When Margret gave me these newborn clothes, I doubted that I’d ever get to use them, but this little fella’ has been able to wear all the clothes everyone has given him, even the newborns.

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  My recovery has not been all peaches and cream the last few days, so I’m pretty excited that John David’s best hobby is sleeping.

   The last few days I have been unable to get rid of a headache for long.

The man is a machine.  Here’s a little of what he’s accomplished this week:

1.  Rearranged furniture to better suit the children as they keep growing:

Dan’s sports themed room.  He insisted on keeping the Pooh Bear painting though, which we thought was too sweet.  Seriously, Nonna, we think you are the greatest artist.  You can paint for us anytime you want.  ; )

Alan’s accomplishments continued:

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John David, 8 days old

  I can totally see why people get addicted to that.  It really helps!  But don’t worry, I’m not addicted to percoset.  I’m simply recovering from a painful surgery.

How funny is J.D. in this picture?

And yes, I know I look rough.  See paragraph a.  Also, I feel like I get a pass on make-up wearing and hair straightening until the 2 week mark, at least.  ; )

 My friend Lauren, holding John David.  And thank you for the yummy cookies, Lauren!

 Lauren’s adorable little girl

 Maelle meets J.D.

 J.D., home from the office.  : )

 I <3 summer flowers!  I didn't plant these day lillies and hydrangeas, but that's the fantastic thing about planting.  It's a work that lasts for years and years and blesses people long after you are gone.

 Check out what Alan bought for the boys.  Apparently when you add our 4 boys + Daddy, we actually have our own basketball team right here.

 Look how tiny he is in his rocker!

 Yes, I’m aware Joshua sometimes still writes his letters backwards….but how cute is what he wrote!
“The chicken tenders are delicious.  You can’t skip tenders.  They are so delicious.”

 our new desk…already looking cluttered up

 I finally finished Caleb’s baby book!  Yay!!!!

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 They always have the father excused from the room to do the epidural or spinal block.  This was their first mistake.  There is only one person that can calm April during a terrified-of -medical-procedures-panic attack, and that person is Alan.
First spinal block:  failed.  She put it in some kind of bony protrusion in my back, so it did nothing.
Second spinal block:  already reached my full level of pain tolerance from having the first spinal block with the also failed local anesthesia that keeps you from feeling the spinal…..leaving them with….
crazy April.
I survived.  They survived.  They laid me down on the table, I suddenly (psychologically) felt like I couldn’t breathe at all, and the panic hit full on.
The smart anesthesiologist said, “Okay, I did not do a good job of handling your anxiety.  Someone get her husband in here now.”  “I know.  Bring him in early–right away.”

“Hi, I’m Super Dad.  All you have to do is rub Crazy April’s head, just like this, and promise her everything will be okay and she’s doing great.”  : )  Thank God for Alan!

How come the women with scheduled-c-sections on t.v. are always so calm?  Actually, I was calm for my first c-section (Daniel).  Oh well.   Let’s get back to what you really want to see:  baby pictures!

 Beautiful!  And ready to breast-feed already.  Someone get this boy to the mama!

 Daddy looks so nice in white.

 By the time we left the hospital, he was down to 7 lb 10 oz.  We actually had to go to the store and buy him some long sleeved newborn sleepers.  (We keep the house nice and cool).

 Daniel is SO EXCITED about J.D.  He wants to hold him all the time, as does Caleb.  Joshua is also seriously excited, but a lot more cautious with the baby than his brothers.  Another sign of the maturity gap there!

Rooming In

   The rooming in policy wasn’t all bad for us.  I fed the baby way more often this way, as he didn’t disappear for hours to the nursery.  It was always obvious that if Alan couldn’t calm J.D. down, and his mouth was rooting, it was time to feed.  This has been great for my milk supply and has kept engorgement from being painful b/c my breasts have been emptied out more frequently by my greedy little eater.  : )

  Not everyone has an experienced Daddy like Alan though!  I’m not sure if this would’ve worked so good for us 7 years ago!

 Joshua, our little photographer

 We have a picture of Alan holding Joshua and Caleb at that age that looks so much like this!

Recovery:
Recovery from a c-section is never fun.  This hospital was really great at staying on top of pain medication though.  We still couldn’t wait to get home.  Hospitals do not let you sleep!  Someone was constantly coming in, even waking up the baby, to check temperatures, give meds, paperwork, pictures, etc.
Right now I’m only supposed to use the stairs a couple times/day and need to be assisted, in case of losing consciousness.

Having done both types of birth, regular and c-section, I now say with full confidence that one should do their best to avoid a c-section.  This baby turned out to be fairly average sized, so maybe I could have delivered him without a problem, but there was no way for us to know that.  All docs/ midwives I talked to recommended this route for me b/c of my scary natural deliveries.
There is no easy way out of having a baby, but natural is definitely easier, even if you do get a 3rd degree or have a hot spot from your epidural.
So we are calling our family complete.  All present and accounted for.  If I weren’t a c-section patient, I’d have a dozen babies.  I really do love babies so much, but it’s not good to have too many c-sections.
We are just going to super-enjoy the babies that we have.

**3 days Old**

John David has been a perfect gentleman of a baby, so far.  He likes swaddling, but hates having his arms swaddled, so I just leave those out.  He has yet to see a pacifier.  In the beginning, he wanted to nurse 30 minutes on each side, and I was a bit concerned for our future….but now that my milk is in, he is done after 7-15 minutes on each side.  Phew!
He sleeps pretty much 24 hours/day.  I figure I might as well enjoy that now, as that will be over pretty quickly!
So far he has been very easy going, which we SO appreciate!!!!

My parents leave with the three oldest boys tomorrow, so next week would be a great time for any of you to visit if you’d like and get to hold little John David.
Right now Alan is squeezing in a little quality time with the big bros.  He took them to a baseball game, and I’m sure they’re having a great time.
What would I do without Alan, Dad, and Mom this week???
I’d like to thank all three of them for being so wonderful and getting us through this exciting but crazy time!!!

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  We got to look at the baby, so that was a bonus.  He’s doing great.  He has half the amount of amniotic fluid that Daniel did at this point.  Dan was swimming in 20, and J.D. is swimming in 11.  Don’t ask me what unit of measurement they use for that b/c I have no idea.
  The baby is big.  My belly still measures right on schedule, but the baby does seem to be large–no great surprise there.
   The baby still doesn’t like to show us his boy parts.  The doc doing the ultrasound asked us, “What is this— a he, a she, or an it!?”  I just groaned.  We (Alan had arrived by that point) told him that this is supposed to be a boy.  We did have that one day where we saw a scrotum, so I just remind myself of that.
   3/4 guesses have been that this is a boy though…..plus you have my track record of having BOYS, so that is still what we are expecting.

  After the appointment that wouldn’t end, Alan took all of us:  Mom, Dad, Daniel, and me into the city for lunch.  Daniel really enjoyed riding the train, and we got to see where Alan works now.

   5 days until our baby arrives!  Not a moment too soon!

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  I’m actually not looking forward to that whole pain part, but they say it’s much different with a spinal block.  Perhaps that will be the case.  I think the bigger problem was my body’s resistance to morphine–which I now have learned does nothing for me.

With Daniel, I was the largest pregnant woman I have ever ever been.  I was 15 lbs heavier at the end of that pregnancy than with any of my others.  So we’ll just call that one my true “balloon” pregnancy.  Even my fingers were pregnant!

I knew the size of the baby was going to be a problem, and Dr. Collins had completely forgotten how much trouble my past deliveries were.  Therefore, a month before my due date I went to his office armed with a detailed list of why he could not allow me to carry this baby to 40 weeks or even 39, or the results would be disastrous.  He laughed me off until he actually read the list.  Then he said, “Okay, actually those are good reasons, and very well presented.”  (Success!  : )  I am the least confrontational person ever, but when I know a debate or confrontation must be made, I write down a thorough argument–so as not to lose my nerve, rehearse it in advance, and then make my case leaving no room for questioning or doubt.  I also won a small debate award for that once in college.  : )  )
My induction date was set for 10 days prior to my due date, the earliest the hospital would allow us to do so.
Alan and I checked in at midnight, leaving our older two boys with DaddyO and Nonna.  Since I have notoriously slow labors (15-16 hours), we told everyone to just take their time driving up the next day, no need to rush.  They all remembered spending hours on end in the waiting room for the last delivery, so they didn’t need much convincing.

The pitocin drip was in by 1 am or so, and heavy contractions started right away.  They weren’t close together enough to get me dilated very quickly though.  I checked in dilated 2-3 cms, and the nurses said I was already registering contractions before they started the pitocin.  I didn’t pay those contractions much attention though, as those are the false labor ones that enable me to be several cm dilated before delivery begins, but do not qualify as active labor.

By 8:30 am, I was hurting badly enough to not want to talk, so I decided it was time to get the epidural.  Everything went haywire pretty quickly at that point.
First, the epidural went more upwards than downwards, so I couldn’t sit up and my chest felt tight.  Then my blood pressure plummeted, I threw up (dry heaved), and started to pass out.  Thankfully, the nurse anesthetist was still there monitoring my reaction to the epidural, so they quickly injected blood pressure meds into my IV.  That stopped the fainting and the puking.

I was m-i-s-e-r-a-b-l-e, and I did not have a good feeling about how things were going.  Dr. Collins walked in to check on me, and I said, “Dr. Collins, this is not going well.  This is not going to go well.  I’m going to be in labor 15 hours (total–that’s my average), then the baby’s going to get stuck at the shoulders.  You might as well just go ahead and cut me open and get this over with!”

Well, he deals with anxious women in labor on a daily basis, so he was probably not surprised by my change in personality.  (I come across as easy going almost always, EXCEPT in labor and delivery situations….in which I can become a bit scary I suppose.  Not yelling, just grumpy.)    He broke my water, assured me that would get things moving, and fled from the room.  I don’t think he really responded one way or the other to my c-section request….

About 1 minute after he broke my water, he and another nurse (in addition to the one standing beside me) rushed back into the room.
“All right, April, you jinxed us.  It looks like you’re going to get your wish.  The baby’s heart rate has plummeted, so we’re going to have to do an emergency c-section and get him out of there.  It looks like when the water broke, the cord started choking the baby.”

All in a matter of seconds, Alan was handed scrubs, oxygen tubing was inserted into my nose, and they were doing various prep jobs as they rolled me quickly down the hall.
By the time Alan got those scrubs on, called the family, and walked into the operating room, they had already begun the surgery.  It was rather amazing how quickly it was all done.

I don’t know what they put in my IV, but it was a rather odd experience, very surreal and confusing to me at the time.  I remember most when they held up Daniel, all covered in goo and crying the quietest cry I’d ever heard.  He was the roundest newborn I’d ever seen.  9lb 4 oz and only 20 inches long.  They held him up and said, “You’ve got a red-head!”  I was so excited to hear that, except I couldn’t really tell that his hair was red yet, only gooey!
They kept him on oxygen, with Dr. Doggett, the pediatrician pacing over him for two hours before anyone got to hold him.

I was too out of it to know anything about that, though.  The epidural had been removed, and I was on morphine, but I felt like I was on nothing at all.  For three hours I just laid there, wanting so badly to sleep b/c of the effects of the pain medication.  But I couldn’t sleep at all b/c I felt like the entire middle of my body was very much on fire.

Lesson learned here:  I really hope to convince the medical staff to give me a different pain medication–not morphine.
They kept asking me, “What’s your pain level now, 10 being the worst pain you’ve ever felt.”
I kept telling them, “10!  10!  It’s a 10!”  I wanted to share in the excitement of holding Daniel and talking to family, but I was hurting way too badly.  I told Alan to just make sure everyone knew I couldn’t really talk yet.

That level of pain only lasted a few hours, the morphine finally wore off and they gave me something else, and so it became more and more of just a manageable pain.  Thank goodness!

Of course, when Daniel was born it was also very hard on Alan, as he was so worried about both Daniel and me, and they didn’t always allow him in the room.  I felt so bad for him.  No family was there to share in his worry because we had told everyone “take your time”.  They all found out about the delivery via telephone, on their way to the hospital.  I think Daniel was born around 9 or 9:30 am, but I was so fuzzy and it all happened so fast, I just really don’t remember!
The family was worried about Alan being at the hospital alone during all this, so Alan’s Granddaddy, who lives close to that hospital, was so kind as to come up and sit with Alan until the rest of the family had arrived.  Jennings also came by to visit, before either Daniel or I had come out of the recovery room.
That was definitely our quickest, craziest delivery!

The c-section is a slower, more painful road to recovery, even with the rough deliveries that I had had in the past.  However, at least I didn’t suffer any complications from it, and it was truly a life-saving procedure for Daniel.  It’s also the reason I don’t advocate at-home births in an age where we have such wonderful medical advances.  I don’t believe Daniel would have survived a home-birth.

Daniel was a very typical baby.  He’s a super atypical toddler, though.  Obviously, he is a mischievous little thing, with all the toilets, lipstick, food, and markers he’s gotten into…..but that boy will do chores alongside his momma all day long.  He also obeys better than any 2-year-old we’ve ever had.  He is such a sweet blessing.

one day old, in the arms of Great Aunt Janet

Dr. Doggett, faithfully monitoring baby Dan

Caleb had talked for a month about how much he couldn’t wait to hold the baby in his hands.

using my finger as a pacifier….  I was never good at breastfeeding in front of others!  Even after three babies!

meeting his great-grandparents

proud big brother Caleb

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