Introducing Bryson and Kylie: March 2011

It's official. We have a beautiful, healthy baby boy as of Tuesday, February 22 at 9:10 PM! What an incredible journey it has been. He is such a joy to Mike and I, and we can't wait for him to meet everyone.

The labor and delivery went much smoother than I anticipated. After I uploaded my last post on the morning of Monday, February 21, I started having some pretty painful contractions around noon every three to five minutes. I called the doctor around 3:00, and she told me to head to the hospital. I called Mike and he was at my desk in record time. My coworkers were so excited for us, and it felt like a whirlwind gathering my things to leave. We got to the hospital, and they told me I had not dilated even a little bit. So after three days of consistent contractions, I had made zero progress. Great news…booo! My doctor came to check on me and gave us three options. 1. Induce me (with the disclaimer that 75% of inductions end up a c-section if the mother has not dilated). Not interested. 2. Have a c-section right then to take him since he was full term. Not interested. 3. Go home and wait it out until the next day – I had a doctor’s appointment the next day at 2:30. Interested. The doctor said to come earlier if the contractions become more intense.

So we go home and I continue having painful contractions into the night every few minutes. The next morning I had enough, so we called the doctor to say we were on our way. We met her at 9:00 that morning, and I had dilated to a one…finally PROGRESS! She said I can again wait it out, or they can induce me to get started. I was out of the 75% scary c-section rate since I had progressed a tiny amount. I chose to be induced. I was over the contractions. I was admitted and the induction started at 10:00. The doctor came by at noon to break my water, which was the weirdest feeling ever. Don’t worry, I’ll spare the details. Remember those contractions I was talking about that “hurt”? Well, after the water breaking occurred, my contractions immediately (within 3 minutes) almost brought me to tears. They were unbearable. I have a whole new respect for women that have had a natural childbirth. That’s for the birds! I had my epidural an hour later. It was the longest hour of the entire day. The anesthesiologist said it was possible it may not work or it may only work on one side. That was terrifying to think I may be in the natural childbirth category. So she gave me the epidural, which didn’t take. She did a number of tests to find out why, and she couldn’t figure it out. So she removed it and had to do it again. The second one didn’t take either. I was freaking out thinking how much worse this was going to get. Then she took one more look at the pump that gives the meds, and discovered it had a clamp on it that prohibited the meds from getting to me. Yep, it was that simple. A clamp! She apologized and said the nursing students must have put them on, because there is normally not a clamp. I could care less, because I couldn’t feel a thing! Thank you Lord from giving us epidurals!

The rest of the labor was super easy. The doctor determined I was ready to start pushing when I started feeling lots of pressure around 8:30 that night. The doctor said to rest for 15 minutes because I was going to have push for about an hour or two since this was my first baby. She said it would feel like I was running a marathon. I was prepared for this but started to get scared. She came back, and after pushing for 20 minutes, Bryson was born. He was blue, had a super cone head, and looked like the biggest, most beautiful baby ever! Mike cut the umbilical cord like a proud Daddy. He was 8.12 pounds. My doctor said had she known that he was so big, she would have given me a c-section. So I’m glad she didn’t know. I prefer the way he came.

The baby doctor put him on my chest, and I fell in love with our son immediately. I can’t express how amazing that moment was. To know that Mike and I were part of creating this precious baby was truly incredible. When they took him away to check him, I couldn’t stop staring at him. Watching Mike watch Bryson was also one of the sweetest moments. I could see how much he loved him too. The rest of the hospital stay was great. We learned a ton about how to care for him, and by the time Thursday came around, we couldn’t wait to be at home with Bryson without nurses and doctors coming in at all hours to check on us. Although the nurses were incredibly helpful, we were ready to do this on our own.

Bryson has been such a great baby. He is a grumpy pants sometimes, but he is generally an easy baby to take care of. Mike was able to take a week off to be with Bryson and I, which was the best help I could have asked for. I was intimated to take care of Bryson by myself, so Mike helped me ease into it. By the time Mike was going back to work, I felt mostly comfortable doing this on my own. It has its challenging moments, but they come few and far between the great ones. I look forward to what’s to come and look forward to sharing all the fun moments on here as well.

Here a few pics of our little man. It was hard to pick just a few out of the 594 taken to date, but here you go. Enjoy!