Thursday, May 23, 2013

Adjusting

Everyone has told me that adjusting to the 3rd child is the hardest.  I'm not sure yet, it hasn't even been a week, but it certainly is an adjustment.  Thankfully I have sweet kids that make it all worthwhile.  This afternoon my kids were so wonderfully generous to me, they all slept, at the same time, for 2 hours.  It was so calm and quiet around here, I just relaxed and enjoyed it.

They sure are sweet when they are sleeping.


 Lily has been talking about what she would do with this baby ever since we told her that we were expecting.  She's been wanting to have a tea party with for ages so this afternoon she set one up in her room and Gideon and I went downstairs so that she could finally have her long awaited tea party with her baby brother.  She invited several dolls and stuffed animals and there was cake, orange juice, cookies in several varieties, and even a pinata.
Charlotte had fun playing along with Lily as she always does, but really she just wanted to sit on the bed holding her baby.
 I'm not sure that Gideon is sold on tea parties yet.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Meet Gideon

On Sunday morning, May 19th at 5:33 am we welcomed our first son, Gideon Ray Hansen, into this world.  He was 7 pounds, 6 ounces, and 19-3/4 inches long.  He's perfectly healthy and we are so excited to have him in our family.
 Later in the day Tyson went and got Lily and Charlotte and brought them to the hospital to meet their baby brother.  Lily was very excited to finally get to hold him.
 Charlotte is just over the moon with him.  She is pretty sure that he always wants her to hold him and really doesn't like letting other people get to have a turn.
 The girls ended up cuddled in the hospital bed with him watching cartoons for about an hour and he just laid there with them and fell asleep.
This morning I managed to get a picture of our little guy with his eyes open.  He nurses and sleeps and so far doesn't spend much time awake.
We didn't stay in the hospital for long and started getting ready to go home fairly early this morning. 
 It was great to get back home.  I'm just not one to stay at the hospital any longer than I have to.  It was great to have the help last night that allowed me to get some sleep after getting no sleep the previous night, but all in all I rest better at home.
 We are all resting well now and adjusting to life with this new little man in the house.
*Okay, now here's the birth story.  If you don't care to know the details the summary is simple, my water broke just after midnight and he was born around 5:30 am.  For those that enjoy the details, read on.*

From the beginning of this pregnancy I never planned to go until my due date.  I was certain that Gideon would come early just as his sisters had.  Lily was born at 37w4d, but in her case labor was induced early due to preeclampsia and low AFI issues.  Charlotte came on her own at 39w2d when my water broke at home and labor began shortly thereafter.  Tyson and I had been talking about when this baby might come for a while because this May has turned out to be an insanely busy month for us.  Between birthdays, finals, school, dance recital, job training and more there were some days that it would be great to have the baby on and others that would just be awful.  I was grateful to have made it through finals and birthdays (Tyson's was on the 18th) without Gideon making his appearance, but this coming week is packed full so I was hoping, as much as I was ready to be done with being pregnant, that he would hold out another week.  I rather expected him to given that Charlotte came at 39 weeks.  Anyway, we went to bed after a busy day on the 18th and I was tired.  A few contractions here and there, but no real sign that labor was on the way any time soon.  Around 11:00 I dozed off and I woke up abruptly at 12:15 am feeling slightly wet.  I got up to go to the bathroom and felt a bit of a gush of water.  I honestly just stood there looking down and asked the universe "Seriously?"  After all, I was just 38w3d and not expecting anything yet.  Tyson was perplexed as I just walked into the bathroom.  He called to me and asked if everything was okay and I responded that my water had broken.  He jumped right up and started getting read to go to the hospital.  *Funny little detail here, with Charlotte my water also broke at 12:15 am on a Sunday morning.  How's that for odd?

Now at this point I wasn't in labor, I wasn't feeling contractions, but I knew that I didn't have a lot of time.  I labor fairly quickly and it would take about an hour to get us to the hospital since we had to get a few things ready and drop the girls off along the way.  Within 5 minutes though I felt my first contraction and within half an hour they were getting regular, about 7-8 minutes apart.  We dropped the girls off with my folks, drove to St. Luke's in Boise, and checked in.  I love middle of the night triage check-ins.  They are quick and painless and the staff isn't terribly busy.  I got checked in and to my labor room fairly quickly and the nurses, while helpful, were great about letting me labor how I wanted to and accommodating me.  I spent a while in the Jacuzzi tub which was great, so relaxing which of course makes the contractions easier to get through.  Now, my labors are odd.  First off, they are short and second, I really only have early labor.  Once it gets hard there isn't much time until the baby comes.  I was at 4 cm when we checked in and only 4-1/2 cm 2 hours later.  The nurse thought that I would be discouraged, but I wasn't I know that the first half is slow.  Just after 5 am the contractions started to get harder so I got out of the tub at Tyson's insistence and my mom had me call for the nurse to check again.  

At this point I was no longer getting a break between contractions.  She checked me, I was at 6 cm and that was discouraging because at this point I was in a lot of pain and decided that I did want an epidural after all.   They called the anesthesiologist in right away and he took one look at me and shook his head.  The nurse was insistent that I had time left and she helped Tyson get me seated on the side of the bed to get ready for an epidural.  That was when I decided that I didn't want it anymore.  The contractions hurt terribly, but sitting in that position during contractions was even worse and besides, I needed to push.  I told (rather cried out) that I needed to push, the nurse said "not now honey, you aren't there yet."  I cried out again that I wanted to push, again she said "don't push."  It wasn't until the third time when I probably screamed that I needed to push that the charge nurse told the nurse to check me again.  I rolled onto my back and sure enough I was complete.  The nurse turned her head as the resident on the floor walked in and right in that moment I gave a little push, not a big one, just enough to relieve the pressure, and Gideon came out and landed on the bed.  The resident raced across the room and grabbed him, my mom and Tyson looked down and sure enough, while no one was watching, he had made an appearance and was peeing on my foot.  He was perfectly healthy and I felt instantly better.  The doctor on call from my practice showed up about 5 minutes later and helped with the afterbirth and gave me one stitch for my tiny little tear.  The onset of hard labor to birth took about 20 minutes.

This is my first time going without an epidural and I while the pain was excruciating, don't get me wrong, the recovery process has been amazing.  I was up and about within 30 minutes of delivering Gideon, my pain has been minimal, and I feel worlds better than I ever have after my previous deliveries.  All in all, the staff at the hospital was great.  They were wonderful about letting me make the calls and listening to me.  My nurse was great about letting me labor how I wanted to and monitoring me at my convenience.  I had warned her that the second part of labor goes very quickly for me but I don't think that she believed me, or at least must have thought that I was exaggerating   I think that she might have learned a little lesson though and will listen a little more closely to what future patients might say.

Anyway, we are all doing great, Gideon is nursing like a champ and my milk has come in so he'll be packing on the pounds soon.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Looking for Baby Brother

The girls have been very interested in their baby brother all through this pregnancy.  They like putting their hands on my tummy and feeling him kick and pointing out that baby brother is getting bigger as my tummy grows.  I happened to mention that when I go the doctor the doctors listens to Gideon's heartbeat which got Lily all excited and she wanted to listen to his heartbeat as well.  So we pulled out Tyson's stethoscope and the girls took turns trying to listen to their little brother.
I'm not sure that they heard anything, but they seemed to have fun trying. 
It was so sweet!

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Lily's 4th Birthday

Our little Lily turned 4 today.  I know that every mom says this all of the time, but it is amazing to me how quickly she is growing up.  It seems like just yesterday she was my little baby girl and now she is this active and inquisitive little preschooler with the most vibrant imagination.  Playing pretend is her specialty these days and she loves having tea parties with anyone that is willing to sit down and sip pretend tea with her.  It isn't unusual for her and Charlotte to come into our room in the morning and wake us up with a cup of pretend tea for each of us.

Lily has been counting down until her birthday since mid-January.  I'm really not certain where her birthday obsession came from, but it has been a topic of conversation almost daily since then.  When I asked Lily what she would like to do at her birthday party she was very insistent that she would like to have a tea party.  I wasn't sure how to make that work with the busy little crew that we were inviting.  I saw some really cute ideas online, but then I realized that I'm 9 months pregnant and my energy and motivation aren't at their best right now so we had a simple tea party with sandwiches, fruit, and apple juice tea.  The kids also made some little sun catchers and ran around the yard playing with bubbles while we moms sat in the shade visiting.
One thing that I love doing for birthdays is making cakes, and yes, they are much larger than they really need to be, but it is fun for me.  This year Lily asked for chocolate cake with chocolate filling and yellow frosting.  I decided to make it simple and feminine for my little princess here so we went with rosettes on the bottom and a diamond pattern for the top.  Lily loved it which is of course what matters most.  It is fun to see her excited about these things.

For some reason Lily still struggles with blowing, I"m not sure why, but it is cute to watch.

 Lily loved her presents and played with them all that evening.
 I'm glad that she has such good little friends.

We had her party on Saturday, the day before her birthday.  This morning we got up and I made crepes for breakfast because Lily loves them.  When we were done she was sad that she ONLY got to eat 6 because she wanted to have 11.  I had 2...  Then we let her open our family gifts.  Charlotte picked out a cute dress-up dancing costume for her and Tyson and I got her a ball, bat, and mitt so that she play T-ball this summer. Lily and Charlotte spent the evening outside trying to trying ever so hard to toss the ball so that the other could hit it with the bat.  

We are so grateful for this sweet little girl in our home.  She is willful and stubborn sometimes, but she is also compassionate and caring.  I'm amazed at how quickly she is learning and by her thirst for knowledge.  While it is sad to see the time fly by so quickly, I'm excited to see her continue to grow and explore the world around her.