The Name Game

So as it turns out, naming a child is much harder than I ever anticipated. This would be because it's not just up to me... there is another person I never factored in... my husband. Unfortunately, we don't exactly have what you call the same "taste" in names. In fact, we really aren't even in the same ball park when it comes to names. As Ryan put it, I like "trendier" more unique (not weird) names and he likes "safe" more traditional names. For example, I liked Blair and Blake whereas Ryan liked Claire and names such as Kate and Emily. Let me explain... every girl I have ever known who was named Brittney or Ashley hated it because there were a million other Brittneys and Ashleys. I didn't want my baby growing up thinking the same thing. With all of that being said I will say the things that Ryan and I did agree on when it came to what we wanted in a name. We wanted something classy and sophisticated and we wanted something age appropriate no matter what age she was- aka we didn't want to give her an old lady name, and that it needed to be no more than 2 syllables-because Gottfredson is such a mouth full. It was also important to Ryan that the meaning of the name was something good (turns out Blair and Blake both have super lame meanings). So how did we end up with Hailey you ask? Well let me tell you. Early on in my pregnancy with her Ryan threw that name out and I quickly turned it down. I thought it was too common. So we let it go. Instead we kept making lists of names that were our favorites and comparing. I will also say that Ryan felt like he couldn't name our baby without meeting her first. He wanted to go to the hospital with a few names, see her, and then decide what name would fit her best. I'm actually really glad we did this because the name we thought we were going to name her just didn't fit once we actually saw her. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So months passed and we still couldn't agree on anything. I was still stuck on Blake and Ryan was stuck on Claire. Then in January Ryan went out to see his parents. He told his dad about the name Claire and THANKFULLY his dad shot it down. Turns out he didn't like a guy with that name at all. And I didn't like it because I wasn't on the friendliest of terms with a girl named Claire in high school... So thanks Grandpa Gottfredson for putting that name in the grave! But unfortunately for me he also shot down Blair and Blake... I kinda saw that one coming though. So in all reality we weren't any closer to getting a name. I will say that another criteria for the name was that it had to flow with the rest of her name. Ryan didn't care about a middle name, and in fact was ok not having a middle name. I think that's kinda odd and I wanted to give her something in remembrance of my mom so I picked to have her middle name Eileen. That is my mom's middle name as well as mine. Around January, Februaryish we started making some progress. I can't remember how or who came up with the name Avery but one of us did and we BOTH actually liked it. It was not something we were sure about though still but I was pretty set on it for awhile. Then in February, while Ryan was in Utah for his mom's funeral, I think one of his siblings threw out the name Emory. Again, surprisingly enough, we both liked it. We now had 2 names that we could both agree on. But let me back track... one day while sitting in church I was super stressing over the fact that we didn't have a name picked out for our baby. With so many people, family mostly... ok my side of the family mostly, harping us constantly about a name, I was really feeling the pressure and feeling like we would never come up with anything. A few weeks earlier Ryan sent me a blog post from a friend of his telling all about how he and his wife picked the name of their baby girl. Basically they say the name just popped into both of their heads and they think the baby decided what her name should be. I needed this to happen to me! I needed my baby or Heavenly Father to put her name in my head because we weren't making progress on it on our own. So I said a little prayer and basically begged Heavenly Father to tell me what her name should be. Then I did a totally appropriate Sunday sacrament meeting activity and got my phone out. Yep, I did. I googled top 100 baby names and started reading through them. I read through all of them and nothing stuck UNTIL... I got to the name Hailey. Totally cliche to say this but it is true. I got this feeling that I honestly don't even know how to put into words. I had this really warm almost enlightening feeling once I read that name. I thought this really odd since I had thrown that name out already and so early on in this process. After my enlightenment, I handed my phone over to Ryan and told him to pick out his favorite name on the list. When he was done reading the names he told me that he had actually picked out 4. The first one was Claire, but that name was already thrown out so he said his next first favorite would be Hailey. That was it. At that point, deep down, I had a feeling that we needed to search no further and that Heavenly Father had answered my prayer. There was only one hang up. I didn't want the name Hailey. Like I said before I thought it was too common. I thought it was cute, just not different enough. But we kept it around and added it to the list. About a week before baby got here Ryan gave his class their midterm. The very last question on the test was "what should we name our baby?" with a list of 5 names: Hailey, Emory, Avery, Hadley, and Blake (oh, we threw around the name Hadley too). Ryan got the results back and they are as follows: Hailey was the favorite, Emory and Avery were tied, Blake and then Hadley. I was pretty shocked actually that Hailey was the favorite. Fast forward to delivery day. When she was born neither one of us said it at first but we both had the thought that she just wasn't an Emory. And then another weird thing happened to me. I remember just minutes after she was born looking over at her getting weighed and cleaned off and thinking to myself "that's my daughter, Hailey." This SHOCKED me! I had been trying to resist the name Hailey and we definitely hadn't named her yet. So why the heck did I think that?! I can only think of one answer and that is that she knew what her name was supposed to be. Throughout the next 2 days at the hospital I would randomly have thoughts that referred to her as Hailey and each time I would have to remind myself that we hadn't picked a name for her yet. My brother and dad also threw in their opinions and voted for Hailey. If I remember correctly some of Ryan's family liked that name too. But finally on Thursday, the day before we were leaving the hospital I asked Ryan what he thought because it needed to get done. Kinda casually discussed it and I finally told him all of the weird times the name Hailey kept popping into my brain. And we just basically said ok, Hailey it is. I wasn't about to argue with divine inspiration! I will say that I fought it long and hard and tried to resist the name but now I can't imagine a different name for her. It fits her perfectly and I think it is very cute. And it fits all of our criteria! I'm glad we... or she... or Heavenly Father, or whoever it was, picked that name for her. I love you Hailey Eileen Gottfredson! Now if you don't mind I'm going to start making a list of boy names and girl names so we have a head start next time...

A Princess is Born!

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away in the Midwest, in the wee hours of the morning, a princess was born. Like all other fairy tales, this one starts off with a king and queen in their castle... ok I may be stretching the truth a bit on the king and queen part... and the castle part, but just go with it :) If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm writing about Baby G, now known as baby Hailey, being born. It's a well overdue story but better now then never. Turns out it is really hard to find time to do anything when you have a new born! For real though, it really all did start at home in the wee hours of the morning. I woke up at about 3:30/4 in the morning Tuesday, March 13th, exactly 39 weeks pregnant with contractions. They weren't super strong or regular or anything like that, but they were stronger than my Braxton Hicks that I had been having and strong enough to wake me up and be EXTREMELY annoying. After laying in bed for what seemed like forever I finally got up and went to the bathroom thinking this would help them go away. WRONG! They didn't go away so I continued to lay in bed wishing for sleep. I must have finally fallen asleep because around 8 my alarm went off telling me to get up and get ready for work. I was STILL having contractions and thought that maybe a shower would help me feel better. It didn't really help if I'm being honest. I will say that I didn't really think I was in labor because they really weren't that bad but I did find it pretty weird that they wouldn't go away. Anyway, after my shower I climbed back into bed with my semi-awake, just getting up husband. Semi-joking I said to him "Um, be prepared to have a baby today" which produced a look of "WHAT?" followed by voiced "Why do you say that?" I told him everything that was going on and then asked him what I should do. Remember, I was scheduled to work that day, in like an hour from then. We both decided that I should ask my neighbor what to do. This sounds really funny and random, but she just so happens to be a labor and delivery nurse at our hospital. She seemed like a good resource. So I walked over there and had a little chat with her. She basically told me that there was no way of telling if I was in labor or not unless I got "checked" and that I should probably call my doctor and not call into work. And that is exactly what I did. I made the call to my doctor and they told me to call back later if I wanted to come into the office to get checked out. They weren't too interested because I wasn't having regular contractions and my water hadn't broken. Then off to work I went. I had called my manager to let her know what was going on before I got to work. When I got there she was all over me! Asking me how I felt, what were my contractions like.. blah, blah, blah... it was actually really annoying but I should have been used to it. Fast forward to noon that afternoon. My manager took me out to lunch because she was so excited for me and on our way over there I felt this little "gush." I have never had a kid before so I didn't want to jump to conclusions and say my water broke. It wasn't like what happens in the movies so I just kinda let it go. We got to the restaurant, Casa Brava (a Mexican restaurant that I love) and chowed down. I wanted spicy food because I hear that induces labor...? but little did I know I was already in labor. After lunch we walked back to work and again I felt this little gush. At this point I was thinking ew gross and seriously what is going on? So I ran to the bathroom and called my neighbor to figure it all out. She thought there was a good chance my water could have broken and told me to make an appointment with my doctor, which I did. I went back to work and at about 1:30 I was waiting on one of our regular customers who just so happens to be hilarious. He was asking me when I was going to have my baby and if Ryan was going to catch her. Then he started acting like a quarterback yelling down, set, hike (as if he were catching a baby) and I started laughing. Helpful tip to future moms out there: If you think you are in labor and think your water may have broken, DO NOT LAUGH! Lets just say at that moment Niagra Falls let lose. Yes, while waiting on a customer. No longer was I in doubt that my water had broken and that I was in labor or not. Thankfully he was now leaving and I blew off the next customer to run to the bathroom. I then told my manager what had happened and she freaked out. She started telling EVERYONE, customers, coworkers, anyone who came near her now knew that my water had broken and that I was in labor. Again, SUPER annoying but it is what it is. For the next half and hour I waited on customers. That's right, I deserve employee of the flipping year for that one. My managers didn't really know what to do and we were short staffed and had a long line of customers so I stuck it out and waited on them. Around 2 I finally got to leave and drove home. When I got home I found Ryan finishing up some nursery projects. I was home early so he asked me what I was doing home already... he pretty much already knew though. So I told him all the fun I had had that day and made the call to my doctor to let them know that it was a done deal. My water broke for sure. They told me to just get to the hospital, so naturally, we took our time :) Ryan finished his project, I went around packing my bag and stuff for the baby, Ryan showered, I showered, Ryan kinda packed a bag, I fixed my make-up and THEN we were on our way to the hospital (the hospital is like 5 mins away from our house). We got there around 4 p.m. and checked in. I got in my really attractive hospital gown that they make you wear and we were good to go. Actually, we had no idea what to do. Luckily nurses are coming in and out, hooking you up to random monitors, checking blood pressure, asking you a million questions and just talking to you, that you stay fairly occupied. Oh, and they really do bring you ice chips haha. At about 5:30 ish my doctor came to the hospital to check if my water had in fact really broken and to give me a game plan. At that point he told me I was only at a centimeter dilated which did not make me happy. I thought for sure I would have been farther along. He predicted that I would need to go on pitocin to get me moving along but he would let me go until 8:30 that night to see if I would progress. Long story short, I didn't. Oh, and my next door neighbor was my nurse! She got called into work that night and so I was her patient. Actually not as awkward as I thought it would be. To be honest, at that point I didn't even care anymore. So at 8:30 she started me on the pitocin. No joke, that stuff works FAST! Almost immediately my contractions were getting stronger and closer together. Oh, so it turns out that I am not normal. Big shocker, I know. But seriously, I don't have contractions like a normal laboring woman does. Mine never got regular and what's just extra special for me is I get "double" contractions. Usually contractions are shaped like a bell curve. They have a peak at the top and come back down... not mine... Mine start, peak, barely start to come down, go back up and peak again, and then come back down. Super not fun. I do not recommend those to anyone. My "birth plan" going into the hospital was to do whatever the nurses and doctors recommended and to get an epidural. My doctor told me whenever I wanted my epidural I could have it. Which meant that I could have had it at 5:30 that afternoon. But no, I wanted to get to 4 or 5 centimeters first because I hear getting one too early can slow down labor. Turns out it wouldn't have mattered because I was on pitocin already! So I suffered until about 10 ish before I asked for one. At about 10:30 Dr. Brown, the anesthesiologist, came in to give me the goods. Wonderful woman she was :) At that point I was 3-4 centimeters dilated and really ready to not feel anything anymore. Dr. Brown was so nice and did a great job! I'll be honest. Leading up to the delivery day it was not uncommon for my prayers at night to include asking Heavenly Father to bless the anesthesiologist that she would do a good job on me. Heavenly Father answers prayers. When I was fully numb and feeling good Dr. Brown looked down and realized she still had some medicine left so she looked at me and said "no point in good medicine going to waste" and shot me up with the rest of it. Again, what a wonderful woman :) Later that night, at about midnight, my nurse came in and checked me again. I was 5-6 centimeters and she predicted Hailey being born at about 4 in the morning. She told us to go ahead and get some sleep so that is exactly what we did. Next thing I know though I'm being woken up. It was about 1:45 in the morning and Ashley, my nurse, was waking me up to tell me she was going to check me because the monitor indicated that the baby's heart rate had dropped. I was a little loopy from being asleep and just said ok. Next thing I know Ashley is asking me if I'm ready to have a baby because I'm fully dilated. I think my response was "oh, really?" haha so I woke Ryan up while she went and called the doctor. When she came back she had me start pushing. Apparently Hailey was "right there" because the Ashley said she could already see her. The next contraction came and I pushed again. This time Ashley started commenting on how much hair she had. I apparently thought this was really funny because in the middle of pushing I just started laughing. I told you I wasn't normal. Ashley told me that I was the first patient she had ever had that laughed through pushing. I think that I deserve a medal :) On the third contraction, Ashley told me to push again and then quickly told me to stop! She then ran out of the room asking the other nurses if my doctor, Dr. Crooke, was at the hospital yet. They said he should be there any minute. I remember a nurse telling us that if a nurse has to deliver a baby they call it a "code pink." So naturally, I started yelling "Code Pink! Code Pink!" just to be funny. I heard my nurse start laughing and say "my patient is yelling for a code pink..." It just so happens that Dr. Crooke has a reputation for literally walking in and catching the baby. He just always seems to show up at the last possible second and deliver the baby and that is what happened. Dr. Crooke got there right as I was having another contraction and he told me not to push- he was still putting his hospital gear on. He sat down and on the next contraction he told me to push and Hailey was out. At 2:13 a.m. Hailey Eileen Gottfredson was born at 6lb. 3oz. and was 20 inches long. We FINALLY decided on a name for her the next day, Thursday afternoon, after I couldn't deny it any longer that her name was supposed to be Hailey. Maybe I should have told that story as well, but I'll save it for the next blog post. This one is already nice and long... Hailey barely had a cone head because she came out so fast and it was gone within no more than a couple of hours. She definitely looked like me, but she is looking more like her daddy now that she is getting older. Sorry Hailey, I think you are stuck with mommy's chubby cheeks though. Turns out that Hailey did in fact have a lot of hair which Ryan said he told me so because I had so much heartburn while being pregnant with her. It was super dark when she was born but it already is getting lighter in color. It's also nice and poofy like her daddy's haha. We think she is going to end up with blue eyes, but honestly it is too early to tell. She has mommy's long, skinny fingers and unfortunately her long skinny "bird" toes as well. She already has her daddy madly in love with her and slightly wrapped around her finger :) He changed not only the first diaper but almost every single diaper while we were in the hospital and he still changes quite a bit of them now (this all coming from the same guy who said he would never change a diaper). She is an absolute angel and we love her very much. She really is worth all the late night feedings/diaper changes and the pooping and peeing on me. Yes, she has done both of those on me quite a few times... But I still love her! She is perfect and has totally melted my heart. I love you Hailey girl! I can't wait to watch you grow up... but don't grow up too fast!Just a couple hours after Hailey was born

About a week and a half old

I love you Hailey!