One Month Old

WOW!  It is hard to believe that Charlie Banks will be one month old tomorrow.  We had a doctors appointment on Tuesday, January 30, which was the day after our due date.  We were hoping for progress, but we were still one cm.  They hooked me up to a stress test and made me drink a coke so that they could track his movements and hear his heartbeat.  At this point, they decided we would be checked into the hospital that evening and we would start the induction first thing the following morning.  I remember feeling so many different emotions…scared, excited, nervous, anxious.  Every single day for the weeks prior I thought that it would be the day and it was such a weird feeling to know that we would actually be going to the hospital that day!  We decided to go downtown to have lunch at Groucho’s as our last meal out as a family of two.  Then, we headed home to shower, gather our things, and basically pace around the house until it was time to head to the hospital. 

Last Pregnancy Picture before heading to the hospital!

The induction started around 7 am and things moved pretty quickly.  I definitely learned my lesson NOT to wait to ask for the epidural.  On my second go I will be getting that sucker ASAP.  Once they broke my water the nurse asked if I wanted it and things were not too bad so I told her I could wait a while.  Well, pretty much as soon as she left to get me some apple juice I demanded Jimmy to go find her and tell her I needed it quickly.  Those contractions came on fast and were no joke.  After about two and a half hours of active labor, Charlie Banks was born at 3:36 pm.  He weighed 7 lb. 9 ounces and was 21 inches long.  He is perfect!

We had a little bit of a scare and had to stay in the hospital an extra night.  One of the nursery nurses was concerned about his coloring and so they ended up doing some extra blood work and the numbers were pretty concerning to the doctors.  After taking my blood and running some tests it was determined that we had a fetal maternal hemorrhage.  Basically, how I understood it was that there was a leak somewhere prior or during birth that caused him to lose some of his blood into me.  So when they ran my blood work I had a high amount of fetal red blood cells in my blood.  This explained why his counts were so low.

We headed home on Saturday and settled in as a family of three.  We were so blessed with so many friends and family bringing us meals and visiting us.  Jimmy had to leave the following Monday which was really tough!  Definitely the toughest goodbye yet.  We are really looking forward to him getting back to us in a little over a week!  More to come…crying baby is calling!