Many Blessings

All my days have been spent with these two men...

I love watching daddy stare into lil g-man's eyes

 

I could just eat him up... he is so adorable!

Seriously y'all.... I have been blessed! Not only by my wonderful husband, who I am celebrating 4 years of marriage with today but by this sweet precious child of ours! I never knew I could be more in love with my husband then the day we had lil man. He was the best partner I could have needed and he continues to amaze me with his love and strength through this week of becoming parents. God sure did give me a great man in W and I will forever praise our Lord for the blessing I have in him.

Also, lil man is just a doll! So far his pattern is eat, sleep, poop, pee, repeat. Sometimes he will poop and pee on daddy and that makes me laugh. Last night he slept on his own in the bassinet almost all night! We are so proud of him and the small accomplishments he has each day :)

Now on to why I am most blessed beyond measure. The Lord's protection was so evident during our deliver process. I never expected all the crazy twist and turns to come our way while getting little man into this world, but I never once doubted that the Lord was in the room with us and giving W the strength to walk through the journey of child birth.

As hubs alluded to in the last post here is the birth story. Sorry it's a bit long. I let Hubs type the ending while I was feeding G-man.:

I began having contractions on Tuesday night, but they were 7-12 minutes apart and nothing too bad. They continued through the night and into the next day. On Wednesday morning I thought my water had broke and we went into the hospital, once we got there we were told my water had not broken but I was in early labor. By that point my contractions were pretty regular and about 5-7 minutes apart but I was only dilated to a 1.5 cm. So they gave us the opition of going home and laboring then coming back when they got more consistant. We chose to come back home. All day Wednesday my contractions continued to increase and became 4 minutes apart, we went to sleep that night, and although I didn't sleep much at all we stayed at home. Thursday morning we continued to time the contractions and they were still 4 minutes apart so we called the hospital and they wanted us to come back in. We arrived around 8:30am on Thursday morning adn they hooked me up to all the machines again. My contractions were still consistent at 4 minutes apart but I was only dilated to a 2.5 cm.

My doctor decided to keep us, start me on ptocin to stimulate contractions, and break my water. So we called all our parents and siblings and they headed to the hospital... a 3 hour drive for all of them. Of course after they started my IV, my contactions slowed to one about every 12 minutes. My nurse increased my ptocin dosage by 10 times to stimulate more contractions. It worked. My contractions steadied at about every 3-4 minutes, but the intensity of the contractions was bearable. Until my doctor broke my water around 12:30 PM on Thursday. Without that padding of water around G-man, my contractions got much more painful. They needed to break my water to speed along my dilation because at that point I was only at 3 cm. Now I know why the water breaks naturally at around 9 cm for most women. After my water broke, my contractions got much more painful. I continued having contractions all afternoon and they evenutally got to the point where they were 2 minutes apart and each was lasting about 1 minute 20 seconds. The 40 second break was nice, but I had those contractions for 2 hours and they got really painful. I finally gave in and got some medicine. I had hoped not to, but the pain was pretty intense and I was getting very worn out after almost 48 hours of contractions. I started with stadol and even though hubs says it helped, I am not so sure. I felt everyone of those contractions, but just felt drunk during them. In reality, hubs said that I was only feeling every other one or so and I was drifting in and out of sleep. Aparently I also started asking questions about if I had prepared enough food for the family staying at our house. Needless to say, I did not like Stadol one bit. Instead of getting a second dose of Satan's Stadol, I opted for the epidural. No problems getting the epidural. It was actually really easy, except that I had been so hot and had the air turned way down in the room. So when I had to sit up and open the back of my gown up, it was freezing. But hubs was there with me through the whole thing and so were my wonderful nurses, one of which was a student nurse. I think my labor properly welcomed her to the maternity ward.

I got the epidural and the anesthisologist gave me the medicine. That feeling was wonderful! Within the first couple of mintues, I couldn't feel any of my contractions. Sure my legs were numb, but without the contractions, I was very content. However, a side effect of the epidural began to kick in. Apparently a side effect common in many women is a small drop in blood pressure. It's usually no big deal because they have ephedrine close by to administer via the IV in order to increase the blood pressure. So when my blood pressure dropped, they gave me ephedrine. Bad choice. Apparently I can add ephedrine to the list of medicines that I am either allergic to or have bad reactions to. The ephedrine cause my heart rate to pick up too fast and I felt like I was having needles shoved in all over my skin. (All day they kept asking me to rate my pain on a scale of 1-10, where 10 was being hit by a bus. My new 10 is the feeling after getting ephedrine.) I also felt like I was going to pass out. Hubs and the nurses had to keep trying to wake me up while the anesthiosologist tried to even out the medicines. I thought I was awake the whole time, but hubs later told me that I kept closing and opening my eyes and not responding when they said my name.

After that episode, they decided to better monitor the baby's heart rate, they'd use an internal monitor. Again bad idea. Not because anything happened, but because G-man had so much hair that they couldn't get the monitor into his head. By that time, my doctor, who had been monitoring my progress from home, called to ask what was happening. When she called, my blood pressure started dropping again causing the doctor to give me more ephedrine. Same thing happened again. Heart rate up, needles all over the body, feelings of passing out, unresponsiveness, and this time the baby's heart rate began to drop. My doctor decided that it was time for an emergency C section to get the baby out and me off the medicine.

From the time of her decision to the time that the baby was out was about 15 minutes. I remember during the C section after they got G-man out, my doctor and her colleague were talking about The Office while they were stitching me up. I so wanted to join in the conversation, but I was shaking too much and the anesthisologist was still alternating epidural medicine and ephedrine. (Helpful hint for future moms out there: They never tell you that after you get an epidural and have the baby, you will proceed to shake uncontrollably, like the worst shivers you've had, for about an hour. They go away and supposedly are normal. They don't hurt, but they are a little annoying.)

So that's my story. G-man was beautiful and Hubs got to carry him from the C section room back to the recovery room by himself, the first time he'd held a newborn. He says he was terrified, but I think that was just because G-man kept trying to suck on Hubs' neck. G-man was a hungry fella from the time he got out. In fact, by 6 days of age, he had already regained all of the birth weight he had lost. The pediatrician was very suprised and said that he would have been happy if G-man still had 9 ounces to go to catch up.

When I have more time, I'll talk about mommyhood and give you all some super sweet pictures. So far everything is going great and I'm so greatful for God's protection through everything. I'm sure I'll never know how bad it was in the delivery room, but I'm thankful God was watching over us. Go God!