Baby Brother Seth

Seth _____ Hardman

Saturday, January 7th, 2012

9 lbs, 19 inches

7:50 pm

Anika finally got to meet Baby Brother

Seth has a little bit of blonde hair

Anika giving Seth a hug

Daddy and Seth

Waiting for Seth to come back to our room

Anika got to open a gift from Seth. It is a moose that does the Mexican Hat Dance and it is one of her most favorite toys ever (we've checked it out from a parent resource center a few times). She wanted him out of the box immediately. As soon as we told her it needed batteries and that Emily would help her get them at home, she just wanted to leave. The toy is pretty annoying, but how much she loves it is endearing.

I started having contractions at 4 am. They were pretty intense from the start. I did manage to have

VBAC with no meds. I had a really odd labor that never stabilized, even through transition.

I had the most random contractions - the intensity, the time between, the length.

My experienced midwife (30ish years as one) thought it was really weird and unusual,

but I continued to progress so it worked. I guess.

The placenta came out within several minutes after Seth was born, but then I hemorrhaged really

badly and lost over a liter (1200-1300 cc) of blood. The midwife and nurses were sort of frantic

for awhile trying to get me to stop bleeding. Someone was constantly massaging my stomach,

they gave me pitocin, I got a shot of something else to help stop the bleeding, they were stuffing

several things up into me (I still don't know what), the on-call doctor came in... It was exciting.

I seem to be getting better. I am really tired, dizzy and weak. I fainted last night after going to the bathroom, but luckily two nurses were holding me and all I did was sort of a face plant into my bed. I have an IV and my red blood cell count is pretty low but so far barely haven't needed a transfusion.

Seth was doing really well. We enjoyed him being in our room, nursing well, and Nathaniel even commented on how it was nice that we didn't have to worry about all the cords like we did with Anika. But he has sort of digressed. He spit up (amniotic fluid, meconium, blood) a couple times - which could be normal. Then he did it again and we called the nurse in by saying "My baby's choking" as the nurse had told us to do. He just really struggled for a little bit. Then Seth did quite well through the night but has had several more episodes of this today including a more urgent choking where he was pretty dark purple all over and was rushed off to the nursery. The nurses got him breathing again, but he still continued to spit up and choke. He had some oxygen for a little bit. He also had an X-ray and some blood drawn. Now he is in the Level 2 Special Care Nursery with an IV for the night. He is being monitored to figure out if he has some sort of stomach or intestinal obstruction or problem. If he isn't doing better in the morning then he might have to go to Primary Children's to see a surgeon. It has been a real downer to have all of our exciting success turn the corner, but the overall outlook is a little more positive than not. So we'll be praying for him and you can too :)