15 Weeks Pregnant and baby is a......

After the event of losing our little 5 month old nephew I came up with an idea. I asked Travis as we were driving to Primary Childrens Hospital if his sister and brother-in-law were ok with it, I would like to use Max (our nephew) middle name for our babies middle name in honor of him. Travis told me he liked that idea. But I told him we should wait a while to ask them as to be sensitive and not take away from where the attention was needed.
After the funeral I found out that Travis had already asked his sister (They are very close and very similar to each other). Somehow it came out while they were talking with each other and there it was. She said she would be honored if we used Max's middle name Harvey. So it was set. Now we just needed to find out the gender.

Before all of that happened I had found a place in American Fork that did gender ultra sounds as early as 14 weeks! With Alice the earliest I had heard you could tell gender was 16! I was so excited. But I hit 14 weeks the week of our nephews passing and funeral so we decided to wait till I was about 15 1/2 weeks. Which is what I am now.
Yesterday we went to Fetal Fotos and got an ultrasound. While there Alice again was talking and laughing at the tv monitor at her little sibling. We got to see the cute little profile and as soon as that was on the screen Alice yelled "Hi!" it was so cute!
As I had come to suspect and Travis knew from the very beginning we are having another little GIRL!! We are so excited. Im really glad that Alice with have a little sister to grow up with.
We will be naming our 2nd daughter Monroe (Roe) Harvey Taylor.
I no longer feel sick just tired all the time, but I will take that over sickness anytime. I am so very excited to be having another baby. I think back to my time with Alice as a newborn and all the snuggles and loves that come with new babies and it makes me so so excited. August 19th can't come soon enough, but I know that with spring and summer just around the corner, time will go by much faster than the last few months of winter have.
Until my next post!
Bye! Thanks for reading!

Until we meet again

Tragedy hit Travis' family 2 weeks ago.
Sunday morning Travis and I woke to lots of texts and phone calls from almost all of the members in his family. Travis' sister Nikki had text saying that they were at Primary Childrens Hospital with their 5 month old son. He was found face down in his crib late Saturday night with labored breathing.  They did everything they possibly could to help little Maximus get better but the damage had already been done. He was officially declared brain dead Monday morning.
We all went to Primary Childrens to say our goodbyes and be with Nikki and Brett. It was one of the hardest things i have ever had to do and it wasn't even my child. The pain and sorrow in that room was overwhelming but yet at the same time there was a feeling of comfort. Thanks to the knowledge we have of the Plan of Salvation, Atonement, and Eternal families. We knew that this wasn't the last time we would be seeing little Max.
Through the whole week leading up to Max's funeral we spent a lot of time with Travis' sister and her family. Understandably they didn't want to be at home alone so there was constantly family, friends and neighbors there keeping company. I was in awe of how amazing and strong and spiritual Nikki and Brett have been through this whole ordeal. I hope to be more like them because they are truly special souls.
The funeral service was beautiful, filled with love and special memories of little Maximus Harvey Michaelis.
Max is a hero. He donated his heart, liver, and kidneys and saved 3 lives. He was 3 other families miracle. So even though he was only 5 months old he had such a big impact on so many peoples lives.
I know this is a pain that will not soon go away for all involved and especially for Nikki and Brett and Max's 4 big brothers and 2 older sisters. I love this family and hope that i can help in even the smallest way. Please pray for my Sister-in-law,  Brother-in-law and their family as they have a long road ahead of them learning to live this new life without their littlest.

2016 New Year, New Adventures!

Im sorry to all those that read this for all the time that passes between posts I really do want to be better, its just not something I have accomplished just yet. oops!

So my last post on here was of Alice's first birthday. What an amazing day it was. Now she is turning 18 months in March! Wow time sure does fly.

So since I posted about her birthday in October I will kind of just go through the months and tell you all the highlights!
October nothing special really happened. I got a wicked bad 72 hr stomach flu right before my Halloween party that I was throwing. It was miserable! I don't remember the last time I had thrown up that much it was so painful! But I pulled through and made the halloween party happen! It wasn't as glorious as I had imagined it would be, but thats because I had NO energy to get much of anything done, BUT non the less it was a good time and we had a lot of people show up to party with us! I call that a success!

November, Travis turned 28! ........ We celebrated with lots of food and cake and yummy treats. As I am trying to think... I'm pretty sure thats all that happened in November worth writing about... haha oh we did have a wonderful Thanksgiving with Travis family in Payson and then again the next day with my family in Santaquin. It was awesome! My older sister and her family were able to come down and stay for a while from Wyoming and after Thanksgiving their daughter Lily got baptized! It was a good time and we were happy they decided to do it down here in Utah!

December! The month of Christmas!! This is the month that the good stuff happened.
Travis and I had talked back in August about starting to have another baby, we had bought an ovulation kit and had tried for 2 months before I realized that with all 3 of my pregnancies the months I would conceive were December - February. So we decided to wait and try in December. So the beginning of December had started and I told Travis, " All right as soon as I start its time to start counting and watching!" So we waited and waited and enjoyed doing all kinds of Christmasy activities together as a family and some with my family. Finally it was the week before my birthday and Christmas and I still hadn't started... and yet I had had 5 different pregnancy dreams all within 2 weeks of each other. I thought at first that it was just because I was seeing all of these pregnancy announcements on Facebook and on movies or TV shows we had been watching... but as time went on I started to get that maternal feeling that I got when I was sure I was pregnant with Alice but hadn't taken a test to be positive yet. So I tell Travis that I was pretty positive I was pregnant but to be sure obviously I wanted to pee on a stick.

Confession, I still dread peeing on a pregnancy stick. That negative or Not pregnant result that I have gotten way more than id like is haunting to me.

 Anyways so I went and bought a pregnancy test and took it the next morning, I had a very calm feeling about me which isn't normal when I take pregnancy tests. I washed my hands and pulled the test off the back of the toilet and sure enough I WAS PREGNANT!!! I came out of the bathroom grinning ear to ear with tears in my eyes and showed it to Travis as I told him that I should be a betting woman because I totally called it again!!
We were SO FREAKING EXCITED!! Without any effort, any planning, counting, or ovulation tests we had yet again by another miracle conceived a baby!!!
We told only immediate family right then and there over text that we were pregnant! We had decided to wait and tell the rest of the world until I had passed 10 weeks and we had an ultrasound picture to share.
It was the very best birthday/Christmas gift I could have ever asked for!
Christmas came and went and we had an amazing time as a little family and then with my family later that evening.
The day after Christmas is when it all hit me like a ton of bricks!
I had known I was pregnant now for 2 weeks meaning I was roughly 6 weeks along and morning sickness hit me HARD!
With Alice the sickness hit me about 4pm everyday and only lasted a few hours for a month at the most I'm pretty sure.
With this baby I have been sick for 2 months straight! No throwing up but constant awful nausea! And I don't mean the kind where, Oh I just don't feel very good. I mean the kind where you lay around ALL day long wishing you could die. Not wanting to put anything in your mouth to eat or drink and because of that becoming even more sick, which I didn't think was even possible! Poor Alice would just look at me and whine wondering what was wrong with me why I wouldn't play with her and why i'd only get off the couch to feed her and change her butt. It was awful and I am extremely grateful for a wonderful loving husband who helped me SO MUCH, and also my awesome mother and 2 younger sisters! They were also lifesavers!!
Now as I am in the middle of my 13th week and getting close to entering the 2nd trimester I am feeling SO much better! I have somewhat of an appetite, I don't constantly feel sick and my energy is coming back a little which is so nice especially because I have a toddler to raise still!
I think that has been the hardest part of this pregnancy. Is not being able to just sleep and do what I want to do because I'm not feeling well because I have a sweet little girl that needs me to take care of her, to play with her, and simply be there for her. I wouldn't have it any other way, but out of all my time being a mommy this has been the hardest time.

Going back a little bit. At my 10 week ultrasound Travis and Alice came with me. (Travis likes to try and make every baby dr. appointment that he possibly can. He is amazing like that!) While we were doing the ultrasound and looking at baby nugget, he/she started moving lots, already very active. And Alice just lit up and started laughing, smiling and talking to the ultrasound monitor like she knew exactly who was in there!! I got teary eyed and my heart felt so full! I believe that she does know exactly who is waiting and growing in my tummy, and that makes me so happy!

The joy I fell to be able to have a second child and so "easily" it came for us is truly a miracle for us. Im so glad that we have the opportunity to provide Alice with a sibling!
Our official due date is a repeat C-section scheduled for August 19th!!!

Im pretty sure thats all of the updating I have for you right now, at least it needs to be because little miss just woke up from her nap so its time to put the laptop away and spend time with my girl!
Thank you to all those who still read my blog from time to time. I know its not easy to follow me because I'm not very good at keeping up with it. but Thank You. :)

 our announcement

 sweet baby #2

 10 weeks

my sweet little Alice!

Alice is 1!!!

Last Friday our little miracle baby turned 1! Say WHAT?! Already?!
Its crazy to me how fast and slow time can move all together. For example its really hard for me to think back on my life when we didn't have Alice because I feel like she has been apart of it the whole time. And yet i can't believe it has already been a year because it feels like just a few short months ago my water broke and I was in the hospital waiting to meet her. Time is a funny thing.

I spend all day thinking back and remembering everything i could about September 25, 2014 and looking back at pictures. And then enjoying my little ball of energy and seeing how much she has grown in that year.

It was so special for her and for me, because my little sister was getting married the next day so all 8 of us siblings were together again for the first time in 3 1/2 years! Alice got to spend her birthday with lots of cousins and aunts and uncles. Not that she isn't every day but she was very loved oh her day! :)

We had pizza and cake at the Scera park with family and watched Alice have her first taste of cake and she loved it (and all the attention too).
We sang the traditional de Hoyos birthday song and I lost it half way through the first verse. I don't know what happened or what came over me but i couldn't keep from crying. Here we were singing happy birthday to mine and Travis' daughter. Our daughter!!! We have a child..... and a beautiful, funny, smart, and goofy/spunky one at that!! I have these moments every so often where I just stop and stare or think and sometimes yes i cry because i still just can't believe it, that i have a child. I am so beyond blessed and grateful for this amazing opportunity to be a mother. I love it so much and i wouldn't change it for anything! Travis and Alice are my whole world and I love them with everything in me.
The day was great and so much fun.

The next day was go go go!!
My sister was married at 10am in the Payson LDS Temple. It was beautiful. After that we had some family pictures taken and then we rushed home to get Alice down for a nap. That girl loves her sleep and when she is denied it she gets a little unhappy ;) 1pm we had a family luncheon and then went home to get ready for the wedding reception that was to happen at 6pm.
More family pictures were taken, food, dancing, cake eating, bouquet tossing/garter tossing, wedding videos to watch. The night was beautiful. I am so happy for my little sis and her now husband to start the best chapter of their lives, TOGETHER! Its the greatest experience in the world, I would say.

Now I have been procrastinating updating my blog because my memory was full with all the pictures I have on here and so I haven't been able to add anymore on here until I bought a hard drive to put all those pictures on. Well I got the hard drive and have just been lazy at transferring all the pictures and videos over to it, so i still haven't been able to add my most resent photos.

Thats why i never posted about our summer trips to Bear Lake and Yellowstone. Because without the pictures its sort of boring. haha So I do at least have a video for you to watch today. Its a video i created of Alice's life through this past year. I love it and it makes me cry every time i watch it. So here it is for your viewing pleasures. 

If the video doesn't work on here or didn't load right here is the link to watch it on Youtube. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BmZ6KSUiG8

Alice at 9 Months

It is so unreal to me at how fast time flies by once your baby gets here! I feel like it was just last month that I was in the hospital waiting for her to come into our lives. And now... she is almost 9 1/2 months old! Her first birthday will be upon us in no time!!!! I'm not ready for that yet!!!

Alice is an angel baby as I probably say all the time. But its the truth. She is such a GOOD baby! Everyone who meets her loves her and always tells her how beautiful she is... even if they don't know who we are, and that makes us feel so special! 

Our little girl LOVES people, but especially kids and babies. She also loves to laugh.... even if its a fake, forced laugh (which is so funny). 

 Sometimes I like to look back at old photos or think back into our past, at how hard it was and how sad we were. We just wanted so badly to bring a child into our family. Now our dreams have come true, I'm not a sad story anymore and I love that.

Yes we had a very hard very dark 4 year struggle. We lost 2 babies two separate times, we did IUI's and 2 IVF's. All of which didn't give us our dream of becoming parents. But now that chapter of our lives is over and I love being able to post Alice updates and how she is doing and how she is growing and how her cute little quirky personality is forming and shining through for everyone to see!

Now I'm not going to lie and pretend that life is all rainbows and fairy dust, because that isn't real life. Yes there are hard days, everyone has them, the happiest people on the planet has hard days. But i never like to write or share those hard days with people (other than maybe my husband or my mom and sisters) because in a way i feel that it would be ungrateful of me to do that. Plus i don't like to focus on the negative things in life, I try to keep negativity out of our lives and in our homes because it is a poison.

Life is so wonderful and i love getting to see people share on social media that they are expecting or pictures of their new babies! It makes my heart so happy. Before like i said i was in a dark place and was pretty cynical so anytime someone posted those kinds of happy news i always kind of hated them for being so happy and getting what i wanted so badly(which is totally stupid of me i know that now, but it was uncontrollable at that time. I'm sorry to everyone) 

As Alice is turning 10 months at the end of this July we have started thinking about trying for another baby. Alice is such a good and easy baby adding another shouldn't rock our boat :) 

Now just because we are now deciding to try doesn't mean we weren't "trying" before. We haven't been using any preventatives but we also haven't been counting and watching and all that stuff. 

Also on another note, we aren't sure if, after my C-section and the Dr. cleaning up as much scar tissue as he could without making it worse, if my body will even be able to conceive on its own again. Alice was indeed a miracle, our Dr. confirmed it for us. So it might not happen right away or even soon. We won't know. But we can try and hope for the best.

So in case you didn't know or forgot the reason for my infertility, it  is from scar tissue covering my ovaries, not allowing any eggs to be released from them. This was caused my a very bad infection i had from my appendix "burping" out some poison and growing within the length of a month because my Dr. couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. And by the time i went into the hospital and they finally figured out what was wrong the damage had been done. Lots and lots of scar tissue and losing a fallopian tube later.

So on that note I hope the next 4 years won't be of us trying for baby #2 but if it is at least we have our little Alice to love and care for! I am so blessed to be able to have a child i can't even express my love of being a mom.

I honestly sit down at least once a day and think to myself," Holy crap.... I'm a mom.... I have a baby.... no, like i really have a baby, she is mine.... she grew inside of me and i gave birth to her... it was real it wasn't a dream." 

Its amazing that's the only way I can even try to describe it.

anyways here are some Alice 9 month stats for you :)

Alice Jade Taylor, 9 months:

Weight: 18lbs 10.5oz  56%

Length: 29.75inches   98%

Head: 45.5cm            87%

 

The did a test to check her blood sugar and she was perfect! Nothing wrong with our little girl. 

and the best part of this check up was that she didn't have to get any shots!!! It was such good news!

She is allowed to eat anything except, honey, cows milk, and nuts. But because she still doesn't have any teeth i just feed her soft foods in very small bite sizes because she likes to choke a lot on foods. Which is the hardest part on feeding babies solid, "adult" foods. I have mini heart attacks when she chokes. 

 

Alice is also getting really close to crawling.... or so we keep saying. She gets up on her hands and knees and rocks front to back and digs her toes in but always just face plants into the carpet. She has become and expert on pivoting on her belly, rolling like a steamroller, and scooting backwards. Her recent FAVORITE thing is to be in her walker she cruises in that thing and before you can run away from her she is hitting your heals! Its the best. I'm sure you are sick of hearing me love and gloat about my baby so I'll get to the pictures now :) 

 little miss thang

 touching her toes

 playing at Lowes Xtreme air sports

 Texas Roadhouse with daddy, first time in a booster seat

 we ran to the Scera park to see the Candy Bomber, it was SO HOT!

 Happy 4th of July

 She isn't a fan of being squeezed tight or contained at all for that matter, but she did pretty good for this picture!

Celebrating the start of shark week, Alice has a mermaid shirt on since I didn't have a shark one for her.

Well that's about all for now. We have a trip to Yellowstone coming up soon and you can be sure i will post about it after we are back! I'm so excited for it, as a family we used to go all the time when i was little but Travis has never been so this will be his and Alice's first trip to Yellowstone. :)