Welcome, Bennett William

On September 15th we welcomed our son, Bennett William, into the world at 8:12 a.m. via cesarean section.  Tears of joy were there to greet him.

He arrived weighing 8 pounds, 1.5 ounces and measuring 20.5 inches.  Not huge, but just big enough at 39 weeks to be glad we had a scheduled c-section.

His first bath was not well received.

 Once wrapped in some cozy blankets, however, our little guy was at peace.

We are so happy to have another member of our family to love.

We are so happy to call him ours.

Indulgence - Last Few Days as an Only Child

This little lady has just a few days left as an only child.

She knows her baby brother is coming soon, but obviously a two year-old can't quite comprehend that significance.

Being with her this last week has been somewhat surreal.  I pick her up any time she asks and I'm the one requesting extra hugs.

I know that after my surgery, I won't be able to pick her up (at least with my doctor's permission!) for about a month, and this will be hard on us both.

We have been at home a lot, which has given us lots of time to read books (both she and I do the "reading").  She always has strong opinions over what she wants to read, and for the most part I'm trying to indulge her in that tenth reading of an idiotic dollar store book.  Maybe not for an eleventh time, but I can maintain my enthusiasm for a good ten straight readings.

She has become a Taylor Swift devotee - well, specifically to the new song, "Shake it Off."  She is frequently rewarded with a viewing of the "Shake it Off" video and is always mesmerized.

All of our friends have been gathering to support me and Orelia as we enter the final stretch, and the other moms have been especially kind to help run after her at play dates and sit on the floor with her when I'm not really capable.

She and I are so lucky to have such good friends around - always, but especially now.

Noni and Grandpa arrive tomorrow at long last, and Orelia is elated.  They will be taking care of our girl when John and I are at the hospital for the better part of a week and we are beyond grateful.

The temperatures have heated up around here, which isn't exactly ideal for someone who is nine months pregnant, but is wonderful for a little lady who loves to go in the pool.  

Since Orelia is close in age to all her friends, we have been hitting the birthday party circuit on the weekends.  

She has been loving all the extra play time with friends, especially her special baby friend whom she always wants to cuddle with.

He has provided her lots of practice for big sisterhood, and I am so grateful my friend lets her hold him, however unappealing this might be to a baby.

This weekend Orelia will visit two last birthday parties before her baby brother's birth day arrives.

A couple extra chocolate cupcakes under her belt and she will assuredly be ready to take on her new role as a big sister.

I have a feeling the chocolate and general spoiling will be continuing a lot in the near future.  Whatever keeps us happy and sane as a family will be fine by me.  I know I'll be needing some chocolate myself next week, so I certainly can't deny any to my firstborn.  

Waiting Game

It's September, which means we have reached the month our son will be born.

We are all so excited to meet him and can hardly believe the waiting game is almost over.  

My c-section is scheduled for September 15th at 7:30 am, so hopefully baby boy will stay put until then.  This will be his first test to determine if he's an obedient child or not.

I'm trying to take it easy these last couple of weeks since somehow even sitting in a chair can be an exhausting exercise.  Orelia has been a trooper and hasn't been pushing me beyond my limit.

The nursery is essentially set up, though we are waiting on a couple of framed items to arrive so we can decorate his walls.  I haven't packed my hospital bag yet, which is probably how it goes when you've been through this once before (I do have a pile of random items on a dresser that are meant to eventually be packed in said hospital bag.).  I'll leave the sanitizing of pacifiers and bottles to my mom when she arrives in two weekends.  Things are just less frantic this time around, as we know the most important thing is bringing home a healthy baby boy.

Until that baby makes his debut, we will be laying low enjoying the end of summer with our firstborn.  "Faster, faster!" she demands on the swing.  I'm sure these next 12 days will go by fast enough.

The Three of Us

I'm not usually in a lot of family photos, and I'm in even less these days as my belly gets bigger and bigger.   On my dad's last morning with us, I decided I needed some photos of me and my belly and Orelia.

Orelia's little brother is less than three months from his debut, and my lap is getting smaller and smaller.  Somehow we still find a way for her to fit.

Orelia has always loved being carried and is the queen of "uppies" with everyone she loves.  Lately, however, there aren't a lot of times when Mommy uppies are offered.  The other evening when we finally trekked back to the car from the boardwalk, I deemed I would finally pick her up for the final stint where we walked across the street.  She literally cheered "Mommy!  Up!" and waved her fists in the air.  Success at last, I suppose.

She will kiss her brother via my belly when requested, and is pretty good about being gentle with me when we remind her of the baby.  Things are already different for her, and he hasn't arrived yet.  It will be a big exciting adjustment for all of us, but I'm sure she will do great.

It's A...

 Things are about to get a lot less pink around here, because the baby that's coming in September is going to be a boy!

Orelia doesn't quite know what's coming her way in 19 weeks, but she was excited to hold some balloons.

Our Happy News

We are thrilled to let everyone know that our family will be expanding in September.

 I'm about fifteen weeks along, and we are beyond grateful that everything has looked healthy in our appointments so far.

We know Orelia and Harper will be good big sisters to the little boy or girl that joins their lives, and we can't wait for the fall!

Orelia's Birth Story

So I think it's definitely time I wrote down and shared Orelia's birth story.  It's been 18 days since her birth, and I finally have enough distance to be able to describe what happened without getting too emotional about it.

As I mentioned before, Orelia was born via emergency cesarean section, and when I think about what could have happened had we not been at a place able to take care of our baby girl...it's pretty overwhelming.

So to start at the beginning, my doctor decided to schedule an induction for me once I hit 41 weeks.  John and I slept pretty terribly the night before, since we were waiting in suspense for the call to tell us to come to the hospital.  At 9AM we still hadn't gotten a call, so John called the nurses' station and they said they were pretty busy, so we shouldn't expect to hear from them before the afternoon.

We were all sitting around watching the Olympics and eating watermelon, when at 11AM my phone rang.  It was the hospital, and it turns out they were ready for me earlier than they expected.  We had an hour to get over there to get things started.  I went upstairs, changed my clothes, and we set off for the hospital.

After a bit of sitting around waiting, they started me on some oral medication to ripen the cervix.  The medication also started some contractions, but I couldn't feel them yet, so we still had a long way to go.  When I was up for my next dose of medication, they decided to move me to pitocin to get things moving.

I was kept on the pitocin IV for hours before I even began to feel the contractions they kept telling me were happening.  Around twelve hours after we arrived in the hospital, my water broke.   Everyone hoped this would cause labor to really kick in, but it didn't happen.

The night came and went with my mom and John catching a few minutes of sleep here and there and me staying up the whole time.  When the morning came I began to get worried since I had had no sleep and still had the hard part of labor ahead of me.  One nurse suggested I take some pain medication to help me sleep, so the doctor came in to talk to me about my options.  He didn't think the pain medication would help me sleep, and it also might inhibit any of the progress we had made towards labor.

All talk of pain medication went by the wayside when the doctor was inserting a more accurate contraction detector and the baby's heart rate began to drop.   The nurses and doctor started flipping me in all kinds of positions to see if the heart rate would come back up and they started giving me oxygen so that the baby would receive more oxygen too.  Luckily, the baby's heart rate came back up to normal, and in the middle of it all they inserted an internal fetal heart rate monitor so they could be sure to get a more accurate read on how our girl was doing.  With all this activity, they had taken me off the pitocin, so we had to start back from zero to try to get labor started again.  (At this point, I was feeling contractions, and it was not a ton of fun.)

So the contractions were coming and going, but not getting stronger, more regular, or closer together.  They had to start the pitocin back from zero after taking me off of it, so it was back to the drawing board.  We hit the 24 hour mark for being in the hospital, and baby girl still wouldn't budge.  Unfortunately, soon thereafter, during contractions, our girl's heart rate started dropping again.  After a few contractions of lowered heart tones, the nurses came in to put me on oxygen again and to try to see if laying in different positions would bring her heart rate back up.  They were worried that with my amniotic sac broken there wasn't enough cushion for the umbilical cord, and it was becoming constricted during contractions.  Flipping me in every direction still wouldn't get the heart rate back up, and the nurses were calling in reinforcements.  I was given a shot to stop all contractions and the nurses started frantically trying to get a hold of the doctor on duty.  He wasn't anywhere to be found, but luckily another OB was found in the halls who had just come by for a cup of coffee.  She was rushed in my room and soon decided that the baby needed to come out, and fast.

John and my mom were left in the room and they rushed me out on the bed I was laying in.  I heard the nurses start saying that someone needed to find an anesthesiologist, and all the while everyone was still looking for the doctor who was on duty.  I eventually (30 seconds later?) made it to an operating room where about 15 people were rushing around trying to get everything ready for the surgery.  I heard the doctor who had just come for a cup of coffee tell a nurse to let her 2:30 appointment know she was going to be late, and I remember them squirting lots and lots of iodine on my belly.  The anesthesiologist showed up and started explaining to me that they were going to put me under through the IV.  They kept trying to put an oxygen mask on me, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with it on, so I kept pushing it aside.  I assume I started going into some form of shock because my body kept shaking.  I was trying my hardest to stay calm because I knew that panicking would only make things worse.  Right before they put me under they were able to tell me that our baby's heart rate had actually already come back to normal levels, so I drifted off feeling confident she would be okay.  Two hours later I reappeared from the anesthesia haze and our baby had been born.  She had apparently been handed to John almost right away and he had spent the last two hours with him and the nurses.  I remember waking up and worrying that I hadn't been able to nurse her yet and that I hoped it hadn't ruined breast feeding somehow.  Luckily, they brought her over to me soon thereafter, and some wonderful nurse helped her get the feeding for which she had been waiting for two hours.  To my left John and a nurse were giving Orelia her first bath, and I kept complaining that I needed more pain medication (the morphine was apparently delayed for some reason).  I was more tired than I ever remember being, from the drugs, surgery, and staying up for over a day, but I was so thankful that our girl was healthy and doing well despite the big scare.

In child birth class, our instructor had told us that everyone feels like they have an "emergency" c-section when the c-section is unexpected.  She told us that unplanned c-sections are just that, unplanned.  A true emergency c-section happens within 5 minutes, where the husband doesn't even get a chance to be in the room.  Well, we qualified for a true emergency c-section, which scared the hell out of me and John, but we both went into it knowing how quickly they are capable of getting babies out when they need to.  I think from the time I was put under to the time Orelia was born was a total of 2 minutes.  We thank God for her every day, and we are so grateful to have been in a place where she and I were taken care of so well.

Baby Orelia Has Arrived

Our daughter has finally arrived, and we couldn't be happier.

Her name is Orelia Marie and she made quite an entrance into the world on Friday, August 10th, weighing 7 pounds, 4 ounces, and measuring 20.5 inches long.  I promise to write more about the name and the emergency C-section at another time.

We are halfway through our four-day stay at the hospital, trying to learn as much as we can from all the amazingly helpful nurses.  John is taking to fatherhood the way anyone who knows him knew that he would (i.e. he is a natural).

We couldn't love Orelia any more.