What a blessing!

*** I started this blog entry the week after Joanna was born and as you can see it is now a month later and I am finally finishing it! Life has been busy around here so I finished what I could so that I could post and move on to more recent events. I kept the entry just as I wrote it a month ago and then added the pictures. Enjoy!

 For weeks we had been preparing for the arrival of our little blessing on February 4 and lo and behold she arrived January 27! I got the January baby I had been praying for. She surprised us last week by coming in her own timing. It took a few days to wrap our heads around her coming early and shifting everything we planned around her arrival. She is a great baby already sleeping 4 hour stretches at night and rarely fussing about anything. But I will get to that...I might as well start at the beginning.

Last week was a crazy week beginning with Elizabeth getting sick on Saturday the 22nd and proceeding to have a temperature by Sunday of 104. It was difficult to keep down and then on Monday Caleb had it. The two of them were pretty sick through Wednesday so I took them to the doctor Thursday. Elizabeth got on meds and we were to watch Caleb but he already seemed on the mend. Thursday was busy and by that night I was tired and we were resting together watching tv. I was feeling a lot more pressure than usual but I was chalking it up to the baby shifting or being on my feet too long. I laid down on my side on the couch for a little while and when I went to get up I felt like I peed on myself. I knew I had just gone to the bathroom so I wasn't sure why I was feeling that way. I went to the bathroom and sure enough my pants were wet, more so than if the baby had kicked my bladder. I think I just sat there for a moment as I tried to process what might be happening. Had my water really broken? How do I know? What do we do with the kids? I'm not ready, I need another week. I went out to the kitchen where Heath was washing the dishes and I still laugh about what I said. I looked at him and said, "I don't want to freak you out but I think my water just broke." That statement alone freaked him out so I am not sure why I prefaced it with that. His face turned to stone and he just stared at me. "What does that mean?"

I immediately got on the computer and checked how to tell whether my water had truly broken because it had been such a small amount. It told me to lay back down and if it happened again when I got up, it was really my water. Sure enough after 30 minutes on the couch, when I got up there was no question. My water had broken and it was time to go to the hospital. We had called Heath's mom after the first episode and she was on her way. The doctor was called and he said he would meet us at the hospital. The next 20 minutes were sheer confusion. I couldn't even think about what to pack and what we needed to do next. I threw a few things in the bag and managed to remember to throw the cameras in there. The kids who had been ready for bed were watching us with a mixture of worry and confusion on their faces. Heath's mom got there and we said our good-byes and off we went. We drove in almost silence as we were still trying to wrap our heads around what was happening.

Once we got to the hospital everything moved pretty quickly. I was hooked up to everything, forms were filled out, questions were answered, doctors were notified. All we were waiting on was an anesthesiologist to get there. For those of you that didn't know, I was going to have a c-section as I had previously had two others. As we waited, Heath and I started to panic because we had not decided on a boy name. There were several on our list but none that we were sold on. Even as we were talking about names, we just couldn't settle on one that we really liked. It was looking as though the baby would be nameless for a time if it was a boy!

At 11:30 p.m. they were ready for us and took me back to the operating room. I got a spinal block instead of an epidural like I was used to. It was essentially a shot of medicine into my spine.The results of that would rear its ugly head later. At 11:58, Joanna Faith entered this world screaming like neither of her siblings did. It turns out that she was nicked by her ear during surgery and the nurses were vigorously rubbing her head where she was bleeding not knowing she had been cut there. Heath said his favorite moment was when they brought her to me and she stopped crying when she heard my voice. I was just happy that she was healthy and whole and finally with us!

I won't go into all the details of the weekend but it was long and miserable for me. I ended up with a spinal headache as a result of my spinal block that pounded whenever I was vertical. By Sunday I was miserable and the anesthesiologist came to perform a blood patch. They extracted blood from my arm and inserted it into the location of the spinal block to compress the leak. I had to lay flat for an hour before they slowly raised me back up again. The results were immediate and I felt like a new woman! Unfortunately I had not been able to enjoy visits with friends and family all weekend due to my headache but I was going home feeling a lot better.

We were able to go home Sunday afternoon and the kids were thrilled. They had been so sick the week before, they only came up to the hospital once and we were being very careful about how much they were around her. We were thankful for grandparents and great friends to keep them busy while we were in the hospital. Having had a c-section and then the blood patch, my body was hurting but I was so thankful to be at home where I could be comfortable. It was time to adjust to life as a family of 5!

When Joanna was first brought to us after birth. Notice what time the clock says!

Joanna reminded us a lot of Elizabeth when she was born.

The kids came by Friday afternoon and brought the bear they made her. They couldn't wait to see her.

Our first family photo!

Grampa's first look at his 8th grandchild

Gamma's (Heath's mom) first look

Grammy couldn't wait to get her hands on her!

Getting dressed and ready to go home!

Joanna's anal daddy is delinting her feet!

Loaded up and ready to go!

 

 

 

 

 

Get me out of this joint!