Happy Birthday James!

The weekend before James’ birth Tropical Storm Lee formed in the Gulf of Mexico and cut inland through Louisiana.  This brought rain to our area starting Sunday afternoon and continued well into the afternoon on James’ birthday.  We all thought it was kind of ironic that a tropical storm sharing Charlotte’s middle name was going to rain on James’ birth day!

After a fitful night of sleep filled with lots of rain and wind and a fear of power outages, we woke on Tuesday, September 6th ready to go.  We scheduled a 10 am c-section for many reasons but one of the big benefits was that it meant we didn’t have to be at the hospital until 8 am and so got to sleep until a decent hour.  Mom and Dad arrived around 7:15 am and we left for the hospital not long after Dad left to take Luca to the vet.

We drove to the hospital in some driving rain and had the added stress that morning of our phone carrier (AT&T) having problems due to the storm.  For much of the morning we either had no service or very little service!  Thankfully we were able to use the wireless internet features on our phone to keep up communication!

When we got to the hospital we were shocked to see the waiting room for Labor and Delivery packed with people.  It turns out that September 6th was a popular day to be born and the hospital had 25 babies born that day which was at or near their record!  Thankfully we didn’t have to wait long before being taken back to our room to get prepped for surgery.  Our nurse was nice and got us all set up and we headed into the OR on time around 9:30.

I was a little nervous about the c-section due to some issues I had when Charlotte was born.  I had a big drop in my blood pressure after receiving my spinal which resulted in some nausea and I felt really bad after surgery also.  I had warned the anesthesiologist and my nurse about these problems.  Thankfully my nurse pumped me with fluids beforehand and I didn’t have any of those problems this time.  It was nice to be able to enjoy (for the most part) the entire process instead of feeling really bad!

I got my spinal and after what seemed like a very long time, our doctor finally told Jason to stand up and start taking pictures and then at 10:09 AM we heard a beautiful sound….loud, loud wailing!  James definitely came out with a set of lungs!  He screamed and cried the entire time the doctor’s were checking him out which was music to my ears.  They moved the end of the sheet blocking my view so that I could see him being weighed.  I couldn’t believe my ears when they announced that he weighed 6 pounds!  Our doctor had been predicting a big baby and James came out at barely 6 pounds!

After getting weighed, measured (18 inches long), and checked out James was brought over to meet me.  Thankfully he stopped screaming for the first few seconds after we met but quickly started up again!

After our very brief introduction Jason and James headed up to the nursery where the rest of the family got to see him and Jason gave him his first bath.  I haven’t heard all of the stories from the family watching James in the nursery but from the pictures Charlotte was very excited to see him.  And I did hear that she exclaimed that “He’s a nekked noo-noo!” when he was unbundled.

I finally got out of a very boring stay in the recovery room and we got to our room.  You know things are different this time around when the nurses are working to get your transferred from the recovery bed into your hospital bed and you hear the pitter patter of little feet scurrying to use the potty in your room!  Once I got a little bit more settled and was given James to hold for the first time Charlotte came in to meet him before heading home for her nap.  She was very excited to see him and wanted to sit on the bed with me to look at him.  It was so sweet having both of my babies right there with me!

I was very thankful to feel very good through the whole process of James’ birth.  The doctors and nurses took great care of us and helped me avoid the pitfalls that we faced with Charlotte’s birth.  And we could not feel more blessed than to have James added to our family!

Note: Charlotte’s Big Sister shirt came from my friend Hillary at Mint Julep Monograms.