Brody Wade has arrived!!

Brody Wade was born on April 1st at 10:48am weighing in at 8lbs 80z. He is the most beautiful baby boy and I feel truly blessed.

On Tuesday I was having contractions on and off throughout the day but very sporadically They subsided in the evening and I slept through the night. On Wednesday around mid-morning I started experiencing the same thing again. By the time Jeremy got home from work the contractions had started to become much more regular about one every 30 minutes lasting for about a minute. By 10pm the contractions were coming every 10 minutes for about 1 minute. My doctors had told me not to come to the hospital until they were about 5 minutes apart. But, I called the doctor anyway and told him what was going on -- as expected he said to hold off on coming in until the contractions were closer together. Within 30 minutes they went from 10 minutes apart to 2-3 minutes apart. We called back and they told us to head on over. So off we went. By this time the contractions were VERY strong and I was in quite a bit of pain. Jeremy was great through all of this and did his best to keep me calm. We finally got to the hospital at 12:30 am. After being admitted I immediately tell the nurse I want an epidural. Little did I know how much time I had to wait! First we had to go through a whole bunch of medical questions, then they had to draw blood and send it to the lab, and after the lab results were in then and only then could I get the epi. Well, needless to say those next 2 hours were NOT fun! It's all a bit blurry to me now, but I do know I kept telling Jeremy that he needed to get me drugs ASAP! At 2:30 am I finally got the epidural. Oh how I loved Dr. Baxter ( the anesthesiologist) seriously, she must love her job -- getting people out of pain every day! Five minutes after the epi I was on cloud nine. Poof -- pain be gone! I was finally able to sleep for a few hours. The doctor came to check on me at around 4:30. By that time I had dilated from 3cm at 2:30 to 4cm. At 8am the staff changed over and a new doctor came in to introduce herself -- Dr. Monguman. I hadn't met her before at any of my previous appointments, but she was super friendly and I liked her right away. At 9am she came back to check me and I was 9cm dilated. She said I would start pushing within the hour.

At 10am I started to get a bit nervous knowing that everything was really about to start happening! And I actually had started to feel some pain again from the contractions, when I told the nurse this she instructed me to continue to push the pain button every 15 minutes to get an extra dose of the epidural medication -- I ended up doing that for about an hour and the pain subsided. At 10:37 I pushed for the first time. The nurse immediately stopped me and said this baby is right there and I need to get the doctor in here before you push again. So she laid me on my side as they monitored the baby's heartbeat while she went to get the doctor. The doctor was there a minute later and had me start pushing again --- within 11 minutes Brody was born!! I couldn't believe it. They had originally told me that I would most likely be pushing anywhere from 1-3 hours!! But, I guess Brody was just really ready and had done most of the work for me already -- I mean, is that a good kid or what?!

A few hours later we were moved to our room where we stayed for the next two days. All of the nurses and doctors were just wonderful and I'm so grateful to all of them. On Friday we learned that Brody had jaundice. This is pretty common in babies; to treat it they had him lay on this billy blanket that lights up and helps break down the bad stuff in his system. We also had to start supplementing with some formula because he wasn't getting enough from the breast. But everything is going really well now. We took Brody to his pediatrician yesterday for a followup visit and she thinks his color looks great and that since he is feeding so much better that Brody is definitely moving in the right direction. We go back to see her again tomorrow to make sure he is gaining some of his weight back and we'll go again in 2weeks for another checkup.

Brody is an angel. He is the sweetest little guy and we couldn't be happier. It's amazing how much you can love someone so fast. Everything about him makes me smile from that new baby smell, to the way he purses his lips to even how he pees like crazy after i take off his diaper!! Being a mom is a lot of work but it is everything I ever wanted.

Much love to all of you for all your calls and well wishes.

xoxo

Laurenicole