D Day

It was the morning of Friday April 4th and the last morning of my life with it just being Trevor and I. It was a long day filled with many emotions as I attended my Grandpa's funeral. Mourning the loss of a loved one here on this Earth, and the excitement and anticipation of a new life about to begin for our sweet little boy. I went in that night at 9:00 to be induced at 38 1/2 weeks. And my body wasn't doing a thing. Not. One. Thing. So they gave me this pill to help get my body into labor all while telling me that it could take up to 24 hours for my body to go into labor, and there was a chance that I could get sent home after 48 hours it still wasn't doing anything. Cool. Because I reeeeally hate needles. And when I say I hate needles, I mean I loathe them. I can't stand the thought of them, so the thought of having to go back and get another IV made me cringe. Haha.

I started to have pretty strong contractions and they gave me an ambien so that I could sleep-which helped me to sleep for a total of 2 hours. All while sweet Trevor is getting his beauty sleep just fine on that poor excuse for a chair/bed. I should have known then that was a sign of many things to come! So by 9:00 the next morning I was only dilated to a 1 1/2. Great. At that point we figured it would take over 24 hours for him to get here. But I received a tender mercy from the Lord. I think because my pregnancy with Briggs was nothing but lots of highs and unknowns, he decided to be nice to me and let me have an easy delivery. Because at 10:30 my water broke and by 2:30 I was ready to go! So after 20 minutes of pushing..yes 20 minutes and this was my first pregnancy..at 3:12 our sweet little Briggs Trevor Pace was born. Coming in at a whole whopping 4 pounds 14 ounces and 20 inches long.

And he was the CUTEST and SKINNIEST little 4 pound baby you could ever find! I for sure thought he would need to go to the NICU because they told us that anything under 5 pounds goes straight to the NICU and he was really purple when he came out. But after a little bit of oxygen they decided that he was fine and didn't need to go! What a sweet blessing! Our first night with him was easy to say the least. Briggs ever since he was born hasn't been much of a crier and I have always had to wake him up to feed. Which also would be an indication of things to come…

 Briggs was born SGA-Small for Gestational Age. He also in the womb had Intrauterine Growth Restriction or Retardation-causing him to be small. (I will talk more about this in my next post.) So our first night he was just quiet as can be and I had to wake him up to give him his whole half an ounce of formula, all while other newborns around us were screaming most the night. Which I told Trevor was normal and that Briggs wasn't like most newborns so don't expect all our children to be like that haha.

 Briggs ended up having jaundice and needed to be on the bill lights, which he hated, but they ended up sending us home and allowing us to have him on lights here at the house. He had to get his heel poked over the course of the next 3 weeks of his life. He only cried a few times through all of it and proved to us early on that he is just one tough kid. 9 days after he was born Trevor was holding him and found a bump on his head…a very large bump. So we took him to the ER and found out he had a sub dermal hematoma. Which is caused by trauma but he had no trauma to the head so it didn't make any sense. Most babies get them from the trauma of birth but he was born 9 days ago, so it really didn't make sense. The next night we ended up back at Primary Children's Hospital where they did a CT scan of his head. All came back normal and nothing to be alarmed by, except now with this new pocket of blood in his head from the hematoma, it made his jaundice levels jump back up. I didn't really realize how yellow he was at the time. That finally went away and his hematoma has now calcified and he most likely will always have a small bump on his head-but we are grateful it wasn't anything more serious!

Needless to say, being a new mom you already have anxiety about this new little life you have to take care of. On top of that having such a small baby who scared you your whole pregnancy and continued to scare you for a few weeks after having him…ya my stress levels were at an all time high. Trevor deserves an award for living with me and my hormones those first few weeks! 

Being a mom teaches you many things, things that no one can prepare you for, no matter how much they tell you. But it is the most rewarding and satisfying thing this life has to offer.