One week old!

It's hard for me to wrap my head around how much has happened since I woke up in my hospital bed last Wednesday morning. Andy wrote his version of the day; here's mine.

March 17 started out like most of my days in the hospital. Andy and I talked on the phone for a bit and then I had some breakfast around 9:00. I figured that I'd spend the day watching movies and working on some knitting projects. Andy planned on bringing Chipotle for dinner, so I was looking forward to that. The nurse came in and put me on the monitor just before 10:00. She came back in after about 20 minutes because the test wasn't yielding the results she was looking for. I drank some juice to wake the baby up, and she suggested that I roll onto my other side to see if that would help.

When I rolled over, the baby's heart rate dropped into the 60s (usually it's between 135 and 160). When it didn't come back up right away, she called for backup. In a few seconds, my room was full of nurses and residents. They slipped an oxygen mask onto my face and several people went out into the hall to figure out what to do next. After a minute, they came back in and announced that I would be going down to Labor & Delivery for a c-section. It was now 10:30 AM. I paged Andy and called Mary to come to the hospital in case Andy didn't make it in time. Andy called back and the nurse told him what was going on and where he should go when he got here. (I didn't know this at the time, but she also told him to hurry since that they wouldn't be able to wait for him.)

I was moved onto a stretcher and they raced me down to L&D. I was terrified. My biggest fear since being in the hospital was that I would have to have an emergency c-section without Andy there. It was looking like that was going to happen.

Once we got to pre-op, the baby's heart rate had come back up so the doctors slowed down a little bit. Andy arrived when I was in the delivery room, and right after he sat down next to me they started the procedure. Andy held my hand and started talking to me so that we would both be distracted. We didn't even notice when they began the c-section.

We heard someone announce the first incision at 11:09, then the sighting of feet and a bottom after that. At 11:10, the baby was out and we found out that we had had a little boy! I can't believe how quickly everything happened - it was only 40 minutes after they made the decision to deliver him.

Patrick was placed on a warming tray as his team of doctors and nurses got to work. We heard his little cry and were relieved that he was able to breathe on his own. I got to see him for the first time and touch his tiny hand as they carried him out of the delivery room. Andy followed him to the NICU and I headed to recovery.

It was a long, exhausting day for us, butI was finally able to get out of bed at 9:00 PM. I knew that once I was out of bed, they'd let me go down to the NICU in a wheelchair, so I wanted to make sure that happened. At 9:30, I finally got to meet our son. I was so excited to see him that I didn't even notice the all of the wires and tubes.

I was on bed rest for 9 weeks - 3 weeks at home and 6 weeks in the hospital. Seeing Patrick and getting to touch his little hands for the first time made it worth every single second.