LIFE MORE ABUNDANT.: How it all went down

For those of you who are interested and haven't heard the full story yet, here it is. Well you can review the previous post about the trauma with Dixie last Saturday night but if you choose not to, the short story is that Dixie was attacked at the park last Saturday night while I was walking with her and Tom and Savannah were playing at the playground. She is fine but had an injured paw and couldn't walk. So I, being ohhh 9 months pregnant, carried her across the park walking/running. Keep in mind that Dixie weighs about 35 lbs., I gained about 35 lbs. with this pregnancy and all the while I was stressed out about her being ok. That was at about 8pm. After a trip to the emergency vet, we got home and put Savannah to bed about 9:30. We were doing some cleaning of clothes (also see previous blog for my lovely bloody white tank tops) and things as we were going to have some friends over for lunch after church on Sunday. About 10:30 I noticed that the braxton-hicks which I had been having since week 27 were slightly painful and coming pretty frequently. Tom talked to some friends from church about the possibility of them coming over to take care of Dixie if we needed to go to the hospital that night. Keep in mind Dixie was in pain, needed a few medicines and special treatment to be able to walk on her paw. We finally started to head to bed about 1 and the contractions were real and frequent. After a few hours of not really sleeping and timing contractions in my half sleep state, I woke Tom up about 5 and told him we should probably start getting ready to go to the hospital and call our friends who were going to watch Savannah until Grammy and Poppie were able to make it to Savannah to take over Savannah duty. We dropped Savannah off about 5:30 and were at the hospital shortly there after. Once they took me to triage, they said I was about 4-5cm and admitted me. After a short time I got an epidural and felt much better. About 9 the nurse said I was 7 cm and she thought we would deliver soon. My epidural started to wear off shortly there after on my left side so the contractions got more and more painful. The Dr. came in and said I was at about 9 but He hadn't dropped any yet and I was still at +2. She then finally broke my water and he dropped right away to -2 and we started pushing shortly there after. After a few pushes, I asked for some more of the epidural as it had completely worn off on my left side which made pushing pretty painful and I figured if I was going to get an epidural and deal with the few problems I always tend to have with anesthesia, I was going to make sure to get all the benefits of the medication. We pushed for a short time and then this big head of dark hair showed up and here was Isaiah!!

I do always struggle with the epidural wearing off though, this time it took almost a whole day for the feeling in my right side to return and I am always quite nauseous and struggle to feel "well". I of course can not complain though, because this beautiful little boy is here and we are so blessed with how much the Lord has blessed our family with great health and protection during this pregnancy and his birth. The Dr. thought it was a funny story about Dixie and the dog attack probably sending me into labor (she actually knows the woman who owns the 5 dogs). She said she was just going to start encouraging patients to run with a dog in their arms to induce labor (as long as you are full term she says!)

Here are a few pictures of the past few days here at home. Isaiah is a great baby, he LOVES to sleep and has done pretty much that all week! Nursing is going very well and Savannah is a wonderful big sister. She is very excited to see him and touch him and kiss him. So far Isaiah eats every 2-3 hours (we are trying to push it to 3 more and more) during the day and about the same at night except about once at night he will go 3-4 hours. We swaddled him for the first few days but lately he has been ok without being swaddled as long as he is good and asleep. He does like to sleep curled up on his side snuggled in bed with mommy and daddy though but we are trying to teach him that his crib and pack and play are much more fun to sleep in. He has just in the last few days started having more awake time so we are finally seeing those eyes pretty often during the day which is fun! Tom is going back to work this week so we are going to see how that works out. My mom is supposed to be coming for a few days this week and then Tom's parents are coming next weekend so we are excited for more family visits! Savannah also turns 2 at the end of the week, so it should be a fun week with lots of pictures. I will try to update as often as I can!

Showing Isaiah all about rocking sheep!

Loves to sleep on mommy and daddy's bed!

Savannah has spent a lot of time with daddy and has loved it! If you can tell from the picture, she has also become quite bossy, we are working on some discipline issues as she nears 2!