I had written the previous blog post about 2 1/2 months ago anxiously awaiting when I became 3 months to be able to tell everyone the exciting news!, and I was just too sad to delete all the happy baby talk. So I thought I would write a separate blog. Chad and I found out yesterday that we lost the baby. I know many people may like to keep that kind of thing private but I truly am just so heartbroken it feels only right to get it written down, and maybe eventually I will end up deleting this entry. There are times throughout yesterday and throughout today where I feel peace that everything will be ok and that this sort of thing happens all the time, but then I have sudden reminders of how sad it is. I bought Madi a "New baby" book that I came across yesterday and couldnt help myself but break down, and all the "Big sister" shirts we bought her now will no longer be worn, and every time I thought about having a sweet baby whos heart was no longer beating inside of me, just killed me. The worst part (sorry if this is too much info) is the baby had to make an exit, and this is probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Yes, I have had other hard painful things to go through but this out did them all, passing my baby and just knowing that it had to just be thrown away is just heart wrenching. Today I have been ok, until I caught a glimpse of the forgotten ultrasound I had hanging on my fridge and then the tears started flowing, and all poor Madi kept saying was "Mama sad" which made me more sad, because I do not want her to see me cry. I am grateful I have my Madison and thats what always keeps me smiling, is at least I have her and a loving supportive husband who can be there for me. On a much happier note, we will get to start trying again in a few months. I know many people have had to go through this and I am sorry to each one of you who has. As much as I hate hearing people say it to me, "Everything happens for a reason" I know it does and I know that God has a plan for everything and I know everything will work out for us in the future:) EASTER I thought I would share about Easter too, because it truly was such a wonderful Easter even though that was the morning we woke up with fear for the baby. We had so much fun hanging with all our family, my side and Chads side of the family. And Church had such a wonderful service. Madison had much more fun this year than last Easter, last year all we have are pictures of the poor baby girl crying her eyes out, this year she was a ball of joy and had SO MUCH FUN finding all the Easter eggs my grandma hid for her and my 2 little brothers. This girl is quit the sneaky stinker too, she found like 4 peeps somewhere lying around and every time I looked at her she was gobbling down the last bite of a peep! At least someone likes those things! I truly am grateful for Easter time and how it brings family together, and I truly know that "Because Jesus walked such a lonely path completely and utterly alone, we do not have to". -Elder Holland

Life since 2014

It has been 9 months since I last blogged, my goodness! I have so many things to fill in. Well to begin from the last time I wrote, I was waiting for my thyroid to be taken care of, and guess what..IT IS NOW! We found out in February that my body is where it needs to be and that if things go according to plan we will be able to start trying for our second baby:) But just to fill everything in on Madi since shes the most coolest person to ever hear about.. Madi will be 2, YES 2 in May..wait what? I swear I just planned her first birthday last month. I really do get sad with how fast she is growing, but of course I am so excited about all the developments she makes as well! Right now Madi is VERY in to EVERYTHING Princess. It started with the movie Frozen, and to all my friends, yes we feel your pain, we too are listening to Let it go (not so much anymore) and every other song thats frozen on youtube on repeat all day long. One would think it would be easy and fun to sit there and watch these on repeat but I will tell you I do not enjoy it all the time anymore lol. Because now when she wants to watch one, 30 seconds in she says "other one" and takes my hand and puts it on the computer... and then its a guessing game, who knows which one is "the other one?". Still though its precious, she knows the words to the songs and will lip sing with the words to the songs. Her new obsession though is Belle "Tale as old as time" and the Little Mermaid "Part of your world" and Tangled, Tangled is now the new "frozen", we watch it all the time the whole movie which I have to say is kind of nice being able to snuggle up with a usually none snuggler and sing the songs. So there is no doubt what theme birthday party this girl will be having;) Madison's vocabulary has seriously grown so much, she sounds like a 3 year old sometimes when she talks, she is our little parrot who copies every word we say and its the cutest, except for when something may accidentally come out we dont want her to say haha. Just recently I was rocking her before bed time and we were singing a church song "I am a child of God" and she sang the whole song minus a few words along with me! She seriously never fails to impress me. She is also very tall, which I know I always say, but seriously its so true. We will be at the park and she towers over all these boys and when I get to talking to the other moms about our kids ages, she is at least half a year younger than them and like 3 inches taller. No complaints though she can just beat those boys booties when they try smoochin' her later. Our new favorite thing to do with her since she is finally old enough, is SLED! She loves it! (we stole my moms sled so dont tell her;p) but madi loves going FAST or as she says "FAT" and she loves running "FAT" too. She will even go sledding down the hill by herself, with someone being at the bottom to catch her of course:) She also LOVESS the park and she will now even climb up the stuff by herself and go down the slide, ugh it just amazes me, I know its something so simple but she has grown so much with her independence just because it was something she wouldnt do by herself before and I am a proud mama!She also LOVES going to Monley Bizness and Jumpstreet which are some fun kid jungle gyms around where we live, and they are inexpensive and a good way to get some energy out for a couple of hours! We all got hit super hard with the flu about a month ago, and I am the culprit:/ I totally jinxed us because I was so proud that we managed to skip out on the cooties, but we all got it eventually. And thank goodness we are all over it now, Madi held on to that cough for like 3 weeks! We are also so excited to be looking for a new home to move our family to. We are staying in Colorado and looking near by to where we live now and I can not wait for this next step in our life! I am most excited to have a garage and a backyard, and a basement! OK SO HERE IS SOME EXCITEMENT......ARE YOU READY??? Madison is also very excited to announce that she gets to be a BIG SISTER come early November!! Yep thats right, everything DID go according to plan and we get to welcome this next baby with open arms into our family! YAY! We have our first appointment(well technically second) to get an 8 week ultrasound done, and we get to see the babys heart beat since its too small to hear yet. I am so excited to do this all over again (not gunna like a little nervous though) I will definitely be posting pictures soon!:) HOW MY LIFE IS CHANGING This pregnancy I can already tell is SO much different than when I had Madison in my belly. With Madi I was SO sick right off the bat and cant even keep track on my fingers and toes how many times I got sick. I did however have my first puke episode at 3am on April fools day (very funny baby). But this time around I am so tired, and not just because I have a toddler to chase around, I just feel drained all day and want to sleep all day, so I am taking advantage of nap times while I can. I feel nauseated throughout the day, but it goes away then comes back, I am hoping that by the second trimester I will be full of energy again. Well thats it for now! I will be posting more soon:)

2013 Update

WOOO well where to begin... SO since the last time I wrote so many things have happened that I feel I need to update everyone on! Lets go in order. In April I made a big decision to take a radioactive pill that was intended to stop my thyroid from producing any more thyroid hormones so that it would not function anymore. I did this because I developed hyperthyroid in 2011 which caused me to loose a bunch of weight and caused heart palpatations. So I started taking a drug called methemazole which normalized the thyroid hormone my thyroid was putting out. When I got pregnant with Madison they monitored me every visit and took me off the drug before I got pregnant because it has the potential of causing problems with the development of the baby and causes problems to my liver more so when I am prego. At this time I really had no idea all of the problems it could cause, but thankfully my body went into remission when I got pregnant so they monitored me every visit by my thyroid levels were perfectly normal! About 6 weeks after having Madi my body started acting up again so I was put back on methemazole. The doctor told me my options this time that I could take radioactive iodine and stop my thyroid function and become hypothyroid like my mom and grandma are AND Iwould be taking a hormone rather than a drug and it would be 100 percent safe during pregnancies OR I keep with what I was doing but risk not going into remission with my future pregnancies and have possible complications, so the obvious choice was stop thyroid functions and not have to worry about it. So almost 3 months later after taking the pill I have still not been put on the hormone replacement pill because my thyroid is not doing what it should be doing. So I have been super exhausted and definitely more irritable but hopefully they will be getting me on something soon! The only frustrating thing with all of this is that we have to wait 10 months before being able to get pregnant again since the radiation stays in my body for about 6 months, so we are so eager to have another baby but we have to wait until my body is ready and healthy for another baby. So next new thing is that I started 3 jobs all of which keep me at home with my baby. Every wednesday I help a lady clean her house for 3 hours while Chad stays with Madison, 2 days a week I help my grandma stock cards at local stores for a company called Avanti who sell birthday cards, and holiday cards and I also help nanny two cute kids a 1 year old and a 5 year old 1 to 2 days a week which we love because it gives Madison a buddy to play with! This has been such a blessing and I wasnt even looking for a job it just all sort of fell into place which has given us some extra spending money! SOME SUPER AWESOME NEWS! My hair is growing and growing! I have got a few bald spots which I know will always be there but it is a whole lot better than a whole head bald! NO MORE hot sticky wig in the middle of summer it has been so nice! I have gone from this.. TO This.. My real hair! We also celebrated my beautiful daughter's first birthday May 26 a park near our home. The theme was "Cute as a button" and chevron design. She wore a super cute outfit we ordered from "angel pie boutique" and she did such an awesome job! Madison got lots of fun presents including a miniature grand piano that we keep in her room that she got from grandma and grandpa Bartholomew. She is now walking like a champ and is running now! She has the cutest walk ever! She is a super big girl, she is in the 95 percentile for height and 70 percentile for weight and at 13 months old she is in 18 months clothes! I love her long legged-ness!

New Years Resolution (2013)

Okay so it has been way too long since I have last posted, so I will try to explain everything briefly starting from when I last posted. So as I hope everyone knows by now (from all my sharing on facebook) I have a beautiful little girl names Madison Belle who is almost 8 month! She is a super tall girl with beautiful olive skin tone, and the most precious personality ever (we are still working on figuring out her eye color). We have since moved back from Utah, in July, so about 6 months ago and time as flown by! I do miss it at times, I miss old friends who I had a lot in common with and my good friend who had a baby around the same age as Madison, but we have kept in god touch since the move:) We now live in a cozy apartment home and we are so happy to be living near our family so they can spoil us and more importantly, Madison! IT being the New year and all, I wanted to make a few changes (not like thats cliche at all). I dont want to do the typical "weight loss" "eat less junk food" because I have tried that all before and honestly I am not willing to give up the junk food, though I could stand to exercise more..any way I am getting off topic.. So what is my New Years Resolution? I want to S L O W D O W N. I struggle with this so much because I am always running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get so many things done. I find myself showering and being out of breath because I have to hurry to make sure Madison is ok, which is totally normal I know, but still why just not wait to do that until the hubby gets home and I can actually enjoy it? But even then I still can not remember sometimes if I put shampoo in my hair already or not so its possible I am shampooing twice. So lately, I forcefully tell myself to not worry about the dishes, or the pile of laundry and just tell myself to wait until Madison is napping or until Chad is home. These days I try to get myself to shower longer than 5 minutes and just RELAX. I found myself wanting this as my New Years Resolution because when the day is over I feel so sad that another day has gone by and I have to wait until morning to play with my baby girl again. I do not want to look back and regret not treasuring the moments I had with my children because I was too worried about making everything perfect. NOW, a couple years ago I did not care how messy everything was, in high school my mom wanted to kill me for never keeping my room clean, but ever since I was pregnant and that "nesting" instinct kicked in, it never went away! I just want everything to always be perfectly clean for my baby to feel comfortable and safe, but I do not want it to take away from our time together. Trust me, writing this down I realize I may sound a little dramatic and like one of those silly moms, but I really think all of us moms need to take a step back, and just put all the silly chores to the side and find a better time to do them so that we have time to ourselves and with our kiddos:) on a different note now.. I do have some pretty exciting news about my alopecia, that my hair has finally grown back! I do have a couple of spots that require wearing a little hat over because it is still bald but I have been getting steroid shots (which really hurt) in those spots that help with hair growth! It is funny because 2 years ago when my hair was gone and I went into this same dermatology office they turned me away to get shots because they told me "your hair will probably not grow back because there are no hair folicles visible" but man I showed them! One of my favorite quotes from the Notebook is "science can only go so far, and then there is God" and I believe that 100 percent! It is crazy to look back on one of my posts from a long time ago on this blog and see pictures of myself without hair and to read about where I was in my life back then, thats why I enjoy blogging because its fun to look back on later on:) Now I am done ranting:) Here are some pictures of our little family through the past six months.

Birth Story

I can not believe how long it has been since I have blogged! So much has happened since the last time I wrote, I mean, I had a baby! I do have to warn that this may be an extraordinarily long post! There is so much to fill in on how my pregnancy went but I will just skip to the good stuff and talk about the birth story! SO, I was 4 days past due my due date, which was killer! I seriously thought I was going to be prego FOREVER! I loved being pregnant, and sometimes I miss it, but I really wanted to meet my baby girl! And to make things more frustrating was that my Mom, and Grandma were in town from Colorado to be here in the labor room with us when Madison was born, they arrived here tuesday the 22nd which was Madi's original due date and she didn't come until the 26th of May! So it was a close call because that was the day they left, so they only got a few hours with her. Everyday we thought was the day, I thought what I had been experiencing were contractions, but those were only minor ones to prepare me for what was to come! On Friday morning at 3:45 am I woke up with a sharp pain, one that I have felt before several days before,so not being able to go back to sleep, I came into the living room and sat on the couch, then I got another really sharp pain! So I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen in excitement and starting timing the pains! I had never been so excited to be in so much pain in my life! I soon started to realize these are contractions, and I knew then what everyone meant when they said "when you know, you'll know". The contractions were 6 min apart and it was the kind where you have to stop, hold on to something and take deep breaths because you feel like youre going to fall over when you walk. After about an hour of 6 min apart contractions I called my mom and grandma at the hotel (this was all while Chad was still sleeping, I mentioned I thought I might be having contractions, but he had heard me say that everyday for a week so he wasn't too concerned) and I went over and hung out with them while Chad caught up on sleep since he had to work super early. So after running on 3 hours of sleep, and obviously being in too much pain to go back to sleep we all decided to go on a walk, a very long walk that took up the day! We went to victorias secret, where every woman would ask when I was due, and I really did not want to have any conversations because of how much I was hurting. We also went to the pond and walked, and then my mom made me pace around our apartments lap after lap. So for about 17 hours I had contractions every 6 minutes, and finally at 7:30 pm they were 3-5 min apart! I was in tears by this point, so I called Chad and told him to get his butt home from work and he came racing home! Him and I drove to the hospital and my mom and grandmas were to meet us there after I called them when I was done getting hooked up to Iv's and everything. When I got there they had told me that I was already dilated to 5 cm and 90% effaced! So after that I got my Iv's and epidural, which I must add the IV hurt WAY more than the epidural! Then..I took a nap and waited until it was 4 a.m, the whole family was there and doctor said I was ready to push, and thankfully enough it took only 20 min to push! At 4:21 a.m Saturday May 26th, Madison Belle Bartholomew Was born. She was pink, clean and beautiful when she came into this world, absolutely nothing was wrong, she was perfect. The Nurse said she could tell Madi knew my voice because I was the only one able to calm her down in the hospital when she would cry, she just listened to my voice.

I can not explain the feeling of holding my angel in my arms for the first time, and even now still. I just can't stop staring at her, and it makes me cry happy tears when I imagine how she would be when she grows up. Though I do not want her to grow up, I can not wait for the fun times that I share with her and her daddy!

The Ultimate Gift

I have to start out by saying I have many ways of expressing my gratitude about the many blessings in my life, but it makes it extra special sharing it with all of you.

As I am sure you all know by now, Chad and I are expecting our first beautiful daughter May 2012. Her name is Madison, and I know she will be the most precious angel on this earth. I am so excited, and thrilled to start this new chapter in our lives and to be able to teach her all the rights and wrongs, and to help guide her so she can live, again, in heaven someday. I know that we are not only going to be a blessing to her, but she will be the best thing that has ever happened to us. I know the future holds trials and there will be many learning situations at hand and that will only make us grow stronger as individuals and as a family.

We are hoping to be able to move back to Colorado really soon, so our families can all be close and the new grandma's and grandpa's can come see their little granddaughter whenever they please. Until then she will have a nice cozy little room for her in our apartment.

Madison already has quite the closet full of clothes already! Chad is been so cute and has been buying all these cute little outfits and surprising me by putting them in my stocking. We also just bought the most precious dress from baby gap and I can not wait to put her in it!

Little Madison is now 17 weeks in my belly, almost half way there! She is extremely healthy as far as we could tell from the Quad marker screening, and on our 20 weeks visit we will do an ultrasound showing the 4 chamber of her heart, and all the parts of her brain and we will be able to make sure everything is still going we:) She has a very strong heartbeat at 160 BPM. I am still waiting for those little feet to give me a good ol' kick in the ribs so hopefully I can feel her soon!!

We are Expecting!

Ok! So I can not even describe how good it feels to get it out in the open! I was so excited I just could not wait anymore to share the exciting news! Our baby is due to arrive May 23-25 of 2012! Crazy thing is, is May 23 is my mommas birthday so they may just share the same day:)

I wanted to get the chance to describe to everyone how the process worked.. and no I do not mean the typical way where the cup watered the seed;p I was not able to get pregnant much on my own so it required a lot of time and patience. I had to get on a pill called Chlomid which helped my eggs to mature since mine never did that on their own AKA ovulation. Once the doctor "okayed" the eggs I then had to insert HCG which is a natural pregnancy hormone, but we just gave my body a boost. The injection had to go right into my stomach, but the difficult part about this was that I had to mix the HCG in a little bottle and insert it myself at home, and I had no idea how to do that! But long story short, I overcame it. Then the exciting news came 2 weeks later! I then had to start taking progesterone (which is another natural hormone we produce, my body just needed an extra boost) for 2 months every night before I went to bed and that was just a messy situation.. literally! I am now 13 weeks and everything is going wonderfully besides the morning sickness I have had for the last 2 months!

Both of our families are so excited and can not wait to be grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncles!

OH and I can't forget to tell you how I told the daddy to be! So just a short explanation first of why I did it this way.. So when ever I shower we do this little thing where I put a lot of soap on my stomach and then will just write a little note that usually says "I love you" and then I will call Chad in to have him see (sorry if this is to much info lol). So anyways I knew he was coming home from work so I hopped in the shower lathered up my stomach with soap and had "I'm prego" written across so that when he came home to give me a kiss while I was in the shower he looked down and saw what I had written and he was so excited! He was like "Love are you joking?" and kept saying "no no there is no way" haha so it was very cute:)

So that is the wonderful news in a nutshell! We will be having plenty more to share very soon!!!