Hailey's Memorial Service

Hailey Elizabeth Leishman

November 20, 2009-November 26, 2009

Memorial Service held November 29, 2009 @ 1:30 pm

I thought that I would put my talk on here that I gave at Hailey's memorial service on Sunday.

I didn't have my sweet baby girl long enough to:

• take pictures of her hands and feet.
• to get her dressed up in a cute outfit with a bow in her hair.
• to hear her babble or coo.
• to see as many of her "firsts" as I would have liked.
• or to watch her grow and develop into the beautiful woman I know she was to become.

But, I had her for six amazing days and in those six days I spent time with the most amazing baby girl. She came out crying the biggest crocodile tears you've ever seen. Even the nurses were amazed. Aaron and I feel very strongly that she knew her mission here on earth would be a short one. Heavenly Father also knew her mission would be short and blessed us with many special and sacred experiences to help prepare us for what was to come. I would like to share something that I wrote in my journal on September 26th of this year.

The main reason I picked up my journal this morning was to write about my feelings about this pregnancy. We are having a baby girl and have decided to name her Hailey Elizabeth. I don't know why but I feel a really strong connection with this sweet spirit within me. Her spirit is so strong and my love for her is stronger than I have felt with my other pregnancies at this point. I always instantly love and bond with my babies when they are born, but I feel like I already know Hailey. The analytical part of me wonders why this baby is different. Is there something physically wrong with her? Will something happen and I won't be able to raise her? Or will she have disabilities? The spiritual side of me wants to think that she is just one of those amazing spirits that shines and glows of strength and sweetness. Either way, she and I already have a strong, beautiful connection and I am grateful for that. I am excited and anxious to hold her in my arms!

I have to note that both of my hunches were correct. I was blessed with a baby who had one of those amazing spirits that did shine and glow of strength and sweetness. She and I had a bond that we shared long before I could actually touch her cheeks or kiss her nose. I will always cherish that.

We have shared with the kids that because her spirit was so beautiful and strong that she didn't have to come to earth like the rest of us to be tried and tested. She only had to come to gain her body and she could go home to our Heavenly Father. With that perspective I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for allowing her to be a part of our family for six amazing days so that we did have the time to...

• look deep into her eyes and feel of the love she had for us. She looked into every one of our eyes with intensity as if to say, "Please know how much I love you!"
• to fall in love with her beautiful face and features and her "little man" hair - long on the sides and back and practically bald on top.
• to have her grip tightly to each one of our fingers as to give us a hug to let us know she will miss us and love us forever.
• to marvel at the size of her feet - we were sure that she would become a basketball player one day.
• to snuggle with her and feel the softness of her skin against our cheeks.
• to give her lots and lots of kisses - even Eskimo and butterfly kisses.
• to learn that her personality was one of love, sunshine, sweetness and purity.
• and to fall madly and deeply in love with her.

My tears have not been tears of anger or hate. They are tears of missing and heartache for the loss of the things I listed in the beginning that I will not be able to do with my sweet angel on this earth. But, I know without a shadow of a doubt that she and our family will be reunited again some day. It will make the days on this earth seem longer than they use to be, but I am a fighter. I will work hard to live the best life I can live for her and for the two beautiful children that I still have here. I know a few "Angel mom's" and they are some of the strongest, amazing and most spiritual women you will ever meet. It is my turn to become one of those women.

I love my Heavenly Father. I am forever grateful for the time he allowed us to be with Hailey and for all of the sacred moments we shared with her and for the ways that he prepared us for what was to come. Aaron and I were both at peace with the situation when she passed, knowing deep down inside our broken hearts that she was not suppose to stay with us any longer. It was time for her to return home. I know that she is safe and happy there and I look forward to the day that we can wrap our arms around each other and be an eternal family.

Hailey Elizabeth Leishman

I am not sure if this video is going to work. I hope it does. This is our sweet Hailey Elizabeth. I believe that most of you know by now, but our sweet angel was called home unexpectedly to be with her Heavenly Father on Thanksgiving Day. We thought that she was a healthy baby girl, but when I went to change her diaper at about noon on Thanksgiving I noticed that her lips, hands and mouth were blue. We took her to the emergency room where they worked on her tirelessly for hours. Her little body could take no more and she left us at about 8:30 that evening. We are heartbroken that we do not have our sweet Hailey with us physically anymore, but we are comforted to know that she is with our Heavenly Father. We are also grateful that her time in the hospital hooked up to so many tubes and IV's was but a few short hours. Her mission on this earth was meant to be a short one and we are at peace with that. We have had many special spiritual experiences that have given us comfort over the last week and a half. We love our sweet angel baby and miss her dearly!

We have a new baby!

Announcing Hailey Elizabeth Leishman - born Friday, November 20th at 10:32 am. She weighed 7lbs. 4oz. and is 19.75 in. long. I have to thank Julia and Sterling for these pictures. We thought we were coming all prepared with the camera, video camera and laptop so that we could put pictures up immediately. The only thing we forgot was the card reader for the camera, so we can't get any of our pictures on the blog yet. So, we will have to post more later.


Hailey is doing well. She is a typical newborn - very sleepy and not very interested in eating. We are having a bit of a problem with her latching on, but we are not giving up. I am recovering fairly well from my c-section and look forward to getting rid of the pain.


The kids have been really good with Hailey so far. Lexy is a natural mommy and is already telling Nathan to be careful. Nathan had been very gentle and also loves to hold Hailey. We will keep our fingers crossed that they continue with such loving behavior and jealousy doesn't take over. I will put some more pictures on when we get home and I have my card reader.

Belly Pictures

I have not been a good picture taker during this pregnancy. I feel like my life is so crazy that taking belly pictures just has not been a priority. I know that later I will wish I had some, especially since I have been in probably the best shape of any of my pregnancies. So, I finally took one. I'm going to spare everyone the bare belly shot on the blog. I have a couple other pictures that I have taken while pregnant, although they weren't specifically "belly" shots. I will post them just for my sake.

This picture is from our disney cruise over the 4th of July. I was approximately 20 weeks.

This picture is from our trip to Gainesville for the Gator game. I was bummed that I didn't get a picture of Aaron and I at the game so we took one with the family in the hotel the next day.

Here I am this past week - four weeks away from delivery.

Aint it great to be a Florida Gator!

So.....not to make all you Gators too jealous, but Aaron and I had the opportunity to go to a Gator game a couple of weeks ago against Arkansas. It was so much fun! We haven't been back for a game since we left over 7 years ago. The opportunity to get the tickets came a week before the game so we worked quickly to figure out what to do with the kids. Without going into all of the details I just want to give a HUGE thanks to the Haddocks - both families. We couldn't have gone without you!

We hadn't really looked too closely at the tickets prior to the game. We we got there we found out that we were in the first row of the end zone! It was so much fun to be that close to the players and all the action.

Here you can see Albert and Alberta coming to join us for some cheering.

Here the Gators were right in front of us. You can see Tebow (#15)!
The little dot in the sky is a ball coming through for a field goal. When the Gators had been practicing their kicks before half time ended I realized that when they kicked the 50-yarders the ball came in really low and barely missed us. At one point during the second half the Gators had to kick a field goal from around the 40 yard line. I turned to Aaron and said, "You are going to catch this one". They kicked it and he jumped for it and barely missed it. It bounced off of someone behind us and came up and hit my arm. It was soooo close! What a blast!

The other fabulous thing was the weather. I had been concerned about being outside standing or sitting for 3-4 hours in 90 degree weather. It has been so hot down here despite that fact that it is October and being 8 months pregnant in that kind of heat is not kind to the body. However, on Friday while we were driving up an amazing cold front rolled into town and we sat through that game in the 60's! It was so beautiful. It was great to be outside and it even allowed me to make a 45-minute hike up to the stadium without swelling beyond repair!

It was just a great trip - a wonderful, relaxing, get-a-way that helped relieve all the stress that I have been feeling lately. I am so grateful that we had the opportunity to go. (Thanks again Haddocks, we are sooooo grateful to you!)

Sleepless nights......already?

It is currently 3:55 am. I have been awake since 2-ish. This has been the story of this pregnancy. This has been the strangest, worst, yet best pregnancy I have had. I was soooo sick in the beginning. The entire time I have not slept well. It usually starts with having to go to the bathroom and then....I am wide awake, usually for a few hours. My luck is to fall back asleep about 45 minutes before the alarm goes off so that I have that "felt like I've been hit by a mack truck" feeling. Most times I just toss and turn trying my hardest to go back to sleep. Tonight is actually the first night I decided to get on the computer and catch up on all my blog reading - it's been a while. I think that being so sick in the beginning really helped with the weight gain. With Nathan I put on about 45 pounds. This go round I am seven months along and have only put on 16 pounds --nice! I am hoping that I will keep it under 30 total this time - you never know about those last two months and well...my appetite has arrived! Also with Nathan I had placenta previa and was not allowed any exercise after week 20. This time I have been able to keep up with the exercise and I think that has really helped keep the weight off and I don't have anywhere near the aches and pains I had last time. So aside from the exhaustion, which I am still plagued by, I actually feel really good and can't complain at this point. Yay!

I was contemplating a "natural" delivery with this baby since the only reason I had a c-section with Nathan was because of the placenta previa, so I sought out the only Dr. in Lee county that will do a v-back and am currently driving 45 minutes to Cape Coral to see him. However with lots of thought and discussions with the Dr. we have decided that with my history of complications (which I won't go into now) it is safer to have another c-section. At this point I don't know if the date is officially scheduled because they were having a hard time getting through to the hospital, but hopefully we are going to have this baby on Nov. 20th. I am due the day after Thanksgiving, but since we have the opportunity to schedule this I thought it would be nice to have a few days to recover before I host Thanksgiving at my house.

So..... I'm sure that you are all on pins and needles wondering what this baby is going to be.... Well, thanks to I kind post and gentle nudge from my friend Stacey I decided that I should go ahead and take this time to finally get a post on here and spill the beans....Thanks Stacey:)

We are going to have a baby girl! Her name is going to be Hailey Elizabeth. Lexy is very excited. Nathan and Aaron were rooting for a boy, but the girls won - in fact we won ice cream because we "knew" it was a girl and had had a little contest going with the boys who just "knew" it was going to be a boy. --There's no messing with a mama's intuition!

We have started the preparations - Lexy and Nathan moved into the same room and got bunk beds a few weeks ago. They have adjusted well. We are having to sell Lexy's bedroom furniture because we realize that she will probably never use it again since the girls will most likely room together later and we are hoping we can get more for it if we sell it as a set. Until the furniture is gone we can't really set up the baby's room, which is killing me because I have really been hit by the "nesting bug"! I am ready to go through and re-organize my entire house and would do it too if I only had more time and energy :0). I have had so many projects that I wanted to get done over the summer that never were accomplished. We finally just finished one and that was getting our food storage put away. I went to Time Out for Women back in March and purchased a TON of food storage because there was a '20% off and free shipping' deal. It has been stacked against the wall in our entry since then. It has definitely been a conversation piece when people come over and see 25 boxes stacked in our house. Anyway we discovered unused space at the top of our bedroom closet and finally got some extra shelving put up and the food storage is no longer in our entry- Yay! Now I have the itch to go through everything else in the closet and reorganize it so it looks as good as the nicely stacked food storage. :0)

Well, I think it is time for me to try to go back to sleep so I am going to sign off for now -- Good night all.

Way Overdue

I know that this post is WAY OVERDUE, but I am going to give an excuse...Now,whether it is truly valid or not......I don't know, but it is still my excuse. :o) As you can plainly see by the picture below I am pregnant with baby #3. This has been my hardest pregnancy yet. I felt ill from the time I ate breakfast until I went to bed up until about a couple of weeks ago. I still have my moments, but it is definitely getting better. My other issue has been exhaustion. I have been soooo tired. I can get 8 hours at night, a 2 hour nap in the day and still feel like I haven't slept for a month. It has been really hard. I am trying to patiently await the point when I have lots of energy....it hasn't happened yet. I don't know that I am going to be able to catch up on all the posts I haven't done, but hopefully I will at least be able to keep up from here on out.

This is my ultrasound done at 12 weeks. I am 18 weeks today. I will hopefully have another ultrasound in the next few weeks that will give us a little hint as to whether this little "peanut" is a boy or girl. We will keep you posted!