Then 3 months and 6 days later Jaris Zachery Krahn was born, and at the time we thought those were our two roads/journeys to growing our family and we were done.

Well 15 days (or maybe less) from now road number 3 will come to and end of it's own and join up with the other roads into the road we call our family.  Never did we think I would conceive a child without any medical intervention.  Well I actually have conceived 3, two of whom are in the loving arms of Jesus, and shortly we will get to hold our son Hayden Ezra.  I won't lie these last days feel as though they will take forever.  I just long to hold him in my arms, to look into his sweet face and say I  am your mommy and I love son!  For me carrying my babes in my womb is not as big of a deal and a long as it is to hold them in my arms.

Three roads/journeys converge into one to create our family.  I have more than I could ever have dreamed of!

36 Weeks and Family Photo's

 The cousins!  

 My beautiful daughter full of personality.  Funny thing is she is in this camera shy stage of life and they still got some great shots of her!

 My family L-R : Tyson, Chris, Jocelyn, Maddie, Mom (Olive), Kenzie, Me (Hayden in the tummy), Jeral, and Jaris

 A mother and her daughters

 The kids are going crazy yet not to shabby!

 We were playing round about mouse to get her in a happier mood!

 Love his eyes!  

 31 weeks here in this picture!  More to come on August 4th!

 I love being this boys mommy!

The kids and Dads throwing rock in the pond!

Life is busy around here between two 2 year olds and appointments we are busy, busy, busy.  However today is a stay at home pj day since starting tomorrow we have a week of non-stop appointments and outings.  We are gone every day of the week with something.

Yesterday I had my almost 36 week check up with my OB, and strangely enough yesterday also marked a year ago that I took the misoprostol to force my body to let go of our little baby girl who was already with Jesus.  That night was probably the most painful, hardest, and loneliest nights of my adult life, and the days that followed were so hard on my heart.  

Now a year later I was in the office of the same OB almost 36 weeks pregnant with our son.  And crazy enough we have 3 weeks and 2 days at most until he is here!  So far so good with Hayden, however my blood pressure is doing what it did at this stage when I was pregnant with Jaris, it sky rocketed through the roof.  We are waiting to see what next week holds.  I have another appointment and an ultrasound.  We are still hoping and praying that my body goes into labor naturally, and I am secretly hoping by the 16th of August in part because I really would like to have both of my support people there and Jeral.  However I also know Hayden will come when he is ready unless we get to August 20th.

Last night Kenzie was sitting on my lap looking at the pictures I just posted and I decided to pull up two more pictures.  I spent some time telling Kenzie about about the woman who gave birth to her and showed her a picture of the two of them together and told her that we can look at this picture and talk about it when ever she wants.  I know she does not totally understand yet, and that is okay.  We really do not want to showing her the picture for the first time when she is 5 or 6 and throwing her world for a big loop.  We want conversations like last night to be normal so when she is able to understand more it is not strange or weird.

I also pulled up the only pictures we have of Kenzie with her namesake.  Honestly the lighting is awful and I am sure that they got better pictures with their camera when they came to visit her when she was 5 weeks old.  One day I will have to explain that the locket in her hope chest is not from her birth mom, instead it is from the lady we named her after.  I am thankful that Kenzie can also read my blog from that time.  It is funny one would think that after not seeing or speaking to someone for 2 years you would not miss them however ...!  The reality is Kenzie has lots of people who played a huge roll in her becoming a part of our family that she may or may not ever meet.

Well I have lunch to make for the kids, laundry to do, and rooms to tidy up!

34 Weeks

Wow so close to the finish line!  34 weeks, and still feeling pretty good, at least when i think about how sick I was at this point with Jaris.  Every day/week that I get to breath properly is a blessing and something to be thankful for!

I remember when we lost baby Annabelle (a year ago July 21st, we found out she had no heart beat), I told someone that I would go through nine months of not being able to breathe if it meant we could have her back.  So when I got pregnant with Hayden I started praying I was not going to have to live out those words.  And while I have been stuffy a lot through out this pregnancy I am still able to breath at night thus far, and hoping that I get to keep breathing through my nose right to the end.

It is also nice knowing I have an end date in sight and that day is actually now scheduled for August 20th.  Yeah for not going over due. While I would way rather go into labor naturally than be induced I am thankful that my OB will be around for this delivery.  So why the early induction date?  My OB is going to New York with his daughter on my original due date so he is inducing me before he goes.  With the possibility of complications arising during delivery like they did with Jaris he wants to be the one to deliver.  Plus I was the first woman be preformed an ovarian drilling on (yep I was a guinea pig), and he missed the birth of the first child as a result of that surgery, and he does not want to miss this one.

There is lots to do in the next 5 and a half weeks!  However we are trying not to stress over those things.  What gets done and that is that!  Well okay that is one project that has to get done otherwise my wonderful hubby maybe in the dog house!!! :)  Other than that I do not care that much!