Baby makes Four

This was our family a week ago. Julian, Bryggen and myself ( plus 40 lbs) waiting for our lives to change for better or worse with the arrival of our baby girl.

Honestly, life had been so good up until now, I was a little apprehensive about the change. Would I still be able to go do all the things I enjoy?( eating out especially if it involves sushi, going to the ballet and opera, going for a run, lazy mornings, antiquing etc.)

These things, I still don't have the answers to but I do know that this baby was diagnosed with Shones Syndrome and needed someone to take good care of her and that Julian and I had been selected as her caretakers, no matter what it meant.

The induction was scheduled for Aug 2nd. While excited about the prospect of sleeping on my belly again and  not wearing prego clothes, the fear of pain like I have never felt before in the form of childbirth scared me a enough to keep me from running into L&D and begging to take the baby out.

As you can see here, I was very large...

So after waiting for the hospital to call and tell me to come in since 5 pm, at 9:30 I called and was told to come in as it must have been a full moon and the hospital was packed and running out of beds.

To St. Lukes we went with my Mom & Dad...

Apparently my body had been having regular contractions when I checked in so they started me on a very low dose of Pitocin at 2am. at 10:30 the doctor broke my water.  At 12:30 I tried to take a nap unfortunately the contractions got a bit more intense and by 1pm I was begging for an epidural a.k.a. my back cocktail.

At 1:40 it was go time.

And at 3:10 pm Sara Vaughan Hillery was officially on her own.

Vaughan weighed in at 7 lbs and 12 oz and 21" long.

After running lots of test in the cardio unit of the TCH NICU it was determined Vaughan could go home with additional monitoring via doctor appts and ecocardiograms. We have been so blessed and the doctors themselves were in disbelief as it seamed Vaughan's heart was progressively getting better and not worse as the PDA closed. The cardiologists still anticipate surgery will be needed in the first 6 months of her life but the later, the better, as it gives her time to grow.

After spending all of our time in the NICU  the first few days we got word that Vaughan could go home on Friday August 5th.

So our family of 3 is now a family 4. We are so blessed and thank everyone for their good wishes and prayers for little Vaughan.