Our Beautiful Baby Boy!

Brenden has some gorgeous eyes, just like his Daddy. :)

This is one of our favorites. He is just so adorable.

Mommy and Baby in the hospital.

Daddy and Brenden in the hospital before we got to go home.

Brenden has such a serious face...ALL OF THE TIME!

Brenden's first time in his car seat. You can't tell by his face, but he really loves it. :)

I love his many facial expressions.

Brenden's Gran came and took tons of pictures.

Brenden and his Gran. She really adores him.

Brenden and his Grandad. Grandad held him almost the whole time he was in town. It was lovely.

Brenden and his Uncle Josh.

Baby Brenden's Blessing. It went great!

All of our wonderful friends who were there.

We were the happiest parents ever!

Brenden in his Daddy's blessing outfit.

Baby Brenden posing one of his many grumpy faces.

Baby Brenden is here!

Brenden James was born on February 3, 2011 at 5:24 p.m. Weighing in at 7 lbs. 5 oz. and 20 inches long. I think he is absolutely perfect! He had such a hard time getting here. First off, he was just late, which for Chris and I was really frustrating. Especially with everyone else, mostly due after us were just popping out their babies left and right. But he is finally here and we are so excited. So now for the story!

Brenden's Birth Story.

The night of February 2nd, I was having some contractions and they were about 6 minutes apart so Chris and I decided to go to the indoor track and do some walking. We didn't walk for very long, maybe 30 minutes. I was having to stop pretty frequently. So we went home and decided to play some Wii bowling. Not any regular bowling, but the 100-pin bowling. So we were timing contractions, I was sitting on the birth ball and bowling. And the contractions kept getting closer and closer together. When they were about 4 minutes apart we decided to go to the hospital. This is right before midnight. We get there and they're looking at contractions, they're there, they're just looking a little inconsistent. And I was only dilated to a 3. So they told us it would be better for us to go home, that I would be more comfortable, take a bath, and be able to sleep. Chris and I went home and through the course of about 5 hours I took 4 baths and pretty much no sleep. The contractions were just too uncomfortable.

Around 6 in the morning I told Chris it was time and that we should go back to the hospital. And of course with all of our hospital visits that were false alarms he was quite hesitant. He called and told the nurses that the contractions were now consistently about 2-3 minutes apart and they told us to come in. While we were in the exam room waiting Chris was freaking out. He would have been so upset if we weren't any further dilated. Well I got checked and was dilated to a 6. Woo Hoo!

No one tells you that you can be dilated at a 6 for 7 hours though. Thank you. It wasn't too bad, it was just unnerving and uncomfortable to know I was that far along and to still be waiting and not progressing. They put me in the tub, made me walk, put me on the birth ball and gave it some time and absolutely nothing was happening. So around noon they decided to break my water. It didn't hurt like I thought it would. It was just an odd experience. They weren't sure that they had actually broken my water because I didn't have a whole lot of fluid. Turns out they did break my water.

The breaking of the water didn't really help to progress anything. Dang it! So around 2 they gave me some pitocin which is the drug they use to induce labor. And also some IV pain medication. Never again. That stuff made so loopy for the next couple of hours. There is not much I remember. I dilated a whole 2 centimeters in the next hour or so.

Around 4 or 430 they gave me to epidural. Didn't hurt at all. Granted at this point the contractions were so close together I was going through one the whole time it was being administered so I was kind of focused on that. After that. I continued to push for the next hour until Brenden was born at 5:24. Way too much pushing for me. I was hoping to push for may 30 minutes. No such luck.

Brenden came out and we had to cut his umbilical cord right away. He was dangerously blue. His cord was in a knot. For some reason they call it a true knot. It was about 4 inches away from his belly button so he just wasn't getting any oxygen. After Chris cut the cord they took him over to the table to get him breathing and clean him off. I remember looking down at my bloody gown. He was just covered in it. Normal right? I'm pretty sure.

After the initial scare of my child coming out blue everything went great! I got to eat and rinse off in the shower. It was great.

Get This Baby Out!!!

So far an update on the last few months, since I am a horrible blogger and haven't blogged in a while. What can I say, life keeps me busy, and there isn't even a baby to preoccupy my time yet. We have been in and out of doctors offices and the hospital for the last month, not because anything is really wrong, but mostly because I have no idea what's going on with this baby and my body. It's a little frustrating honestly.

The first time we went in the hospital, we were at 36 weeks since they decided to change our due date on us from January 12 to January 29. Kind of lame if you ask me. I was in labor, well I wasn't sure if I was or not. Chris and I were at Sam's Club doing some of our grocery shopping done before he had to start working. Well I started having these pains a lot like braxton hicks, but they were way way to frequent just to be braxton hicks and they just weren't easing up no matter what I did. Later on that night, they were just getting super close together so we decided to go to the hospital just in case something was wrong. Well I was in labor, but they decided that we needed to stop it because only being 36 weeks they said they would have to send him to the NICU and we really didn't want that. So they gave me some drugs to stop the labor. DANG IT!

And after this point, every day being pregnancy started to seem like an eternity, even though it wasn't. I just felt like everyone that was due after us was having their babies and I was just stuck being uncomfortable and just feeling gross. It was so frustrating.

I think it was the next week we had an appointment with the midwives and they did the regular checking on heart rate of the baby and all that good stuff. And he hadn't really been moving around a lot so they wanted to hook me up to this machine that monitors the babies heart rate and contractions. The most annoying machine ever. Every time you move or really anything it messes with the machine and it has to be readjusted. Really dumb. Well the variation in his heart rate was good, there just weren't a lot of spikes like they were hoping for so they sent us to the hospital to be monitored. LAME! So we went to the hospital and he was fine once I had some apple juice there. I think the cold juice just woke him up. He's just not very active in the day, he's always super awake at night though.

This week has been particularly crazy. This last Friday I was having contractions, so we went in, and of course we had to go to the hospital because by the time they were getting close together, the doctors office was closed. So we go to the hospital and back to being hooked up to that dreaded machine. Yes, contractions are there, but they were't too intense and I was only dilated to a 2. But I was 80% effaced. Greatest news ever! So were sent home. It was ok, I was super duper tired. So we did some walking and hung out a little bit and went to bed.

And this week we had to go back to the hospital because I thought my water broke. False Alarm! Kind of. My water hadn't broken, but I was leaking fluid. So they said just to keep an eye on that and any contractions.

Today we had another appointment with the midwives. We really love Helene, in my opinion she is by far the best! We went in to find out that I had dilated another centimeter. Great news! And they set up an induction date for Tuesday since next Friday is the last possible day to get this baby out! I'm just hoping that he decides to come before that. It would be a blessing not to have to be induced.

I have another appointment with them on Friday for an ultrasound and non stress test to make sure I can actually make it through the weekend. They just want to make sure there will be enough fluid to support that baby of ours, if not they will induce on Friday. I would really be ok with that, but I'm hoping to wait for the induction as long as I possibly can.

So this is our life for the past few weeks, hopefully Brenden will come soon.