Happy 4th Birthday Brian!

4 years ago today my life changed. 4 years ago today, a piece of my heart left my body to reside outside of me. 4 years ago today I became a mommy. 4 years ago today, my first baby, Brian was born.

I had a rough end of my pregnancy. I had swollen up pretty bad - I couldn't even fit in my shoes anymore - and my blood pressure was on the rise. My doctor put me on bed rest for the last 5 weeks of my pregnancy. I was allowed to go to my baby shower on the condition that once I got to the shower that I lay on a couch with my feet up and not get up until I was leaving to go home. People waited on me hand and foot - it was kind of nice ;-) Two and half weeks into bed rest, and two and a half weeks before my due date, I was feeling nauseous, dizzy, and woozy. I called my OB at around 8 pm, and she told me to come on into the hospital - it was time to get the baby out. I hung up the phone and told Chris and he went into shock! "What??? But we're not ready" was his response. I calmly told him that I was going to go take a shower and then we could get going. I figured since I wasn't actually in labor that I could take a few minutes to get myself ready for the ordeal ahead.

As we were on our way to the hospital, we made a last minute change to the baby's middle name if he ended up being a boy. July 17th is also my father-in-law's birthday, so we decided that if we had a boy that he would bear his grandpa's name as his middle name. At the hospital we were taken into triage while we waited for a room. When we finally got in the room, I was only dilated about 1.5 cm, so they inserted cervidil to "ripen" my cervix. The plan was to leave that in overnight, and my doctor would come back the next morning around 7 am to start the pitocin and get things rolling. Well, in theory that would have been a lovely plan.

Chris went to bed on the "oh so comfortable" love seat in the room, and I decided to try and take a shower to relieve some of the cramping in my back. When I got back in bed and they hooked me back up to the monitors, the nurse noticed something was really wrong. The baby's heart rate had dropped to 60 bpm. She immediately rang for the other nurses, and in what felt like a split second, I was surrounded by 3 women - 1 was holding an oxygen mask on my face, another was inserting an IV into my arm, and the third woman had her arm up to her elbow inside of me and was flipping me from side to side. I remember looking to my right and seeing Chris through the fear I was feeling, and automatically praying the Hail Mary over and over again to keep my baby safe. The nurses were able to stabilize the baby and get his heart rate up, but it meant that they had to call Dr. Patel back into the hospital after sending her home just a couple hours before. She broke my water and inserted a monitor inside of me. Long and short of it is that she told me that the baby wasn't tolerating contractions very well, and that we could continue with labor for the next 12 hours or so, but that we would probably come to the same conclusion - I needed a c-section. I never really had any desire to go through labor, and the most important thing to me was that I had a healthy baby, so having to have a c-section didn't make me upset.

So at 7:29 am, weighing 6 pounds 10 ounces, and measuring 19 inches long, Brian entered this world. He was grey at first and wasn't crying because the doctors wanted to clear his lungs out first. But then I heard those first cries, and it was a beautiful, surreal moment. Chris had tears in his eyes, and all I could think was, "I'm a mommy". At this point I was so exhausted, I drifted off to sleep while they were stitching me up.

I didn't get to see or hold Brian for almost 5 hours. Incredible, but true. They whisked him off to the nursery, and when I finally got settled into my room (a semi-private by the way - blech!), I still hadn't seen him. I sent Chris to try and find our baby. When he got to the nursery, no one knew where Brian was!!! Another dad pointed him out to Chris - his isolette was sitting off in the corner.

4 years have gone by in the blink of an eye. I can't believe the tiny little baby I brought home (and subsequently dropped that first night - ouch!), is now 4 years old. He is such a good big brother to Sean and Colin - he tells me they are his best friends. He is a big helper to me. He is potty trained. He can read and spell some simple words. He can say his alphabet backwards - I swear, and neither Chris nor I taught him that!! Brian is an amazing little boy, and I'm so proud to be his mommy. Happy Birthday Boo Boy! I love you a million, billion, jillion!