Our gift from God~Brady George Shaban~

Well the time has finally come and our gift from the good Lord above has finally made his presence in this world :)! We are so incredibly and completely in love with him and our life is truly complete with him. Even though he has just made his way into this world we feel like he has always been with us:) Adjusting to parenthood has been pretty smooth for the most part, but the first few days home were a little scary and hectic...which I will go into details later on. For now I will just begin with how the labor started :)

41 weeks pregnant and on our way to the hospital

It was Sunday Nov. 1st and we checked into the hospital at 9pm where they had to start inducing my labor using the drug cervitec, which ripens my cervix so when they started me on the pitocin it was such a "shock" to my cervix. I had my first dose at 10:15pm and then my second dose at 1:15pm. They usually give three doses but I started have contractions on my own pretty regularly so they held off. So needless to say I didn't get a wink of sleep Sunday night so going into my labor I was already so exhausted. My doctor, Dr. Jenkins, came in at 8am on Monday Nov. 2nd to break my water and after she did that my contractions got to be more and more intense. I was hoping that they wouldn't have to use the pitocin but no such luck:( The nurse started me on the pitocin at 8:30am, in which I was dilated to about 2cm, and at first the contractions were pretty tolerable and then around 9:30 I was in a pretty uncomfortable place. I wanted to have an "all natural" birth but my desire became less and less as the contractions grew more and more intense. So at around 10:45am I opted to have an epidural hoping it would allow me time to relax and hopefully get some sleep. Little did I know an hour after getting the epidural I would have to start pushing! I called my parents and sister to let them know that I was at 7cm and they should make there way to the hospital :) I wanted to have my mom and sister in the room when I delivered because I thought it would be such a great moment to share with them. Noon rolled around and the Dr. said "well it is time to push!" I was shocked because here I was expecting to have a much longer labor and my family wasn't even at the hospital yet. But the nurse said that given it was my first child the pushing could take awhile...which I guess she was wrong. I started pushing at 12:10pm and within the first few pushes they knew it wouldn't be that long until he entered this world. My mom and sister came into the room at around 12:30 and my mom immediately started crying, which then made me cry, then Kris cried and then before you know it we were all crying! :) But I had about 10 more minutes of pushing to do and then at 12:50pm our little miracle entered this world :)!

It was truly an amazing experience and even though I was completely exhausted, I would have done it all over again the next day. When the Dr. laid Brady on my chest all the pain and tiredness I had felt earlier faded away and I was completely and forever in love with him :)! We now were a family of three and Kris and I knew God had blessed us big time and we are forever going to count this blessing over and over again :)!

Brady entered this world as healthy 7lb. 14oz and 21in" long and passed all his tests :)! He was quite alert too for being a newborn and had considerable amount of strength in his neck and was somewhat able to hold his head up while laying on your chest :) Here's a video of him and Daddy just 6 hours after he was born along with some pictures my friend Sarah took during her visit to the hospital the day Brady was born.

He took to breastfeeding right away and the only thing the nurses told us to watch for was his "low risk" jaundice. When they sent us home on Wednesday the pediatrician told us to just keep monitoring his skin color and keep an eye on his wet or soiled diapers, which at this point he didn't have a problem making his "quota." We were discharged from the hospital Wednesday afternoon at about 2:30 and Brady was pretty content with his first car ride. He even let us do a quick stop at Target (Daddy just ran in and Mommy and Brady stayed in the car) to get some supplies :)

Once at home we were so glad to finally feel relaxed and not have nurses or doctors always stopping in our room and we welcomed the peace and quiet :) But later that night things kind of got a little scary as Brady hadn't had a wet diaper for 12 hours and his skin tone was turning more and more yellow - so I called the on call Dr. and when I didn't hear back from her for over an hour we decided to just bring Brady to the ER. We got to the ER around 12:30am on Thursday and as soon as we got there the Doctor took his temperature rectally, which was normal, and then shortly there after he went pee and poop! Go figure! :) So they ran some test and even though his jaundice numbers went up slightly, it still was severe enough that they felt like they needed to do anything else at that time. We were just told to try and keep up with the breastfeeding and hopefully the jaundice should pass with him going to the bathroom. I had to have a follow up appointment on Friday morning at Metro Peds in Shakopee with his pediatrician Dr. O'Laughlin. She said he looked great and she said his jaundice looks like it is subsiding and he had gained a few more oz. since his discharge from the hospital on Wednesday. He still has 5 more oz. to gain until he is back at his birth weight, but he is well on his way:)

We are so thrilled and relieved that everything is going to be O.K. with our little man:)! Our next appointment with the doctor will be his week old wellness check:) So until then....