Birth Announcement and Christmas letter

                                                                                                                            April 2009

 

Dear Family and Friends,

 

The first line of this letter is supposed to read “We wish you a Merry Christmas!”  However, Happy Easter will have to do!!!   I started writing this back in mid-November and was going to mail it out before the hustle and bustle of a new baby and Christmas arrived, but decided instead to send the letter out with baby announcements, and life with a new baby has been, well, pretty busy! 

 

2008 was a crazy year!  We had a “foster daughter” for a few months at the beginning of the year, and that was a pretty stressful time for us!  I was working 55+ hours a week and engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a 16 year old every night when I got home (okay, it wasn’t really THAT bad!) on top of trying to keep the house clean and keep everyone fed!  I needed to study for a big counseling exam to finally get my Utah licensure, and let’s just say I didn’t wind up spending any time studying as I was too busy playing mommy/disciplinarian.  During that time, I also got LASIK (Finally!! I’d wanted it for a long time!)  We had sort of talked about starting our family on top of it all, but we wanted to make a little more headway with our mortgage before I quit work and we wanted to make sure the LASIK worked since pregnancy can reportedly change your vision.  Post-surgery, my eyes were 20/20 and the doctor reassured me they weren’t likely to change, and starting a family moved a little closer into sight (no pun intended!)…and happened WAY faster than we would’ve imagined! 

 

Anyone who says you can’t conceive while stressed wouldn’t believe that I did!  After a month of complete chaos, I suspected I was pregnant.  I don’t know why, I just did.  So I went out and got an EPT, and voila!  A little pink plus appeared!  Disbelieving, I did it again…VOILA!  ANOTHER pink plus!  I put my arms around Corban, who was making sandwiches downstairs. “You’re gonna be a daddy,” I whispered.  He kept on making sandwiches.  “Do you want one?” he asked.  I looked at him, dumbfounded!  “You are going to be a daddy!  Aren’t you excited!?”  Another set of disbelieving eyes needed to see that pink plus!  Doubting Thomas that I was, I did the test AGAIN the next morning…ANOTHER PINK PLUS!!!  There was no denying THREE pink plusses!

 

Six days later I took my big counseling exam.  I took a few days off work to study and, being newly pregnant, devoted it to reading baby books instead of study guides!  It was soooooo exciting!  I went into the test positive I was going to have to retake it and was okay with that, under the circumstances.  Wanting to make the 3.5 hour trip to Salt Lake worth my time, I went shopping for maternity clothes that weren’t even close to fitting me when the test was over! 

 

A month later, our “daughter” moved out (sigh of relief!  I didn’t want the stress on the baby!).  Six weeks later, we went to Arizona to finally break the news that we were pregnant (even bigger sigh of relief)! We hadn’t told anyone at work or church because we didn’t want the news to spread to our families before we told them (sometimes the world can be REALLY small!) and being pregnant for the first time, you are so excited you want to tell the world!!!  (Yeah for my mom, who had probably started to believe that at 31, I may never have children!)  Two months later, my test results came back and I PASSED!  Within a month or so, I was a Licensed Professional Counselor.  Having my LPC, I no longer needed hours for my license, quit my full-time job, & increased hours at my part-time jobs!

 

Wanting to fit in a vacation before the baby was born, we went to Alaska!  A grand adventure, one we will treasure forever.  The first day, a local sent us on a “short” hike to get away from the touristy parts of town, to really experience Alaska’s “great outdoors.”  This little hike wound up being about 10 miles long, which was quite the hike for a 5 month pregnant woman!  We had to take it easy the rest of the vacation since my feet swelled to the size of Alaska from that hike and didn’t go down until after I had the baby!  Corban’s favorite part of the trip was running into someone from Arizona who offered to take us salmon fishing.  We caught SO many.  It was a blast!

 

In August, Corban finished his MBA pre-requisites and started his actual MBA classes, going full-time at nights (bless his heart, he works a full day and then goes to class every night Monday through Thursday).  He will be finished in December 2009 and can’t wait to be done with school.  His company started losing business in a major way back in October, and every time he calls me during the day, I wonder if this will be the day that we, like many other Americans, will find ourselves facing unemployment.  My father Daniel, my brother Ryan, and my step-brother Kevin all worked at the mines in Morenci, Arizona and were laid off at the beginning of 2009.   These are such scary times!  We are hoping an MBA plus an engineering degree will make him more marketable in these economically difficult days!

 

In early November, I got some sort of stomach bug that was going around and wound up in the hospital for the day.  By the end of that day, I was dilated to a 4 as a result of the vomiting and dehydration, and we thought our little girl would come early as a result!  Shortly after, I learned that my Grandma had been diagnosed with cancer, and my family was devastated.  She went to the Huntsman Institute and they still have not ruled out or confirmed cancer, so it is scary not knowing what is causing her weight loss and pain! 

 

During my 9 months of pregnancy, I never could get Corban to talk about names.  “It’s too soon,” he always said.  And as time passed and my belly grew larger, “Let me think about it and I will let you know,” he would say. He never did let me know. Well, he did in his way, I suppose.  We were out walking one evening and he referred to the child in my belly as “Corelle.”  (Rewind two years.  The day we were heading to Arizona to get married, I was doing dishes and told him I thought the name on the bottom of our dishware looked beautiful.  On the drive back from the honeymoon, I had an epiphany…Corban + Noëlle=Corelle…so fitting for a child of ours!)  When we learned we were pregnant, that was one of the names I put on the table, and somewhere along the way Corban realized it would be the name of our sweet daughter.  (I had him read this letter before printing it…I hadn’t included this paragraph, and it was obviously important enough to him that he asked why I didn’t tell the story of her name.  Since everything else was my idea, how could I not include the one thing Corban asked me to!?)

 

On December 6^th, two days before Corelle was due, I let the doctor strip my membranes.  He said it may or may not cause me to go into labor, and sure enough, less than 2 hours later we were at the hospital and I was dilated to a 7!  An hour and 55 minutes later I was holding our beautiful Corelle in my arms.  I had some post-labor bleeding, and recovery was SLOW.  I had surgery (a D & C) a month after the delivery because I continued to lose blood.  It was hard to be mommy when I didn’t even have enough energy to walk around…there were days in that month that I couldn’t even get out of bed to feed myself!  I couldn’t even imagine having a toddler to take care of in addition to a new baby during those rough days and wondered how anyone has a second child!  Now that I am feeling better, I remember the wonderful parts of being pregnant and having a baby!  I LOVED the labor experience!

 

So, 2009 got off to a slow start, but things are back to normal now!  Corban and I LOVE parenting!  Corelle is the sweetest baby imaginable, and Corban and I feel very blessed!  Corban is the CUTEST dad I ever could have wanted for my kids!  How lucky Corelle and I are!

 

We hope each of you are in good health, happy spirits and enjoying the blessings in your lives!  Thanks for being a part of our lives.  You are among the countless blessings we are grateful for!

 

Happy Easter, such a glorious time when we remember the Resurrection of our Savior and Friend, the one who brings joy and blessings into our lives!

 

With love,

Corban, Noëlle and Corelle Christensen ♥