Welcome Mia Sophie!

For those of you who haven't heard (which means you're not on Facebook or related to me) we have a new member of our family. Mia Sophie Eyerly came 5 whole weeks early. Don't get me wrong- I do not like being pregnant, so the earlier the better (to an extent). But she sure did surprise us! My due date was officially August 11. I always joked that Mia would be a July baby, because if she was born two weeks early (like Cage was), she'd come at the end of the month. But I didn't imagine that she would make her appearance so early in July!

Let me back up a bit and tell this story in the proper order.

July 6th- Dave and I are out dining at one of our favorite restaurants, BJ's. We talked about how it would probably be our last date before the baby came. We also had freshly made soda, a specialty at BJ's. It wasn't until I had already drank mine that I realized I would probably be sick later that night. Soda has a tendency to make my digestive system very unhappy, so I don't drink it normally. I panicked that I was going to be up all night with gas pain, so when we got home, I walked around the house a lot, just trying to get my digestive system moving. I started not feeling so good, so we went to bed early. I figured it was just the beginning of me getting sick.

July 7th (early a.m.)- At 2 in the morning, I'm still not feeling good. I'm having Braxton Hicks contraction and my stomach is really upset with me. At some point, I realize that I'm having contractions every 10-20 minutes. I start to panic. I walk around because I heard that false contractions will go away if you do that. They didn't. I prayed to Heavenly Father to know what to do. Because waking up a sleeping husband and toddler to go to the hospital and spending 3 hours in L&D just to have them tell me it's false labor and send me home was NOT how I wanted to spend my night. I suddenly felt very calm. The Spirit told me to go back to sleep, that I shouldn't worry about going to the hospital that night.

July 7th (afternoon)- We woke up and went to church. I'm still having contractions, but they're far apart so I'm not too worried. Sitting in church, they don't go away but seem to get a little worse. When we get home, I put Cage down for a nap and decide that I'm going to walk around the neighborhood for an hour while chugging lots and lots of water (because that's suppose to help stop false labor too). An hour later, my contractions are 5-10 minutes apart. But I'm not panicking at this point. I feel very calm that I should go to the hospital. I'm so grateful that I know I can pray to receive revelation to know what to do in confusing circumstances! So I walk into our house, go upstairs to pack a hospital bag, come down the stairs and said (very calmly) to Dave, "We need to call someone to watch Cage so we can go to the hospital." To this day, I'm still very impressed with how calmly I managed all of this. So we have our friend come over and 20 minutes later, we're in L&D.

July 7th (evening)- The nurses and doctors on staff that day were a little wary. My contractions had slowed down quite a bit, but they kept me because they wanted to see if anything progressed in an hour or so. It did. I had dilated quite a centimeter or two since coming to the hospital. So they had to keep me another hour and check me again, to see if I had progressed even more. This was a game we played all night long. They would check me, I would progress, they would say "stay another hour so we can check you again". All night long, I progressed, but very very slowly. However, they couldn't let me go because I was clearly dilating and it wasn't stopping. Interesting note: during this time, I was still having very little contractions that were far apart, which is what happened with Cage too. All this time, I was sure they were going to send me home, but soon enough we found out we were staying the night at the hospital. Next thing I know, I'm in extreme pain from the contractions, I'm getting an epidural, and being told that I will be having a baby the next day.

July 8th- All night long, I'd slowly been dilating. And I mean, veeeeeerryyyyyyy slooooowlllyyyyy. Like 1 centimeter every 4 hours. It was incredibly boring just waiting for things to move along. But I wasn't in pain so I can't really complain. I called my mom first thing in the morning and told her to come ASAP. But it would take her 6 hours to get to LA from Mesa, so I was sure the baby would come before she got there. Well, my little girl was very considerate, because she waited the whole 6 hours until my mom walked into the delivery room before she came 10 minutes later. Talk about perfect timing!

She was the most perfect little thing I'd ever seen (besides Cage). I fell in love with her the moment they put her on my chest. And I cried like a baby. But they only let me keep her for a few minutes before whisking her away to the NICU where she stayed for the next 5 days. She had no serious complications; she was one of the healthiest babies in there. But she couldn't keep her temperature up and then she had jaundice. So it just took a while before her body (and the phototherapy) was able to work out those issues. But it was so hard not being able to take my baby home. I don't know how parents who have their baby months early handle it. 5 days was long enough for me. But finally we were able to take her home. We kept her home a whole 2 days before driving up to Utah for Dave's family reunion at Bear Lake. Needless to say, she was the hit of the party there, since no one had expected to meet her yet. I guess you could call us crazy for taking her all the way up there when she was so young, but this trip had other significance. Dave's grandma had just recently been diagnosed with a bad type of uterine cancer, so it was very important for Dave to see her there.

Mia Sophie is doing great so far! It's not yet her due date, but she's already a month old. That's crazy to me. But we are so glad she's part of our family. Cage doesn't seem to suffer from any jealousy issues so far. In fact, he thinks it's his job in life to hold her hand and give her a pacifier when she cries. It's just about the cutest thing I've ever seen. But, I know what you all want...you don't want to listen to me ramble on, you just want the pictures. Ok, ok, here they are. Try not to gawk too much at her adorableness. :-)

Just got admitted. I didn't want to take a hospital picture until I was sure I wouldn't be sent home

First moments, love at first sight

Mia Sophie Eyerly- In the NICU

Phototherapy. I cried the first time I saw her laying in that awful box like a lab rat.

Our new family at the Eyerly reunion

Dave, Mia, and Grandma Sue

Cage loves his little sister

Since we were in Utah, we got to stop by and see my sister, Kelly. And naturally we traded babies