The Arrival of our King James

Wow! I don't know where to start to update the last few weeks. Although I was pregnant for almost 40 weeks (37 and 1/2 to be exact), the arrival of James was still shocking to me! Even through the ultrasounds, it was so hard to envision a REAL baby was in there. Guess what? It was a REAL baby! Our sweet baby James! Here's the story:

Two Sunday nights ago (so Father's Day night) Landon and I were hanging out at home. We didn't have church that Sunday night since it was supposed to be family time. I can't even remember now what exactly we did do, but we got some rest and called our dads to tell them Happy Father's Day before going to bed. We both got off the phone with our dads about the same time and headed to bed. We have a king size bed, and for some reason, that particular night, Landon turned over toward me in the bed. He was holding my hand and we were just chatting for a minute about something. All of a sudden, my water broke. I was afraid I wouldn't know if or when that happened, but I must just say that it was very clear what was happening. So, I said to Landon, "My water just broke." And then Landon said, "Are you sure?" And, let me tell you, I was sure. So, it was go time. We got up. I changed clothes (why, I don't know since it really didn't matter to put on other clothes). We gathered up a few extra things that weren't in the car, and headed to the hospital. I called both sets of our parents that we had just gotten off the phone with, and they headed to Atlanta. It was about 10:40 pm when we left for the hospital from our house.

After checking into Northside, they immediately put me in a pre-op room (instead of the pretty labor and delivery rooms) since I already knew I was having a c section. Because I had milk about 10pm before we went to bed, they didn't want to do the c section until 5am Monday morning....which meant that I had to go through contractions and labor during the night. I'm still not sure why they didn't go ahead and give me the epidural, but they didn't. They did give me some drugs, when I asked for them, to slow the labor down, but it was still pretty significant pain. It was a lot of new craziness at once - I'd never even been in the hospital before, and now all this crazy stuff was happening with my body and pain and being stuck with needles, etc. When they gave me the epidural at 4:30am, I was extremely grateful and immediately wondered why any woman would not want an epidural. The relief I felt was unreal. Anyway, I admire women who want to do it naturally, but it's not for me.




James weighed 6 pounds 11 oz and was 19.5 inches long. He was perfect. I mean, I could not even have imagined how he would be. Things felt so surreal as it all happened. I did have a problem with part of my incision closing. I didn't anticipate anything like that happening, so let me just say now that Landon has been incredible during this whole thing. He has done gross stuff for me in the past couple of weeks that I'm really sorry he's had to do. He's been a great dr. to me at home. There's so much more I could say, but I hear James waking up so I have to hurry! Here are a few pictures:

Landon's dad and mom with James (my parents and the Frymires arrived right before the C section began so they didn't miss anything!)

Here's Landon's mom with James:

Here we are when we were getting ready to go home Thursday. This was a tough day because it's when I found out about my incision problem. My parents were waiting for us at home (thank goodness).

James in a cute outfit....

Getting ready to go to my dr. for a check up:

Landon, me, and James with Dr. Hirsch, my great dr. (even though he didn't get to delivery James...):

Sweet James playing on the floor (or not really playing...but just lying on the floor looking around:

James first real bath! ha - is this cute or what????

Here are my parents with James. My mom stayed for over a week. She was amazing. She didn't take over with James - she did all the yuck work - she did all the laundry, all the cooking, all the cleaning, waited on me hand and foot, AND she took James when I needed help. Most mornings around 7 after I fed him, I knocked on her bedroom door and she took him for me for a couple hours so I could sleep really well. This no sleep thing is pretty crazy. Dad came back to get her Friday and they went home Saturday. I LOVED having her here - she was a great help. I know James will miss his Grammy and GatorPa.

That's all I have time for now - there's much more I want to say....it will be coming...just more sporadically, maybe :) Pray my incision heals and that we get sleep!!