It had a been a long day on October 3. Both Jeremy and I had colds and weren’t feeling great and were very much looking forward to crawling into our bed and going to sleep. Just as we were climbing in, our little baby decided that was not in the plan! I was pretty miserable and uncomfortable, I had found out the week before that I was measuring big…which I already knew since it seemed like none of my maternity shirts were really fitting. Apparently the baby decided that he was out of room, because at 11:45 p.m. my water broke! After I reassured Jeremy that, no, I hadn’t just peed my pants and few minutes of me panicking and pacing back and forth while Jeremy ran around trying to get things together, I decided to call my neighbor to see if she could come and sleep on our couch until my mom could get up there to be with the kids. As luck would have it, she was still awake and came right over. I called my work and let them know I was on my way while Jeremy drove the 45 minutes to the hospital and said repeatedly to me, “we can stop at this one if you want.” as we drove past several other hospitals! I wasn’t really contracting, so I knew we were ok!! When we got there, my dear friends had decorated my room so cute!! They tried to keep me out so they could finish, but I was really wet and wanting to not be in those clothes anymore, so I went in anyway!! Some people think it would be weird to have a baby at the place where you work, but I think it’s great!! They took such great care of me! I was only dilated 2 cm and contracting a little, so we settled in for a long night. I needed antibiotics because I was only 36.5 weeks and hadn’t gotten my group B strep test done yet (my Dr. appointment was the next day) so we waited a few hours before starting pitocin. Things were still moving pretty slow, then around 5:00 a.m., his heart tones started dipping a little and I was still only about 5 cm and I was not feeling good at all. My heart rate kept shooting up and then dropping and we couldn’t figure out why! Let me tell you that having to wear an oxygen mask while having a cold is not very fun! A little while later, I suddenly started feeling pressure. In about 15 minutes, I went from 5 cm to complete and ready to have this baby! When the Dr. got there, he was pretty surprised, he had figured I wasn’t going to deliver until later in the morning! And soon, our beautiful little boy was here, weighing in at 7 lbs 8 oz and 19.5 inches long! Even though he was 3 and a half weeks early, he was our biggest baby! It took him a few minutes to start crying, he’d had the cord wrapped around his neck a few times. Then he cried for just a second and then just stopped and looked around at everyone.
Now, for some reason, my boys think they need to come out posterior, so the Dr. had to turn him and his poor little face ended up being pretty bruised up, so sad!! His poor upper lip was bruised and swollen for several days.
During his bath, he started crying hard and turned really red! The nurse got a little worried and took his blood to see if something was off, but we just learned he turns red when he cries!
His blood sugar was low, so they had to stick a tube down his throat and feed him a little.
And then he finally came to my room so his brother and sister could meet him!! They were pretty in awe of him, it was pretty cute.
Then he got to meet his Grandparents (Grandpa Stowell came up a little later when the camera man was gone)!
This was my longest stay in the hospital after having a baby and by the end, I was pretty stir crazy. They weren’t sure if they were going to let us go home that next evening because of his blood sugars and I was group B unknown, but after a long an very annoying evening, the on call pediatrician finally said we could go home. He also had to pass a carseat test, where he had to sit in his carseat and be monitored for an hour to make sure his heart rate doesn’t drop. They always do this on preemie’s, but everyone thought it was pretty funny to see such a big baby doing a carseat test!! Then right before we left, the nurses brought him back from the nursery and we noticed that he was VERY swollen from his circumcision. The nurses agreed that they hadn’t ever seen that before and that we should probably have our Dr. look at him, but I wanted the pediatrician who did the circumcision to look at him, so we waited even more longer for her to come back. She too, was surprised, but in the end decided that he probably had an allergic reaction to the medicine they used to numb him!! We didn’t get out of there until almost 10:30 pm, but I was very excited to get home.
Austin resting on Daddy while we were waiting.
One of my favorite pictures!
Finally going home!
