Braden Month by Month

I never realized how busy I would be with 3 kids 6 and under.  Life is for sure nuts to say the least.  These is always someone crying, complaining, whining, and in the bathroom at our house lately.  Mostly it is the bigger kids.  Hahaha.  Anyways my goal was to do monthly pictures of Braden to make a Photo Book when he turned 1.  So far I have only taken the picture for his birth and one month.  I am a huge slacker.  My short goal for today is to take his two month picture before he is 3 months on the 26th.  Sigh.

Here is what I have so far. 

Birth

 

1 Month

 

2 Months

 

The Arrival of Braden James

I am not exactly punctual when it comes to writing.  This story has been in progress for many weeks now.  Braden is almost 3 months old, so yeah, time has been flying.  I can't believe it has been almost a year since I found out I was pregnant.  We weren't sure we wanted a third.  Honestly I was convinced I wasn't going to have another child.  We had Daniel, but after he was born and I was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer 2008 I was told that I might not be able to have more kids.  2 years later in 2010 Matthew our second son was born.  Still after that I wasn't convinced.  Then the cold November day came when I stopped at Target to pick up a test cause you know, all the crazy symptoms I was having couldn't mean I was pregnant right?  2 lines said it all.  BOOM.  Baby number 3 was on its way.

This pregnancy was pretty, well, easy.  I haven't had the easiest pregnancies, complications with the other 2 were high.  I am not low risk, but I was able to switch from an OB to a Midwife before I became pregnant and having them for prenatal care made all the difference in the world.  I also had decided early on in this pregnancy that I was going to have a natural drug free childbirth.  I did research, talked to my friend for endless hours about it, and finally decided that I was going to go with the Hypnobabies Childbirth prep.  The course was great.  With it I was able to relax and keep pretty mellow during my pregnancy.  I was comfortable and had barely any issues until about 2 weeks before my due date.  I began to experience Prodromal Labor.  It is about as fun as it sounds.  Hours of contractions that pitter out just as you think that you are going into actual labor.  Like clockwork they would start around midnight and go on until about 4am.  I would wake up after barely sleeping to find that they had stopped.  The nights like this went on for about 10 days.  Thursday July 25th my husband (who works nights) happened to be home and we took the boys to the park early.  It was an very abnormally chilly summer day.  It was grey outside, but it had been so gross and hot for so long that I didn't care.  We had a blast.  I was running after Matthew and climbing the rock wall with him over and over.  The other women at the park were looking at me kind of horrified.  I wasn't huge, but when they asked how much longer till I was due and I said, "3 days."  Well you get the picture.  I felt a little off that day, but I hadn't been sleeping well for a while and I figured I was just tired.  Two days before this we had set up my induction date (since I am high risk and can't go much beyond 40 weeks) so I was convinced that I would have to be induced like I was with my 2 prior pregnancies.  You see, I have never went into labor on my own before.  I had no clue what to expect.  The rest of that Thursday was just as it always was.  We played, I cooked dinner, cleaned up, watched TV, and my husband put my older boys to bed at 9pm.  I dozed on the couch and my husband woke me up before he left for work at 11:30pm to tell me to go to bed.  I slept for a couple of hours and at 1:30am my 3 year old woke up crying so I carried him into my bed.  At that moment I got a painful contraction.  I brushed it off and went back to bed, but couldn't sleep.  I messed around on the iPad for a while and had a few more contractions.  They had no pattern, nothing to make me think it was "time".  Around 2:30am I was so tired and frustrated that I called my mom.  I had to complain to someone how frustrated I was that I was dealing with this pain but not having a baby.  I cried and cried.  My mom knew that something was up and asked if I wanted her to come over.  I told her no, that I was fine, and that I was going to try to go back to bed and I would call her when I woke up in the morning.  In hindsight, that whole conversation makes me laugh.  I kept having contractions here and there, but again they weren't in a pattern and there was nothing else going on to make me thing that I was in labor. 

Something changed at 4am.  A really BIG change.  I had 4 contractions.  The second was 15 minutes from the first, the 3rd was 5 minutes after that one, and then the 4th was 2 minutes after that.  All of a sudden I was getting intense contractions 2 minutes apart.  I called my mom and screamed at her to get here NOW.  Then I called my husband who was at work and told him he needed to get home.  He reminded me that I should probably call the midwife.  So there I was between contractions calling the midwife and my Mother-in-law, who was going to watch the boys.  By now it was almost 5am.  The midwife had told me to get a move on and to call her when we were on our way to the hospital.  My mom, husband and mother- in-law all walked through the door at the same time.  They found me in tears running around the apartment while my bewildered 3 year old whom I awoke with my moaning sat on the couch looking concerned.  My contractions were now 1.5 minutes apart but I insisted on a quick shower.  We left the house at 5:30am.  The morning was beautiful.  The world was still dark and still with just a faint rainbow light in the distance.  During the ride I listened to Hypnobabies and tried to zone out.  Honestly the ride was a blur.  The 2 things I remember clearly was my mom saying, "we aren't going to make it there," from the backseat and me texting my friend to let her know I was in labor between contractions.  Normally the ride to the hospital takes over 40 minutes but we made it there shortly before 6am.

Here is where things got funny.  Looking back now I remember laughing because everything was so ridiculous.  First, we screech into the drop off area outside Labor and Delivery and my husband ran to go get a wheelchair while I somehow managed to get myself out of the truck carrying my bag, cell phone, and iPad.  My poor mom who had white knuckled the ride up thinking I would deliver on the side of Route 287 was stuck in the truck because of the child safety locks and was cursing like a sailor.  My husband brought the wheel chair and I sat down piling everything in my arms on top of myself and while he freed my panicked mom, I began wheeling myself into the hospital moaning through contractions.  What a bunch we were.  Luckily for me it was a quiet night there (just for reference they delivered 400 babies in July which was a record for MMC) and they took me right back to one of the Midwife labor rooms with a birth tub.  As we rounded the corner my Midwife was standing in the hallway waiting for us.  The first thing out of her mouth was, " oh good, I was worried you had the baby on the highway."  Everything started moving fast at that point and my memory was hazy.  They had me undress and started filling the birth tub.  My husband had went to go park and while he was gone they checked me.  I was almost 9 centimeters and my water had broken at some point cause she felt hair.  At that moment I realized that I was going to HAVE to give birth without an epidural.  I mean I wanted to, but I always felt like that was an option if things got painful, but I was determined.  Within 10 minutes of being there I was fully dilated.  There was no time to fill the tub, no time for an IV and the antibiotics I was supposed to have, and barely anytime to process it.  Pushing was hard.  I was unprepared for the burning and the pain.  I kept closing my legs bad telling my mom that I changed my mind and didn't think I could do it.  I almost broke my mom's hand as I pushed.  I pushed for about 14 minutes and Braden was born.  While he was coming out the nurse asked me if I wanted a mirror to see, my exact words were, "HELL NO!"  I was too focused on getting him out.

He came out yelling.  We were at the hospital only about 24 minutes before he was born at 6:24am on Friday,  July 26th.  We chilled for a while, waited for the cord to stop pulsing before my husband cut it. Braden looked tiny, skinny even, which was a change from my second son who seemed huge at 8lbs 13oz.  When they finally took him to be weighed we were shocked the the was 8lbs 12oz.  The reason he looked so thin was that he was over 22 inches!!!!!

We spent 2 days in the hospital.  The only issue that Braden had was a broken collar bone from the delivery.  He healed quickly and has proven to be a really good baby.  For the first month all he did was nurse and sleep.  His big brothers have adjusted in the past almost 11 weeks since he has been home. My 6 year old is especially good with him.

Our family is complete.

Some Changes

Well as always life has gotten busy and I decided to stop posting on my old blog and start on a new one.  It is always hard to think of stuff to write about and stay focused long enough to write about it.  I guess the easiest thing for me to write about would be my boys.  They pretty much occupy all of my time and brain space at the moment.  They are wild, smart, funny, and totally adorable (my totally biased opinion by the way).  My hopes with this new blog is to find a couple of followers who will like to read what I have to say.  It is hard as a mom to feel heard in this world (not that you can hear anything over my kids screaming most of the time) and it is even more difficult to feel like you aren't alone.  Hopefully this blog will be interesting.  My life certainly is.