Logan is Here!!!

I’ve been a little slack about updating the website (having a baby at night has really thrown me off!), but I’m happy to announce that we were blessed with the safe delivery of Logan Daniel on Monday night.  My water broke on Friday afternoon (the day after Doug got home from a 4 day trip to Virginia for work…our first blessing), so Doug and I went to the hospital.  Thankfully my doctor was still in her office doing some paperwork, so the doctor on call let her know we were coming.  She came over and made sure that I wasn’t about to deliver.  Since I was a few days away from being 35 weeks our scenario was a little different than with Steven.  By this stage in development, there are more risks with infection setting in after the water breaks than they are about the baby’s development.  She said that if we can wait at least 24 hours his lungs get a natural little burst of development, so we decided to wait until he was officially 35 weeks before we induced…which meant a couple days on bed rest in the hospital.
We were scheduled to be induced at noon on Monday, but they had so many other births come in that we weren’t taken to Labor & Delivery until 2.  My doctor was working at their office about 20 minutes away until 4:30, so she wanted to make sure she had time to get back before Logan came.  When my nurse checked my cervix I was 3cm and 80% effaced (I had only been 1cm at my appointment on Wednesday, so I was pretty impressed).  They started my petocin around 3:30 at the lowest dose so they could see how my body responded (since Steven came so quickly they wanted to make sure I had time to get an epidural this time).  My doctor came in at 5 and I was 5cm.  I was having little contractions, but nothing worse than a cramp.  My doctor suggested that I go ahead and get my epidural.  Now the tricky part begins.  Epidurals usually lower your blood pressure…not a problem unless you already have pretty low blood pressure like I do…then it’s not great.  When I got my epidural with Macy my blood pressure crashed, they lost her heartbeat, and about 20 doctors and nurses rushed in the room…not an experience Doug and I were hoping to recreate.  My nurse made sure I had extra fluids and ephedrine close by just in case my blood pressure didn’t cooperate.  The anesthesiologist started me with a slow dose, but my blood pressure still dropped pretty low.  My doctor didn’t want to increase the petocin until they knew my blood pressure was stable…which took forever!  Thankfully it never crashed, but it stayed low so increasing the petocin was very slow.  I think I was about 7cm around 7:30, but he was still pretty high (bed rest isn’t very helpful in getting babies to drop) and he was face up (which makes delivery harder).  I finally made it to 10cm around 10pm so we started doing some practice pushes to see if I could get him to come down a little.  My doctor was concerned about me getting worn out from pushing after being on bed rest for 15 weeks, but by this point this little boy was going to come…I wasn’t going to give him a choice!!  I pushed for about 15 minutes and we were ready to get set up for delivery.  Thankfully once he got to my pelvic bone, he turned over into the correct position (I can’t begin to tell you how excited that made me).  I pushed about  15 more minutes and he was born at 10:43…and I was a VERY happy girl!!!
The special care nursery nurses were there to check him out.  His color was really good and he was very angry about being on the outside, but he was breathing really fast so they knew something was off.  Doug went with them to the nursery and we found out that he was 6lbs 3oz and 20 1/2 inches long (that’s 2 inches longer than Macy was when she was born at full term…2 inches!!) He had some fluid in his lungs so they put him on cpap to help keep pressure in his lungs to help with the fluid.  My nurse (who was awesome) called Doug back to the L&D room because it was 11:30 and Rush’s closes at midnight…and this momma who hadn’t eaten in 24 hours was HUNGRY!  By the time I ate, got back to my regular room, went through all the postpartum instructions with my new nurse, and finally got in bed it was about 2:30am…Jenn doesn’t do 2:30am…after only getting 3 hours of sleep the night before from being too excited to sleep, I was beyond tired.  And I was still beyond tired when someone came in from the lab to take my blood at 4am…and when my nurse came back at 5am and then I had to pump (which is my excuse as to why I’ve been so slack with the updates…I don’t function well without sleep and 5 1/2 hours over 2 nights leaves me unable to make complete sentences ;))
I think he looks like Steven, but it’s hard to tell through 2 layers of plastic.

I was trying to show how long he is, but it’s really hard to get a good picture…once he’s in the open air it will be much easier!

We are so blessed and excited to have this little guy as a part of our family!  I can’t wait to hold him and steal some snuggles! 🙂  Thanks for all of your prayers and support during this journey!!!