Meet the new member of our family! Simon Gregory arrived just over two weeks early on April 17th weighing in at 7lb 9oz. (He'll already be 2 weeks old tomorrow!) Labor and Delivery was smooth and quick! For those of you who like to hear L&D stories, here's a quick run-down of the event. 🙂 Otherwise, skip to the paragraph after the next photo.
I had contractions through the night on Tuesday (early Wednesday morning), starting at 2:00 AM. I thought it was just a repeat of the week before where I had contractions starting at 2AM and stopped at 5AM. But, these didn't stop. They only became more frequent and a lot stronger. By 4:00 AM I was in so much pain every 3-5 minutes, but I wanted to wait a little longer before heading to the hospital so I could let our friends sleep a little longer before dropping Judah off with them. Oh, I'm so thoughtful. Ha!
By the time we checked in at the hospital, it was 6:30 AM and I was 7cm dilated! Because I knew my window was short, I immediately told the nurse I wanted an epidural before it was too late. Epidural was given, pain went away, and then returned shortly as the dosage wore off much more quickly than I anticipated during pushing! This caused a ton of pain in the left side of my lower back. The worst pain I've ever felt in my life! I had to stop pushing because I thought I threw out my back, but it was just the contractions. The anesthesiologist came back to give me another dose, but after 15 minutes of waiting, it never took in that area of my back, so I decided to keep pushing through the pain since baby Simon was on his way out! If I didn't wait for that 15 minutes, he would've been out in 30 minutes total of pushing. But, since I waited the 15 minutes, it was a total time of 45 minutes. Still much faster than the 2 ½ hours of pushing when I had Judah! 🙂
We've been doing well transitioning into a family of four. Much easier than I imagined! The day we returned home from the hospital, I was out walking and taking advantage of our beautiful weather through the next few days. My feet definitely stayed swollen for a while since I wasn't putting my feet up as much as the doctor ordered, but here in Mississippi, I've learned you need to enjoy the 70 degree temperatures before they hit 90 for the rest of the summer!
I love my sweet little baby Simon. He is sweet, doesn't cry a ton, and sleeps pretty well so far. I get up with him only once or twice in the night (he's formula fed) right now. Hopefully this is indicative of a great sleeping baby! As far as his looks, I think he resembles Ben more than me in the face, but has my fingers and toes. Funny enough, although his older brother is dark complexion, brown eyes and dark features (just like mom and dad), Simon has lighter skin with blondish hair, and the baby grey-blue eyes! Not what we expected, but I love it!
My best friend (Vicki) came into town last week to snap some newborn photos of Simon. The KitchenAid stand mixer and cookbooks photo are two of my favorites that I requested her to do for my blog announcement. Don't you love them??!! Big shout out to my blogging friends, Jenny, Lori, and Jessica for using their cookbooks as props. I think Simon is gaining much cooking wisdom through osmosis in that photo. <chuckle!> But, seriously, Vicki took some more adorable photos of Simon and I wish I could share all of them with you!
Judah LOVES his little brother. He has shown nothing but positive feelings towards him since the day he met him in the hospital. He wants to hold him, help him, hug him, feed him, etc. all the time. My heart melts all day long when seeing this. I hope they become best friends when they are older.
I've been taking some time off here so I can fully enjoy my two sons, but I'll be back to regular blogging soon! I have a giveaway coming up in the near future, too, so make sure you check back! 🙂
