Time Off

I took the week off after Nova was born to spend time with our other kids, while Tara recovered from giving birth. One of our favorite activities was going mini-golfing up at Tussey Mountain.

 We also took the kids to the People's Choice Festival, which they loved.  There were fun exhibits everywhere for them to play.

Tara parents also came into town and had a blast playing with the kids. Now that our basement has been repaired, they were able to stay with us.  Since the kids toys are all in the basement, they got to interact with them a lot.  Once they came into town I was able to go back to work.

 Here are a couple more pics of Nova.  She's been doing really well. She's our best sleeper by far. Despite how young she is, she's only waking up 2-3 times a night, feeds rather quickly, and generally goes right back to sleep.  We've never had that before. The other kids at this age would wake up 4-5 times a night, feed slowly, and were really squirmy and gasey, making it hard for them and Tara to go back to sleep. We feel very blessed.

Baby Nova

Our holiday celebration took an exciting turn this year. Tara was 5 days past her due date when her internal timer went off and things went from peaceful to show time.  We had a nice pleasant dinner, and then at 6:40pm, all the sudden, Tara started having severe contractions.  Within about 20 minutes it was clear that they were moving much faster than anything we'd seen on the prior 3 kids. We called Karalee Fairbanks to come and watch the kids. She got to our house around 7:50 and we got to the hospital by 8pm.  At this point, the contractions were so bad, Tara could hardly walk.  We got her checked in, and the doctor saw that she was dilated to 9cm.  The doctor and nurses only had enough time to get their scrubs on before Tara told them she felt like she needed to start pushing. Only a couple minutes had passed, but she was now at 10cm, and they could see the baby was coming. Tara hadn't wanted an epidural, and there wasn't time for one anyway. At 8:15pm little Nova Adara Christensen was born. Tara only had to give a couple pushes, and she came right out. She weighed 7 lbs 11 oz. and was 20.5 inches long. She had the least amount of swelling of any of the kids we've had, probably because the labor went so fast. So from first contraction to delivery, only 1 hour and 40 minutes had passed.  This was by far the fastest birth we've had.  Fortunately since we'd had other kids before, we could read the signs and tell how quick things were moving. 

In hindsight, this was probably the best birth experience we could've hoped for.  The labor was short, but not too short. We had enough time to get to the hospital, and the doctors had just barely enough time to get ready to help with the delivery. It minimized the amount of time Tara had to suffer.  With that said, when it did come time for Tara to push, she screamed pretty loud.  Fortunately, it only lasted a couple minutes, since the baby came out so fast. 

Tara and I agreed that it would be best for me to stay for a couple hours after the birth and then head home to be with our older kids. So around 11pm  headed home and got to sleep in my own bed.  Oh, it's so nice to not have to stay up all night for a birth. This was the first time we didn't have to do that.  It was great to actually have the baby during daytime hours.  We feel incredibly blessed.  The Lord was so kind. 

My dissertation was also accepted for publication in The Accounting Review, which was very exciting.