Welcome Home!

As promised, I have more pics of Ainsley coming home. We were so blessed to have so many visitors - at the hospital and at home. Unfortunately, in my "just had a baby" fuzz I completely forgot to get out my camera and take any pictures of Ainsley with her visitors at the hospital. However, we have lots of pictures with her and our immediate families once we got home.

We were welcomed home on Sunday by both sets of grandparents and uncles/aunts on both sides.

The proud uncle with his girls.



The proud grandparents - could they look any happier?




Of course, I am taking every picture that I can of our sweet angels together.

This is early Monday morning right after we all got up. The first thing Anneliese did was check on Ainsley.


Every morning before school Anneliese has to either hold Ainsley or watch a cartoon with her or something. It's very sweet! Anneliese is going through this "funny face" stage and she always wants to make a funny face in her pictures. It seems as if Ainsley was ready to play along.


This is what "our" bed looked like on Wednesday morning. We must have a newborn because everyone is sleeping somewhere different these days. Brandon had fallen asleep on the couch, Ainsley wouldn't sleep so she ended up next to me in bed and of course, Anneliese made her way our direction at some point during the night. (And if you're wondering why there's a towel in our bed - it's covering up the wet spot where the ice packs leaked. I'll spare you the details and let you figure out what the ice packs were for.)


I'll leave you with a fun task. Take a look at these 2 pictures and see if you can figure out which one is Anneliese and which one is Ainsley! Can't wait to see how many of you guess correctly.





Love to all!
Brandon, Jennifer, Anneliese and Ainsley

SHE'S HERE!!!!!!!!

We are so proud and happy to announce the arrival of Ainsley Dell Noska! She graced us with her presence 2 weeks early (thank goodness!) and came into the world on Friday, September 11 at 9:18 a.m. weighing 6 lbs. 8 oz.

Here's a little rundown of how it all happened:

I woke up early Friday morning (about 1:30 a.m.) because my water broke. I woke Brandon up, we loaded up our stuff, packed up Anneliese and headed out the door. We called Jason and told us to meet us downstairs because we were dropping off Anneliese. Luckily we had prepared him for this moment so he knew it was coming sooner or later.

We got to the hospital about 2:30 and by around 6ish I was asking if it was too early for drugs. I love the nurses at St. David's because they said "Of course, you can have something." They put something in my IV and within 5 minutes I was completely loopy! I felt like I had been drinking all day - a feeling that I fondly and vaguely remember. ;) Anyway, that blissful feeling only lasted so long and by a little after 7:00 I was telling the nurse that I'd take an epidural as soon as I could get one. Being another great nurse, she said "No problem. I'm a fan of early epidurals myself. I'll get the ball rolling." Well the ball started rolling early but it rolled for a while. By the time the anesthesiologist came in, the contractions were very frequent and pretty darn intense. When he got there, all I could say between breaths was "Thank God." It was about 8:45 when I got the epidural and he said "It will take at least 15 minutes for it to take full effect." Apparently, Ainsley didn't want to wait that long and about 5 minutes after he gave it to me I told Brandon that he better get a nurse because the contractions hurt really, let me stress REALLY, badly. The nurse came in and said "Oh, it's delivery time. Call Mankovsky (the doctor) and get a table ready." Mom says she also said "Looks like induction by epidural." I didn't hear that part because I was too busy breathing and squeezing Brandon's hand so hard I thought I felt the bones break.

Ainsley was born at 9:18 so if you do the math you can figure that the epidural never quite took full effect. I think it kicked in about 2 minutes after she was born because my right leg suddenly went completely numb. I NEVER and let me repeat NEVER thought I'd be able to live to tell about what child birth feels like. Ainsley must have wanted to prove me wrong because here I am - able to talk about it if you're interested. All I'll say is God Bless those of you women out there who did it completely drug free and on purpose - you are my heroes!

Okay, enough writing. Here are the pics of the wonderful day.

Our beautiful baby.


The perfect big sister loving her new baby sister.




The Noska girls.


The car ride home - thanks Aunt Barbsie for the beautiful eyelet blanket you made that brought both of our baby girls home!


For those of you wondering if Ainsley looks like Anneliese, take a look at this. It's a picture of Anneliese coming home from the hospital. We think they look exactly alike!




I've got more pics of the rest of the family but I'll have to do those in the next blog. It's getting late and you know how it goes - new moms have to sleep when they can because the hours come very few and far between.

Love to all,
Brandon, Jennifer, Anneliese and Ainsley