The Employed Housewife: Nathan is here! :)

Ok, fine, he didn't just arrive or anything, but I've been busy!

Nathan is already 5 weeks old, which I absolutely cannot believe! I know that several of the people that read my blog are on Facebook, so I know you've seen tons of my pictures, but I haven't really shared much about the experience.

If you read in my previous post, you know that I was scheduled to have a c-section on September 7th, and we were able to stick to that plan. The night before, I was really focus on getting the house clean one more time before the baby arrives, since, you know, newborns are rumored to keep parents busy.

We went to bed probably around 1:30am and we were awake around 3:45am so that we could get ready and be there by 5am. I took a shower, did my hair and make-up, because I thought I just may be somewhat presentable after the surgery if I did all of this before.

I didn't want to be late, and of course we were anxious, which made us get to the hospital about 20 minutes early. The hospital staff was like, "Um...you're early." Oops. Our bad, yo.

We got into our room and began the process of getting ready for surgery.

OMG, I was ginormous.

The surgery was scheduled for 7am, but there were some setbacks, so we didn't get into surgery until 11:30 or so. The surgery went really smoothly (Travis didn't pass out or anything!) and Nathan was born on Friday, September 7th at 12:28pm weighing 9lbs 3.4oz and measuring 20inches long. I can honestly say that seeing him for the first time was THE happiest moment of my life. I can't describe how it makes you feel, but it's the best feeling ever.

Nathan did have some troubles that we were expecting due to being a bigger baby and because there was a lot of amniotic fluid (which isn't a good thing, but we knew this in advance. The doctor never figured out what caused that though). The first problem is that with all of the fluid. During a c-section, the baby often gets startled when the pull him out, so his reaction is to inhale, getting fluid in his lungs. Nathan did exactly that, so he was put in a special nursery (not quite NICU), to be monitored and put on oxygen. The second issue was that bigger babies have trouble regulating their blood sugar, so they have to stay monitored for that. Because of the breathing stuff they had him on an IV until I could feed him myself, which I was thankful for.

It took him longer to have normal breathing than expected, so around 6pm on Friday they told us that they would have to keep him in the nursery overnight. At that point, I had only seen him for a minute in the operating room, so this was devastating news. I immediately asked them if I could go see him, and they said I could go as soon as I could get out of bed and into a chair without getting dizzy.

My immediate thought was, "Is that a challenge?" and my second thought, in the words of Barney Stinson,

I asked them for a wheelchair and managed to sit up (keep in mind that I had just had a surgery where they mess with your abdominal muscles!), and when the nurse asked if I was dizzy, I definitely lied and said no. I made the transition and we went to the nursery, but we couldn't hold him. He was hooked up to too much.

Although I hated not having him with us, the upside was that for my first night as a mother, I was able to get some rest, so I felt much better the next day. Around 10:30am, we were able to go see him again (this time I even walked about 15 steps!), and I was able to hold him for the first time, which was the 2nd best moment in my life.

While we were down there, they took him off of the oxygen because his breathing had regulated and I was able to feed him. I won't share pictures of that moment, but Travis got to give him a bottle of formula as well because they wanted to keep his blood sugar at the right level.

We eventually had to go back to our room without the baby, because they wanted to check me and then we had Travis' cousins Jaymi and Kyrie come to visit, so we stayed in our room for a while. Around 4:30pm, Jaymi and Kyrie decided they were going to leave, so we walked with them down to the nursery so I could go in and hold Nathan up in the window so they could see him better. It was at this time when the majority of Travis' family as well as mine showed up. I was holding the baby up so everyone could see him (because nobody had seen him yet without being hooked up to everything) and the nurse noticed the 5 zillion people looking at us through the window. She looked at me and said, "You know, he's doing really well. You can take him down to your room so he can visit with everyone."

Our First Family Photo

This was probably the best thing I had heard that day. She just told me that we would need to bring him back before each feeding to do a quick test. If he passed the next 2 tests, he'd be able to stay with us overnight, and he did. He slept remarkably well on Saturday night, and on Sunday they mentioned that we were ready to go home. You would think that I would have been ecstatic, but this is how the conversation went:

"Today? I figured we were going home tomorrow."

"Oh, do you want to wait until tomorrow? We have the room, so you can."

"Well, let us think about it."

A few minutes later I decided to stay the extra night. I just felt like we needed it since the whole first day of his life we weren't the ones taking care of him. I wasn't ready to give up the extra help. He did amazingly well all day on Sunday, slept just fine that night and Monday morning, we were feeling much more prepared to go home.

Heading home from the hospital!

We are really thankful that the nurse decided at that time to allow Nathan to come with us to our room because he was able to meet Dadow, Travis' maternal grandfather for the only time. Exactly one week later, Dadow passed away unexpectedly, and having the memory of Dadow meeting Nathan has brought us a great deal of comfort.

We have talked a lot about God's perfect timing, and Nathan's arrival is such a perfect example of that. Nathan was originally in the correct position, and for some reason, he turned the other way, which is what brought my doctor to decide to deliver him early. If he had been born on his due date, we would have had to do all of this while coping with a loss, which would have been so difficult. Having Nathan around while we grieved as a family made it a little easier for everyone, and we are so thankful for that.

Now, here we are, and Nathan is 5 weeks and 4 days old. Travis and I are adjusting to life as parents, and we are loving it! Sure, we have our moments (more me than Travis since he's returned to work) but there isn't a moment that goes by that I am not overwhelmed with the love I feel for this sweet baby.