Brody is HERE!!!

We are sooo excited to shout from the rooftops that our sweet baby boy BRODY is here. He joined our family Friday March 6, 2009 and 3:40am 7lbs 20.5". (My dad wants to know why I always have to do these "middle of the night things") he he he

We got to come home on Monday and we (Brody and I) are so happy to not have anyone poking and prodding at us. So here is how it began including the middle and the end.

Thurdsay March 5th was our anniversary. I had been having contractions on and off for at least a month. Anyway we went to go see a movie and afterwards I told John that I think we would probably be having our baby that day. So he suggested that we go to the hospital, but I knew that as soon as you get admitted to the hospital you don't get ANYTHING to eat. So I decided it would be a better ideal for us to go to Tommy Bahamas. So we ate lunch and THEN went to the mall to buy a battery charger and then to the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital and went to the triage room where we were greeted by our crazy nurse who will remain nameless (cause I don't like her). She hooks me up to the monitors and tells Me to tell Her when I have a contraction because she wanted to feel them because, "the monitors don't really know when I (or anyone else) am/is having a contraction. (UGH OK) Then she asks what doctor Crowder had said I was dilated too and I said a 3 and effaced 80 to 90% to which she replied, "Oh you are at a 2 and only 40 to 50 effaced. Doctors always blow these things out of proportion" (Doctor Crowder doesn't "blow things out of proportion" The man is absolutely brilliant and has been delivering babies for decades. (I hold him on a pedestal can you tell) Anyway then the nurse proceeds to tell me about her life and how she's had 8 kids all naturally and she's glad she's only working a 4 hour shift cause she wants to go home and yadda yadda flipping yadda.

We get to the delivery room and Crowder breaks my water at 7:30 and I go into hard labor about midnight. At 2:30 I tell the nurse I feel ALOT of pressure and she checks and says we will wait another hour. At 3 I tell her NO and that the baby is coming. She calls Crowder and tells me not to push. So yes I do have an epidural, but the drugs just aren't working. I finally tell the nurse (oh yeah this one I really like by the way) that she has one more contraction for me to hold this baby in and she better get Crowder on the phone and tell him to run. He finally makes it into the room. Throws on the gloves and the cover shirt and in like 5 or 6 pushes BRODY was born. 3:40am.

The NICU is standing by in the room. They let me hold Brody for about 5 second and then take him away to the NICU. I am not really told anything at this point. All I know is that my baby is in the NICU and I am exauhsted. The rest is a but fuzzy but here is how I remember it. I remember a lady coming in an updating John, but I was too tired and out of it to hear. I had a bad reaction to the epidural and I was throwing up. Then later my parents came to visit and the chaplin comes in to say a prayer. I don't even know why he there cause I thought it would be just like Addison. Where he would spend a couple of hours in the NICU and then be ready to come home. So the chaplin says a prayer and I go into internal freakout mode. I don't think I let anyone know how much I am truly fraking out at this point. So I go to the NICU and there is my baby boy with an oxygen hood over him and he's hooked up to all these monitors. I learn that he's not grunting but that his respitory rate is elevated, but once they can get that under control he can come to the room. So they get his Res Rate under control, but then tell me he is hypoglycemic and can't come to the room. They have to put him on a feeding tube and I have to pump. I hate the pump, it's so not natural. So it's now Satuday night and they tell me once my milk comes in I can exclusively breastfeed with suplementation. So I finally got to nurse about 2 am on Sunday and then got to nurse thereafter. He got to come to the room Sunday around 11am and we finally got some bonding time. They still monitored his sugar levels but said we couldn't go home because he was jaundiced. UGH WHAT NEXT?!??!!? So they brought a bilirubin light blanket in for him to lie on just to bring his bilirubin levels down and Monday they checked his sugar and bilirubin levels and we were discharged by Dr Rivas the NICU doc. who is by the way absolutely awesome. So we got home Monday evening and it has been great.

Addison absolutely loves Brody. She wants to hold him all the time and feed him. It's so nice to write that because I really thought we were going to have trouble with her, but she has been so great. Brody is eating every 3 hours and weighed in yesterday at 6lbs 13oz. It's normal for them to lose a little weight when they come home.

So that's our story and here are some pics.