Hunter's birth

After his first bath at home
what a face

Only a few minutes old

Proud parents

It all started Tuesday night, the Dr.'s office called and said that Thursday was really busy for inductions and wanted to know if we wanted to wait until Saturday. Not really, once we knew it was Thursday the thought of waiting two more days was not that appealing. So went about the rest of our day thinking I still had two more days. Wednesday morning at 8:30 am (of course I was still sleeping) my phone rang, and I didn't want to answer but I saw it was the Dr. so I thought I better. The lady on the other end said tomorrow is really busy is there any chance you guys want to come in today? The next step was to call Dave who was already at work and see what he thought. My mom was flying in from the airport at 1 pm, so I needed to figure somethings out.

Dave called back and said let's do it, my work is fine with me taking the rest of the day off. So he was going to leave at 12pm. Luckily my friends Elizabeth was already staying with us and she was able to help us out. So I needed to be to the hospital by 11 am, so we got ourselves and four kids ready to leave by 10:40ish. The plan was that Elizabeth will drop me off at the hospital, then go drop her kids off at her sister-in-laws, then go pick up my mom from the airport, then bring her and my boys back to my house, then come to the hospital for pictures. Wow, what a lifesaver!

Dave got to the hospital at 12:30 and I was all checked in and hooked up to the patocin (don't know how to spell it) for about 45 min. At 12:45 pm the doc broke my water, which made the contractions more intense, so by 1:30 pm I got my epidural. At 2:00 pm the nurse checked and I was at a 4, so we figrued it would still be a few hours. Around 3 I started to feel pressure and I was trying to explain to Dave what it felt like, and I said no way I'm at a 10 already, I think I'm just getting close. So when the nurse came in I told her I felt the pressure, so she took a peak and she said well it looks like your ready to have this baby, let me go get the Dr. I think it was around 3:15-20ish when she got there and shortly after that I started to push. It only took 2 10 second count pushes and a couple of half pushes and he was out.

Now the moment of truth, how much does he weigh? We were all anxiously waiting. 5 lb 4 oz, and 20 in long. Sweet, what a relief! And I can't believe how long he is, the boys were both 18.5 in. He came out wonderfully healthy, and looked great. Once I delivered the placenta we looked at it and it was only about the size of Dave's hand and it had a crusted edge around it. the Dr. said that's what it does when it has shut down, and decides it doesn't want to grow anymore. So her it looks like we did the right thing. At this point things are going well, hunter and I are enjoying some skin to skin, and he has already nursed a little.

Time to head up to recovery, here's where the excitement starts. Once we get up to the 3 rd floor I feel a gush of blood, but I thought no big deal, you never know how much is coming out. Then I move to the bed in the recovery room and I tell Dave I don't feel good, and start to get really light headed and pale. Dave looks down and see pools of blood on the bed. He tells the transporter girl, um there's a lot of blood we need a nurse. At this point I'm pretty out of it and am not sure what's happening. the nurse gets there and pushes on my stomach and I feel a wave of blood pour out, and hear her say oh man. I'm in and out the whole time, not really with it. The Dr. comes in and tells me I have a blood clot in my uterus and she needs to manually extract it. During all this my blood pressure dropped to 50/30. After she removed the blood clot, they gave me some medicine to make my uterus start contracting because it just kept pumping out blood.

Once the clot was removed I started feeling better for a time, and was really hungry so I thought I would eat something, well I guess my stomach wasn't ready for that and I started to feel really nauseous and just wanted to go to sleep. They put some anti-nausea medicine in my IV and I was off to sleepy land, for a little while anyway. I guess I put everybody on high alert and couldn't get more then a 20 min nap before people were coming to draw blood, check vitals, check bleeding everything. I finally started feeling better around 9 pm.

Thankfully Hunter was an angel the whole time in the hospital and has been ever since we have been home. The boy loves to sleep and is a great eater, caught on to nursing right away. He wakes up every 3-4 hours to eat and then goes right back to sleep where ever he's laying, crib, bouncer, on your chest. He is just perfect and shows no signs of being premature. We are so blessed that he has come to us with no problems. We love him so much!

Hunter Scott Richards

Hunter and mom enjoying skin-to-skin

Hunter using his lungs

ready to go

Daddy and his new boy

So cute!

Weighing 5 lbs 4 oz, and 20 inches long. We are so happy to welcome this beautiful boy into our family. We were so glad that he broke into the 5 lbs and that he is perfectly healthy, and should be just fine to go home with us tomorrow. Heavenly Father truly has blessed us to make sure Hunter got to us nice and healthy.

Sorry that the pictures are out of order and that their aren't very many blogger was having some problems. More pictures and the whole story will come later on.

Bed Rest??

Not quite, but close. Here's the update on the baby, about a month ago I had an ultrasound because I was measuring small. This was not a huge surprise because I had the same with Makay, but I was further along about 34 weeks, this time I was only 31 measuring 28. So the ultrasound went fine he was just over the 10th percentile, and all the blood flow and fluid looked great. We scheduled another one for one month later. That was Tuesday this time the news wasn't as good, but not terrible. The fluid and blood flow through the umbilical cord looked great. However, he has dropped under the 10th percentile and had only gained about 1 pound in a month, they estimate about 4.2 pounds. This was not great news, the Dr. is worried that the placenta has stopped working as well as it should. I had a non-stress test later that day, during this test they monitor his heart beat and it looked great. We felt reassured after this that he was doing well.

Today I had my weekly visit with Dr. Loewen and we talked about what all this means. Well it looks like we will be having our baby next Thursday. By next Thursday I will be 37 weeks, so by this time the baby's lungs will be developed and he will be able to come into the world. I had my reservations at first, but my Dr. reassured me that she feels perfectly confident that he will be just fine. It is better for him to come out and get the nourishment he needs, then stay in if the placenta is not giving him what he needs. With this decision the Dr. said I was to take it very easy, which I thought I was already doing, but this means no more work or outings that involve a lot of walking. anyone who knows me, knows this is going to be hard for me, but I will keep my eye on the prize and take it easy.

We are putting all of our good thoughts and prayers out there that everything will go smoothly and that he will be perfectly healthy and a good weight. We are excited to have him join our family and look forward to meeting him.

End of summer = fall

I know summer isn't over yet and maybe I'm jumping the gun a little, but I'm so excited for the fall because that means...College football! (Hence the new background) I am so excited for the up coming college football season, not only are we die hard Ute fans, I pretty much love watching any college football game. And now that my house will be full of boys it's official we will be a football family. Whether they play it or not, we will watch it. So here's to a great football season just around the corner.

Makayisms

I got this idea from my friend Ivy's latest blog post, so I thought I would do the same. I think this age is so funny, he thinks he is just as big as everyone else and will tell them all about it. He is such a chatter box, totally opposite from Logan, he didn't talk that much at this age, so it's very foreign to us.

Here are some of the things he says on a daily basis; comes and pulls the covers off me and says "mommy breakfest", then he runs into the kitchen opens the fridge and says "this" pointing to whatever he's in the mood for. He isn't picking, but particular he knows what he wants so if you grab the wrong thing he pushes it away and says "no" with quite the scowl. Once you get the right thing he shakes his head with so much enthusiasm and say "uh-huh".

He also likes to talk to Logan's friends and will say things on the lines of; " hey guys" and runs to show them where their room is. He also says the typical "I did it" when he does the buckles in his chair, or if something doesn't work like he thinks it should, he says "ah man".

The funniest and sometimes a little annonying when you are trying to talk to your spouse, he is obsessed with car washes. I guess it's because one time we got the car washed when he was in the car and now he can spot them a mile away. Anytime we pass a car wash he says"mommy wash, see" and he'll keep saying it until you respond back. Or if we are driving on a road where he knows a car wash is he'll say, "mommy, where's the wash?" until we get to it. Along with car washes he loves train track, so every time we get in the car he ask, "mommy train tracks, peeas".

Lastly, yesterday he started carrying around a car and saying " 1,2,3 blast off".

Thanks for letting me rant about my sweet 2 1/2 year old. I figure I better write it down now while I remember, because before I know it he'll be all grown up.