How can it be…7 weeks!

Seven weeks…Really?  They say the time goes by fast but I never could have imagined it to be this fast!  Week 7 was a pretty chill week for the baby and myself.  A side note about KC.  I started bleeding pretty heavily when we were there so the Tuesday after we got back I had my 6 week postpartum check up to get cleared for exercising and to make sure my recovery was going as smoothly as it should have been going.  Well, unfortunately my doc. was not pleased that I was still bleeding and told me that was very odd.  She decided to schedule me for an ultrasound on Friday to go in and see what was happening.  She warned me that the worst case scenario would be that I’d have to have a D&C (surgery) to clean out my uterine lining so that the blood would stop.  My mind always goes to worst case so of course I was preparing myself for bad news.  Once we got home from the doc. Emmett and I decided to get Daddy’s Father’s Day gift ready.  I found this idea on Pinterest and took several photos to fit into a picture frame spelling something.

So creative right!?

We also caught Sadie and Emmett becoming best friends.

He was still so much smaller than her!

We also went to a BBQ in the park for a bit and when we got home we did this:

We had to catch some z’s because Father’s day was the next day!  I went and looked for Chad’s gift for over an hour.  I knew what I wanted to get him but didn’t know the brand or type.  He ended up picking this out at a later date:

That is one happy dad!  We ended up going over to my parents house for dinner and to celebrate.  My dad got a gift card from me to Starbucks.  We also had dinner with some of my parents friends who’s kids all live out of state.

Backing up to Friday, I did have my ultrasound and they found that there was still placenta leftover in my uterus which basically means that it was growing and needed to come out.  My body was still bleeding trying to get rid of it but the placenta was still thriving there.  My doctor scheduled a D&C for the following Wednesday.  More on that later.

Week 6, a very BIG week!

This was a big week for Emmett because not only was it his first plane ride, it was his first visit to Kansas City to meet friends and family!  I also caught a few smiles on camera.

And some snooze time was also caught on camera.

This week we basically just got ready for our trip.  E and I met up with one of my dearest friends who I went to college with for some much needed girl time and wine.

Wednesday we went up to Boulder and met cousin Becky for the first time for lunch and to see my mom and meet some of my mom’s co-workers to show E off to.  Becky said that she now knows what love at first site is.  There were no photos because Emmett slept the entire lunch so Becky didn’t get to hold him but maybe next time.  After lunch I went back to my mom’s office with her and then we drove back up to Denver together.  We had a lot to do to get ready for the trip so I think we were up until almost midnight.  We didn’t have to be at the airport for our flight until 8:30ish but we had to get up super early to make sure we were there in plenty of time to get checked in since we heard that everything takes longer with a baby.  Thank goodness my parents offered to take the dog the day before and my dad offered to take us to the airport.  He came by to pick us up around 6am.  When we got to the airport we thought we were golden.  We went to go check a bag and then they saw that we had a baby and asked whether or not we had his boarding pass…excuse me!?  They wanted to see his immunization records or his birth certificate, neither of which we had.  We hadn’t even gone to pick his birth certificate up!  They told us they’d let us on “just this once” but that we HAD to have it when we came  back.  Ok, whatever.  We were a bit nervous traveling with him but it honestly was a non issue.  He slept through the entire flight.  I even had my boob already to go to feed him.  He didn’t wake up once!  I actually decided to wake him up mid flight to feed him so that I wouldn’t have to do it at the airport in KC.  He was such a great traveler!

After arriving in KC we headed back to Chad’s parents house for some Gma and Gpa Baudoin bonding time for a bit before I had to race off to meet my aunt and cousin for lunch on the plaza.  It was my aunt Kim’s first time meeting Emmett and she was bursting at the seems to get some quality time with him.

We had lunch at the Classic Cup down on the plaza.  Emmett also had some sort of a growth spurt this weekend too because I had prepared some bottles for him so that I wouldn’t have to whip out my boob in front of people in public.  He ate his normal 3oz serving from the bottle than was still majorly fussy so I fed him and he ate off of me for 30 minutes!  Crazy!  He continued to do this throughout the remainder of the weekend so we decided to up his intake to 5oz.  He has been doing well on this amount ever since.

After visiting Kim and Lara for lunch we headed over to see Emmett’s Great Grandma Thomas.  She is in a nursing home and totally not with it but it was fun to see her interact with him and grab some photos with her anyways.

After we were done visiting with the members of my side of the family, I drove back to the Baudoin’s for dinner and for Emmett to meet his other Great Grandma and great aunt Nancy.

Chad’s entire family was over to some nice grill time.  We also learned from Chad’s sister that another member of the family is due to make his or her appearance in late January!

That night was a ton of fun with the great news!  The next morning was really nice.  We just got up and enjoyed being with extra help aka grandma and grandpa!  We also just took it super easy.  Grandma and Grandpa took us to a delicious place in KC called yogurtini which is a soft serve yogurt place and then Chad and I came home and took a massive nap while Chris and Charles prepared dinner.  We had tilapia and sweet potatoes and salad.  Very simple and very delicious.  After dinner Chad and I went to make a wine run for a bota box.  This is simply delicious and very cost effective.  There are 4 bottles of wine to be enjoyed for just under $20 a box.  We came home and enjoyed a few glasses of wine before bed with Chris and Charles.

The next day was the day of Emmett’s big event!  This should include a post all on it’s own but since it’s part of his 6/7 weeks on earth, it will be posted here.

My sister in law was ever so gracious and wanted to throw us a “sip n’see” or a party to see the baby after his birth.  We called it an open house and it was from 4-7pm on Saturday.  It was absolutely wonderful.  Cara has the most wonderful decorating sense.  I could never pull off a party as well as she can.

People came from near and far (ok really just near) to meet Emmett.  We had such a fantastic time.  Almost every single person we invited came to see this little dude!  Rather than us having to make a run all over the city to visit people, they all came to us.  One and done.  Really everything was just amazing.  And I couldn’t have asked for a better time.  I just wish we had gotten more pictures with every one who had come.  It was such a whirlwind (like parties for you usually are).  I really hate not being able to devote more attention to everyone.  I’m pretty sure Emmett was held by 50 different people that day.  He did such a great job and was such a good baby.  We were able to feed him two bottles during the 3 hour party (although some people overstayed the time limit) and he was happy.  After everyone finally left we sat around with with family to talk for a bit then parted our separate ways.

Sunday was also a great day.  We did some of this:

and A LOT of this

Chad’s family LOVES to sit and talk for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours….Ok you get the point 🙂

We also headed to the pool with Beckett right before his afternoon nap and also ate some leftovers from the party for lunch.

We had Jambalaya coming out of our ears.  We also finished up the cake and cookies from the party.  Chris’s side of the family was having their own little float trip reunion so they weren’t able to make it to the party on Saturday so they dropped by Sunday to meet the baby as well.  I’m pretty sure we sat in the basement and talked for 8 hours straight.  Chad and I were in bed around midnight that night.  Over the weekend we also found some pretty funny photos of when Chad was a baby to compare to Emmett.

Chad went from this

To this in just a few short weeks…

Chad was HUGE as a child.  He weighed 6lbs 6oz at birth and ballooned up to this little chunker.  He doesn’t look anything like Emmett but my mom and I swear E looks much more like a Baudoin than a Neidt.

Monday we didn’t do much either.  We went to lunch with Chris and Charles and just hung out until we had to get to the airport.  Cara took a few beautiful photos of Emmett

Wow, what a weekend!  Back to Denver we went.  I’d say it was a successful weekend all in all but obviously we were all very worn out!

The many faces of Emmett

Just to break up the weekly update posts here is just a fun one…

That’s my boy!  Love love LOVE him 🙂

Weeks 4-5 or 1 month!

How do 4 weeks go by without even blinking!?  I decided to do monthly photo updates to track Emmett’s growth so this month tracks the first time of taking his month pictures.  My oh my how he’s grown into such an adorable little newborn.

That was at the end of the 4th week going on into the 5th week as the 27th fell on a Sunday.  Entering into the 4th week my running was still going strong and I was almost running at what I had been running at before I got pregnant.  My weight was back to pre pregnancy weight I just wanted to be as toned as I was pre pregnancy so the running was what was going to get me there.  Unfortunately it rained on Tuesday of this week.  No big deal, I’ll just do Jillian Michael’s 30 day shred!  I did that and it felt pretty good!  I was super sore afterwards but proud of myself for keeping up.  The next day was nice and sunny so I went for a run before Chad went to work.  Later that day, it was around 1pm, I felt a huge gush.  I ran to the bathroom and it was tons of blood.  That did it for me.  I decided that day, then and there, that I would not run until I got the clearance from my doctor.  I took it easy the rest of that day.  The rest of the week was pretty uneventful.  We got together with friends and decided on Sunday that we needed to go to church or at least find one we liked.  We found a Unitarian church and we loved it.  Afterwards we went to grab some coffee then headed home.  I ended up doing a 10 mile walk that day!  We went to a bbq at some friends house later that night.

Chad being the super dad that he is decided he’d take on all things baby wearing.

We also took Emmett shopping for a new hat this week since his one that Chad got me for Mother’s Day didn’t exactly fit.

We also did more of this

This week we also met back up with our friend Oliva!

And we started smiling!

We also took a trip to the airport to meet cousin Lara!

After meeting up with Lara, we went to meet up with my parents and Chad for happy our and dinner downtown.  Emmett was having “witching hours” about this point and so no one knew whether or not he’d be fussy or not during the evening hours from about 4:30pm-8pm.  Well tonight was not that night for Emmett.  He cried and fussed and wanted to be held until he went to bed.  Oh well, you win some, you lose some.  He was only about 4 and 3/4 weeks old at that point.  What can you expect!?  He’s generally a good boy so mommy doesn’t complain too much when he fusses 🙂

I also went to my first “play group” this week at the church.  I honestly didn’t like it too much and probably won’t be going back.  I was bored and there wasn’t much to talk about since all the babies were much older than Emmett.  There was one baby that was about a week younger than E there but we really didn’t have too much in common.  When I returned back from my play group, we went over to my parents for dinner.  It was a super rainy night and was nice to go to a big cozy house were someone else cooked us dinner.  We also headed back to church this week and to coffee afterwards.  We also still have a dog.  She has been neglected ever since bringing Emmett home.  She actually had a horrible time with him the first several weeks.  She has now realized that he isn’t going away.  I don’t think she’s thrilled about that but she at least has learned to cope.

I wish so badly that I could explain every single detail in my days.  I forget a lot of what has gone on but this has honestly been the best time of my life.  I LOVE being a mom and having a baby all to myself.  If I remember other details, I’ll go back and edit the posts to show for it.  I love even remember back to May and recalling all these tiny events that have happened in our lives.

And another week…Week 3

Week 3 started off with a bang.  My brother and his girlfriend were still in town for the start of week 3 so we packed it up and headed over to my parents house to hang out with them one last day.  We went to lunch and I honestly felt pretty good since I had so much help over the weekend.  After lunch we went shopping and then back to my parents house to eat one last dinner with Chad and say our goodbyes.

Emmett was pooped!  Needless to say he started sleeping pretty well from here on out.  I decided that he was finally old enough to space his feedings every 4 hours or so.  This seemed to train him better for sleeping through the night.  I found that the feedings started to become once around 1-2am and then again around 4-6am.  Not too bad, especially since this was the week that dad started feeding E!!

This has proved to be extremely helpful.  It was so nice for the next few weeks since one of us would take the 1-3am feeding and the other one would take the 4-6am feeding.  Unfortunately this week I had another blood clot episode but it didn’t last long.  I was still able to maintain and every other day running schedule.  I also found some sort of nodule thing on the back of Emmett’s head so I went to take him into the doc. for a quick look.  It turned out to be nothing but here he is at the doc.  He had gained 10oz since his last appointment just 6 days before!!

Thank goodness it was nothing.  It was something that babies just have sometimes.  Apparently my sister in law still has some nodules on the back of her head that she was born with.  After this doc’s appointment we met up with some of Emmett’s newest friends.  These ladies were in my natural birth class with me and so far there were 5 of us that had already had our babies so we decided to meet up at the Botanic Gardens to talk about our birth stories and have some social interaction outside of emails.

I can assure you that we all look much better now that our babies are sleeping through the night!  All our our kids were born with in 8 days of each other.  No one shares the same birthday.  Mary’s baby (left) was born on April 25, Michelle’s baby was born on May 1, Rachel’s baby was born on April 22 and E was born on April 27.  It was so fun to compare stories and relate with people who are going through the exact same thing as you.

Finally by the end of the week we were doing a lot of this…

And just overall being cute all weekend long!

That about wraps up week 3!  Nothing too new, just more sleep and exercise.  Oh and a whole lot more love 🙂

Week 2 with a new baby

Obviously these posts are written 2 plus months after the fact but I can still remember clear as day what was going on during week 2 with a newborn.  Chad informed me on Monday night going into Tuesday that he was going to go into work.  I was actually terrified but seeing as how I didn’t need hardly any help (his parents left the Monday after E was born) he figured he’d start going into work the 2nd week.  The original plan was for Chad to take 2 full weeks off but we were doing so well the first week of E’s arrival that Chad figured it would be no big deal if he were to go in.  I stressed all night long over it.  In the morning I was so scared.  I didn’t want him to leave.  To be 100% honest it was no big deal.

We did a lot of this during that second week without Chad.  My mom made us dinner and my dad brought it over.

I also brought out the baby bjorn for the first time!

We had our 2 week appointment…

I got the clearance from the doctor to start pumping so I ran out and immediately got a the Pump N’ Style so that I could start pumping and not be completely tied to E 24 hours a day.  So far it’s been amazing!  I also made cookies for the nurses that helped deliver Emmett and made us feel so wonderful.  I made a batch of chocolate chip and a batch of peanut butter.  This is how most of my cooking gets done…

We also met uncle Chad who came in from CA to meet his newest favorite nephew!

Uncle Chad helped a ton!  We went shopping, to Chipotle to get some grub, to Starbucks and then to go pick daddy up to spend the weekend up at our parents house for Mother’s Day.

We had a great weekend with one minor scare.  I actually had run about 5 miles on Thursday and then took a rest day on Friday to hang out with my brother.  Saturday morning was also a rest day.  I went to feed E and then change his diaper and when I got up I felt something coming out from “down there”.  I handed Emmett off to Chad and ran to the toilet.  As I was pulling my pants down two very large tangerine size clots passed.  I had blood everywhere and was completely scared and shocked out of my mind.  My bleeding had almost completely stopped so this was very odd and scary for me.  I was terrified and so was Chad.  We were convinced we’d need to go to the hospital so I stared getting clothes on and so did Chad.  Thank goodness we were at my parents house because my mom was the voice of reason.  She told us to chill out and she googled clotting.  She told me first and foremost to call my doc. to see what they say.  I did and they told me as long as I wasn’t soaking a pad in an hour that I’d be fine.  Turns out, I was fine 🙂  I took it easy the rest of the day and let me mom completely baby me.

Later that afternoon E attended his first party!  It was a graduation party from college for a girl in the neighborhood that I used to babysit for.  We didn’t let anyone hold Emmett because his immune system was still so fragile.  He slept the entire time.  I think we were there for about 4-5 hours.  When we got home I fed him and then we had Garbonzo’s for dinner.  The next day E met his friend Olivia for the first time.

She wasn’t too thrilled at that moment.  Olivia is my friend Amanda’s baby.  Olivia was born on April 4, almost exactly 3 weeks before Emmett.  Amanda and I were roommates in Vail when we were lifties and became fast friends.  We lost touch for a few years until she moved down to Denver from Vail.  It has been really fun watching our babies grow together!  Amanda lives in my parents neighborhood so it’s been nice being able to see her when we go over there.  I was able to meet up with Amanda on Mother’s Day for a quick walk around the block.

Mother’s Day this year was great.  Chad gave me wine, a gift certificate to Macy’s for a new swim suit and new swimming gear for Emmett.  Emmett gave me a travel coffee mug!  He is so thoughtful!!  He also gave me a card and even signed it!  We had a nice dinner of ribs, potato salad, and baked beans.  It was a feast for sure.  We finally said our goodbyes and made it home.  I’d say it was another successful week!

What I’ve been up to…The first week

I’m so far behind on posting that I don’t even know where to start.  I have been on Maternity leave since the birth of my son.  July 20th will mark exactly 12 weeks of being gone from work.  My last day of work was actually April 24 because I worked from home on the 25th, had false labor on the 26th and had my son on the 27th.  I can and can’t believe my time is already over.  I’m both sad and excited.  Sad because I really really REALLY don’t want to go back to work and happy because the sooner I go back to work, the sooner I get to quit.  The place I work has a policy that I must go back for 30 calendar days or else I’ll have to pay back all my maternity leave.  All I have to do is work that amount to get all my leave paid for.  UGH.  I hate that I have to do this.  Luckily we have some pretty amazing family members who are willing to come and help us through those 4 weeks that I have to be gone from my baby.  My aunt and mom will be helping out the first 2 weeks and my in laws will be taking the second 2.  Thank goodness for family because the thought of child care sickens me.  I know there are plenty out there that are fabulous but the cost is outrageous!  I’m going to tell my boss tomorrow that I don’t plan on coming back after the 30 mandatory days and have been stressing out about it and losing sleep over it for some time now.  I can’t wait to just get it over with.

I’d love to go over all the things that I’ve done over maternity leave and why I call it a vacation rather than work.  It’s been fantastic.  I wasn’t sure how I’d do with the whole stay at home mom thing but so far so good 🙂  First of all I get to hang with this guy all day long:

Oh my goodness, he just melts my heart!  But while I’m at it, let’s revisit the first week that I was home…

We were discharged from the hospital on Sunday, April 29.  I was so excited to go home and just be with my baby.  No nurses or doctor’s around, just us!  It was nice having them there in case we had questions but I’ve wanted to be a mom pretty much since I could talk so to have a baby all to myself really excited me.  Remember all my food aversions?  Every single one went out the door as soon as he came out.  When we got home I was very tired but felt SO good.  My in laws were already at our condo so I was able to pass E off to them and go take a nap.

Chad and I both got some much needed sleep.  When we woke up we got to making dinner.  We invited my family over as well and had pizza and salad. I was so excited to be able to eat raw eggs again in the form of dough and batter that I decided to make brownies.  While everyone mingled after dinner and held E, I made brownies and ate the batter 🙂  Once everyone left, it was just us…Night #1 with just us 3!  My sister in law had mentioned that her first night she was so overwhelmed she cried so I was expecting to have a similar experience.  Everything went swimmingly except for the fact that I am terrified of SIDS and would check on him every 1.2 seconds.  We tried to get him to sleep in the bassinet next to our bed but I was so paranoid that we ended up sleeping with him like we did in the hospital-on our chests with pillows packed around us.  We did this for the next few nights as well until I read more on SIDS and the rate actually INCREASES if the baby sleeps in the bed with you.  After I read that E went in the bassinet and has been there ever since.  We’d loved to transition him into his own room but it’s just too hot right now for him to be in there so maybe once summer ends he’ll have his own big boy room 🙂

The first week Chad took completely off from work and we took many walks, went to the mall several times, took E to his first doc’s appointment (he had gained back all of his birth weight and then some!), cooked some meals together and just enjoyed one another’s company.  Chad even mentioned at one point how much he’d love to be a stay at home dad.  It was very very nice.  My mom was also over almost every single night.  It was a bit stressful looking back at it all because everything was so new and we were all so sleep deprived.

I cried a lot because of happiness and of course the littlest things tipped me off so I’d cry because of that.  I even lost my bra at one point and threw a temper tantrum!  I thought I was going to punch a hole in the wall!  I dreaded nights the most because I knew that I’d be up every 2 hours and it was tough to put E down and not be able to watch him breathing.  I still get nervous about night time but have zero problems falling asleep these days!

That first week was just trying to get acclimated to our new life.  I really can’t say that much has changed.  We just sort of forced E into our life and so far he’s just gone with the flow.  I jumped into running the Sunday after we got home with a little soreness.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you that 2.5 miles is easy!  That used to be my cool down run!  I had to walk about 1/2 of that distance!  I would say week 1 was a complete and total success!

Sick

I’m sick today.  I haven’t been sick in months.  I think the last time I felt sort of even close to this was the weekend of my baby shower.  It’s so strange.  It came on so quickly!  Last night when I was nursing my precious boy I started developing a sore throat that seems to have developed into a full blown cold.  Ugh.  At least it’s a rainy day.  Days like today make me want to sip my coffee and stare at this little face for hours:

April 27, 2012

The pushing started and I immediately felt relief.  The problem was that my contractions were still only 6 minutes apart.  I think that worked in my favor because I was able to gain my energy back after each push.  When I first started pushing the nurse asked if I wanted a mirror to see what was going on.  I remember people saying that it helps motivate you to have a mirror so I thought it would be a great way to see my progress.  They put the mirror down there and I looked as I pushed.  I would see the lips open up and then close.  They even had me put my hand down there to feel the head and the hair.  I couldn’t feel anything.  I was so out of it and so low on energy at this point I wasn’t sure how I was going to get the baby out.  Chad kept trying to get me to drink water because the nurse and doctor expressed concern that I could be dehydrated.  He kept putting a straw up to my mouth.  I could barely open up my mouth enough for him to get the straw in there to drink anything.  I couldn’t even talk to him.  I was also so hot that I tore off my hospital gown and was completely naked.  I did keep asking the nurse and doctor if my progress was normal or if I was making any progress at all.  I kept looking at my bikini line in the mirror and kept thinking how easy it would have been to just make an incision right there for a c-section.  I also kept asking “are you sure this baby is going to come out?!”.  The doc. assured me that the baby would be coming out vaginally.  It was absolutely horrible.  I was so discouraged.  The doctor would even leave for several minutes at a time.  When the doctor would leave, I’d give up all while thinking “there is no way I would deliver this baby if she wasn’t here”.  I would keep pushing but wouldn’t try nearly as hard as I would have had she been in there.  I think the longest stretch was 20 minutes.  I was left with Chad and the nurse.  I finally had them take the mirror away because it didn’t seem to be helping me out much. I tried numerous positions to help and get this baby out.  I even tried standing up and squatting using a birth bar to try and help things move along.  Nothing seemed to be working and standing used up SO much more energy than lying down did.  I finally decided that the best position for me would be to squat while leaning up against the bed.

Once the doctor finally came back in she stayed in.  She also noticed that the little guy wasn’t doing well.  Every push, his heart beat would go down to about 40 beats per minute.  This wasn’t a huge problem, but it was a problem.  The doctor decided to go ahead and ask if she could hook me up to a saline solution to stop me from dehydrating, a pitocin drip to get the contractions closer together, and oxygen to help get me and the baby through this whole experience.  I agreed to all.  Chad kept asking me “Linds, are you sure you want all these interventions?!”  He was so good at making sure this is what I wanted.  At this point I didn’t care.  I wanted to do WHATEVER it took to get this child out.  It hurt so much.  The doctor also asked me if I’d like a local anesthetic put in on my perineum in case I tore.  I decided that as long as it wasn’t an epidural (it wasn’t) that I would go ahead and have her numb the area as I had a feeling that I would probably tear.

The next phase all is very fuzzy.  It’s almost like I blacked out or had an out of body experience of sorts.  I remember things speeding up all of a sudden.  After the pitocin started, the contractions felt like they were non stop.  I felt like I was just in a constant state of having to push and if I wasn’t pushing the pain was so unbearable I thought I would pass out.  I kept pushing and pushing.  I don’t even know how I had the energy to keep going.  I remember them repositioning me to get into baby time position.  They were all encouraging me and kept saying “keep pushing Lindsey, he’s almost here!”  They kept telling me only a few more pushes.  This really motivated me so I just kept pushing and going.  I had no clue how much progress I was making at this point.  I felt something slide out and saw him on my chest.  Someone said to me “hold onto him Lindsey”.  I was in so much shock that I had no idea how I had a baby on my chest.  I instantly snapped back into reality and had a surge of energy at this point.

I was so happy that it was all over.  The first thing out of my mouth to Chad was “F*@% this natural birth $hit!”  It was the hardest, toughest, most difficult thing I have ever done in my life and I’m convinced I’ll never ever go through anything else more physically demanding in my life.   I’m so proud of myself for doing this naturally.  I am not sure if the next one will be medicated but I do know that my recovery was nothing short of miraculous.  I’m not sure whether to attribute that to the fact that I did this naturally or not.  I knew all along that I could do it and that an epidural was out of the question.  I’m not sure why I felt so strongly about doing this naturally but once I get an idea in my head I almost never go back on it.  I just kept telling myself the entire time that I could do it.  I must do it.

When the baby was put on my chest, I looked at my husband who’s eyes were filled with tears and asked him “is this Emmett Thomas?”  He replied “yes, it’s Emmett Thomas”.  I has thought I would also be filled with tears but I don’t think I had anything left to give.  I was so worn out that I was just so happy it was finally over.  I look back at that evening and though I didn’t feel the oxytocin pumping through my veins at that very moment, I know it was there.  After he was born, they put him on my chest and I just started at him.  They let me hold him for about 30 minutes before taking him to clean him off and take his measurements.  I was in pure and utter shock that I created this perfect human.  Everything about him was/is just amazing.  After they took him off of me, there was miconium everywhere (baby poop).  He had pooped all over my chest.  They took him away and weighed and measured him.

6lbs 7oz and 20.5in.  I was so amazed that I created such a tiny human being.  He was only 1 day early and so so tiny!  The rest of the night was filled with visitors.

I must say that the rest of the night continued to be the most incredible night of my life.   My parents were also there but we didn’t have any pictures of them holding E.  Our parents were in the waiting room from 10:30am-12:15am.  They were all such troopers.  They kept taking bets on when the baby would make his grand entrance.  Apparently the doctor told them that he’d most likely be here by 7pm Friday night.  Once we had him, I breastfed him (45 minutes on ONE side!!) and then had them come back to see him.  They only stayed for another 30 minutes at most to hold him and say hello to their new grandson.  Everyone was SO tired.  Once they all left, the nurses took us into our recovery room and spouted off a million and one different directions.  One thing I do remember was that I would be cold and shivering uncontrollably and probably would not sleep at all during the night.  The shivering started immediately after she told me about it.  I also remember having a turkey sandwich to eat.  Wow, when you haven’t eaten in over 24 hours, the most incredibly thing is a turkey sandwich.  I was also allowed to sleep with the new baby on my chest for the entire night.  I just remember waking up every 15 minutes to look at him, kiss his head, cuddle him, whatever I could do to sneak a peak at the newest addition.  I wanted it to be morning so badly so that I could talk to Chad about the whole experience.  I couldn’t wait to see family and friends the next day.

I can truly say, without a doubt this was the most challenging and yet most rewarding experience of my life thus far.  I know it can only get better from here and now a few months removed from the experience I can honestly say I’d like to try natural again.   Let’s just hope the NEXT one is a bit shorter 😉

We love you more than you will ever know Emmett Thomas.