Picture Day

One more post for the day - a former coworker of mine is now a photographer, and she came to take pictures of Max today. Her work is awesome. You can see some of the pictures she took on her blog here. They turned out so well, and we can't wait to see more of the pictures! Thanks Kim!

The Arrival

Max James decided to make his arrival exactly 4 weeks before his due date. He weighed 6 lbs 2 oz and is very healthy. Here's the story. On Tuesday December 30 I went to my regular doctor's appointment. Because of my gestational diabetes, I was being monitored weekly for about 30 minutes to see how the baby looked. At that appointment, his heart rate dropped at one point. The doctor decided to send me to the hospital to be monitored for a longer period to see if it happened again. So we went to the hospital and stayed for about three hours. Everything was great and they released me. One week later (Monday): My next doctor's appointment. Again, the monitoring and, again, a deceleration. So now my doctor was worried because he didn't know what was causing it. He sent me back to the hospital, this time overnight, and also ordered an amniocentesis to check Max's lungs. He wanted to see if they were mature because he wanted to induce if Max was ready. We slept there and everything seemed fine. Tuesday morning we went to a perinatologist for the amnio which went well. We went home for a couple hours and then my doctor called to say he wanted me to stay overnight in the hospital. So back to the hospital. After hanging out at the hospital all night and Wednesday morning, we finally heard from the doctor that the amnio was good and he wanted to induce. Eek! I wasn't ready for that...I thought I had another whole month! Thank goodness for family - both of our moms cleaned the house, finished baby laundry I had barely started, organized the nursery and more! So at 3:30 Wednesday afternoon they started the process. That night I started having contractions and got some medicine for that. That helped me sleep but, as Matt says, I was cracked out. They started pitocin at some point, I don't really remember too much about that. The thing I remember the most is my awesome nurse coming in the morning and pretty much slapping my face a little (not really) and making me wash up to wake me up some. After that the doctor came and broke my water and soon after that I got an epidural - pretty much as soon as possible. I have to say without the epidural I wouldn't have made it. A little before noon the awesome nurse was like okay you can start pushing and she called the doctor. At 12:01 on Thursday January 8, Max was born. The whole experience, although I didn't feel too prepared, was better than I expected. Max's only problem was a little jaundice. We stayed at the hospital until Saturday. We so appreciate everyone who visited. We're so blessed by all of our friends and family! We've been home for almost a week now, and things are going pretty well. It's so exciting to have Max here and to watch him grow and change almost every day. It's one of those things that you just don't understand until it happens to you.

Pre-Max

Matt and I went to see "Light in the Piazza" at the Main Street Theater on Sunday afternoon. It was our slightly late anniversary date. We had brunch before and then went to the theater. It was a nice afternoon; little did we know it would probably be our last date for a while. I had Matt take a couple pictures of me before we left because we needed a belly update. Again, little did I know it would be the last belly shot!!