Austin's Arrival

Disclaimer: This post is not for sympathy but rather for me 1) to be reminded in the future of what it was really like 2) to impose a little guilt, if necessary, when Austin grows up 3) for Alli who, I'm afraid, thinks that I've been sugar coating motherhood.

I'm a bit of a superstitious person and should have known things weren't going to transpire as I had envisioned with this delivery when I went to bed the night of the 20th and couldn't get a single ounce of sleep. I laid awake all night tossing from one aching hip to the other. I finally got up around 2:30 and looked out the window to see mounds of snow. Beautiful, yes, but would also make driving to the hospital a bit treacherous. At 4:00am I showered and got the rest of my things ready and off we went to the hospital...it only took 25 minutes (instead of the usual 10). I checked in and look how happy I am - and ready to POP!

(I know, can you believe I'm actually posting this picture! It's for posterity)

Next came the IV. On my left arm the nurse blew the vein once it was already in. On the right arm she hit a valve which wouldn't allow any flow. She gave up and had another nurse try my left hand. Finally, a working IV. As 7:00 was approaching, which was my scheduled c-section time, there was no doctor. Dr. Broberg, who delivered Rylee so beautifully, was nowhere to be found. They paged him twice and never received a response. This isn't looking good. The doctor who was to assist was there and grabbed another doctor to go ahead with the delivery. SPINAL BLOCK. To be honest this is the part of having a baby I fear the most. All went well...at first. While they start cutting I get what can only be described as an electrocution up my spine and into my head that completely freaks me out and is incredibly painful. Both doctors and the anesthetist acknowledge they've "never seen that before". That pain finally goes away. During the rest of the c-section my blood pressure dropped four times down into the 70's which was remidied by a quick shot of epinephrine. This made my pressure jump up and with that I felt like my heart and lungs would explode from my chest. Afterwords the anesthetist tells me that when it drops that low that's usually when people start to vomit and go out so luckily I escaped that outcome.
Here Jon is introducing me to my newborn son Austin!

Isn't he sweet! He was born at 7:56 am, weighed 7 pounds 6 ounces and was 20 1/2 inches long.

Me and my baby once I finally got to hold him!



Daddy and his boy!



Just bonding.

I love this precious little face!

Garrett and Rylee were thrilled to come meet their new brother...

and ride on mom's bed.

Garrett and Austin

Rylee and Austin

Enjoying a cartoon.

Jon was able to take the week off and it was so nice to have him at the hospital with me for most of the time. I was very blessed to have so much help from our families and the kids were taken care of so that I could just recuperate at the hospital and enjoy those first few days without worrying about anything.

Christmas Eve we're heading home! But first the nurse needs to remove my staples. I had staples with Rylee and "knew" what to expect. The nurse takes one look at the incision and says out loud "WOW, he sure used a lot of staples! And it looks like many of them are bent." So 28-30 staples later (I lost count with the ones that the skin had started to grow back on) I was ready to leave.

Garrett and Rylee were anxiously awaiting our arrival.

Christmas Eve night I went to my parents for dinner with Garrett and Rylee and made it for about 1 hour. Christmas day was fun watching the kids open presents and all their excitement. By afternoon however, the tears came and I went to bed that night with eyes nearly swollen shut from crying. Everyone says "oh how fun to have a baby for Christmas" and I suppose it could be but just that statement made it worse. I felt like crap and would have skipped over the whole day if it weren't for my kids. Guilt, physical pain, hormones out of control and disappointment over my already very low expectations of what I would be able to do was just a recipe for disaster.
So my recovery has been nothing like my previous two c-sections. I was in quite a bit of pain and the drugs weren't helping all that much. To add to the fun I got the awesome hacking cough that everyone seems to have. Coughing and c-sections are like water and oil. They're never meant to be together. That being said...is it worth it????

You betcha!

(Here's the sugar coating Alli)

I have been given a beautiful, healthy and happy baby. What more could I ask for?

And I just have to say - I don't know what I would have done without all the kid watching, laundry doing, meals brought in, housecleaning, grocery pickups, and other acts of service given to us by our family and friends! Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!

Closing notes: 10 days post surgery I finally started to feel like I was on the mend. Hallelujah!