Brandon Arvid - take two

Whenever I get behind in my blogging, and then finally get around to it again, I always want to catch up on everything all at once, but when I do that, I don’t feel like I give enough attention to each event and if I do, then you, my dear readers, end up with an insanely long post to read. So, I decided on a solution. I’m going to write the whole blog today, but then post a piece of it each day this week, so that you’re not completely overwhelmed by a super long blog all at once. How’s that for ingenious?!

So, I should probably start off by personally introducing you to the newest member of our family. I know Sterling did a great little post about it, but now it’s my turn. If you don’t care to know all the details of my labor and delivery, then stop reading now and just come back tomorrow.

I started having contractions Thursday morning. Nothing major, but every couple of hours or so they would become fairly regular. About five minutes apart for two hours, then they’d stop almost completely for another two hours, then they’d be back. I had a doctor appointment that day and mentioned to him about my contractions and about how fast my previous two were. He told me that I didn’t look like someone who was in labor. Ha, I thought to myself, I’ll show him! And I did!

I was hoping to have Brandon come on the 24^th because then all five us of would have been born on an even day in an even year (Sterling and I are also even months, and the kids are all odd months), but Brandon decided not to cooperate on that. He missed the deadline by 1 hour and 49 minutes. Oh well. Someone did point out in the comments from the last post that I did want Brandon to come on Memorial Day weekend. At least he met those expectations. Isn’t he an obedient child!

By evening my contractions hadn’t gotten much stronger and were still only occasionally regular, so Sterling and I just went to bed. Right about midnight the contractions woke me up because they’d started to get painful. I got up because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep again. My mom was staying with us, which was great because otherwise we would have had to call someone to come stay with the kids while we went to the hospital and by the time they arrived, Brandon would have been here too. She was still up, so she and I chatted for about an hour before she decided to finally go to bed. She said that if we left for the hospital, that I should just come let her know. About fifteen minutes after she went to bed, I finally decided to wake Sterling up and get going.

I brushed my teeth, packed a bag, got some snack food for Sterling, then pulled him out of bed and made him get dressed. (Quick side note, Sterling has worn the same shirt for all three of our kids births. Yes, it was done on purpose. He jokes that by looking at the pictures that we won’t be able to tell the difference. Never mind that he has a goatee right now.) The pictures are a little blurry for some reason. Crappy camera, I suppose.

Anyways, so by this time, I was in a lot of pain. As we’re getting our shoes on, I mentioned to Sterling that I had the urge to push. Now I finally get what medical personnel mean when they say that. We hurried downstairs and out to the car. I had to pause before climbing in the car when a big, painful contraction hit. A car passed us as we stood there and we realized it was an ambulance. Nice to know they’re around when you might need them.

Sterling drove like a madman to the hospital, blowing through three or four red lights to get there. He dropped me off and went to park the car and I waddled my way up some stairs to the elevator (which is by far the slowest elevator in the entire world!) and into the delivery room. Fortunately they were expecting me and got me straight into a room. Also fortunately, we had a false alarm a couple weeks before, so we’d already been to the hospital and had gotten all our paperwork done and everything, so it was all relatively easy.

They put me in a room and told me to get changed into a hospital gown. I immediately asked about getting an epidural. I had one with both Cami and Austin and I was in so much pain that I did not want to go without. I was told that first the hospital had to get a full liter of fluid in me via IV and they had to get some blood tests back from a lab before they could give me an epidural. Generally the process takes about an hour and a half. And I’m thinking: are you freaking kidding me?!

Sterling arrived to see me dressed, standing next to the bed. I couldn’t make myself climb up on it. Up until this point I’d been in pain, but hadn’t cried at all. Then my water broke. It was at that moment that I realized that this baby was coming and that I was going to have to do it all without an epidural. It was then that I started to cry.

That only lasted about two minutes though until the next contraction hit. The nurses and Sterling manhandled me up onto the hospital bed and the midwife came in to check me. She said it was all happening now. She began to scrub down to deliver when my doctor came rushing in. He’d been on call at the hospital, otherwise I don’t think he would have made it. Keep in mind that we arrived at the hospital at roughly 1:25 and I started pushing at 1:33. It was all very quick. They didn’t even have time to start an IV. It was also so fast that I didn’t get a last pregnant picture of me in the hospital gown. Not that I was really worrying about that at the time.

So the doctor got there and scrubbed up in record time. I started pushing. I’ve seen lots of movies where a woman gives birth and in the movies she’s always screaming. (Why women in movies don’t get epidurals, I’ll never know.) What I do know is that the screaming that they do is very, very realistic. I was certainly screaming. Then my doctor (a man) yelled, yes yelled, at me to “stop screaming, it doesn’t help.” Part of my brain was thinking uh yeah! It does! And besides how would you know? You’re a man! You’ve never done this. It totally helps! Sterling told me later that he almost punched my doctor. I wouldn’t have blamed him. I wanted to as well.

Fifteen minutes and three contractions later, we had ourselves a baby. While I was pushing Sterling was yelling encouragement in my ear, even going so far as to tell me that some of my screams were really impressive. At one point he was chanting “You’re doing great. Here comes his head. It’s almost out. Great work, his head is out!” To which the nurse responded “No, not yet”. I had changed from screaming to grunting and growled at Sterling “Don’t lie to me.” Looking back, we all laughed really hard. That’s probably the highlight of the whole thing. I mean, apart from having the baby, of course.

Brandon was born at 1:49 am on Friday the 25^th of May. He weighed 7 lbs. 12 oz. and was 21 inches long. (Sterling guessed he’d be short like our other two – 19 inches. Nope!) Our first picture of him is one that Sterling already posted of him sucking his thumb. The kid’s a natural! Which translates to dental work someday.

 

 

 

 

So far he’s grown phenomenally. We just had his two month checkup and over the last month he jumped from the 52nd percentile (in weight) to the 74th percentile. He’s a big boy. He weighs almost 14 lbs right now, which means that in two months he’s almost doubled his birth weight. Neither Cami nor Austin weighed 14 lbs until they were 4 months old.

He’s such a sweet baby and has already slept through the night twice (from 11 pm to 7 am). Hopefully it’ll continue. I’m loving it! Many people have told me that three kids are the hardest. For me, it’s been a walk in the park. The older two entertain each other, and I take care of Brandon. Super easy.

Finally here are some pictures from the last two months of my newest little boy.

 

 

And that’s a wrap for day one.