Cousin Fun

Simon and Sean with some cousin fun.  They both had a ball!

Spring Boys

Happy Spring! Look at all of these cutie boys.
As we were setting up for the previous picture, this is what was going on.
Jesse loving on Sean. All the time. We didn't pose Jesse that way, he just wants to be with Sean. I think he thinks they're best friends. Sean's a little more impartial though :)

Meeting Sean

We took dinner to Mary and Josh and the boys and Tim all got to meet Sean.

Mary was nursing him when we arrived and Noah and Simon could hardly wait to see him.

As soon as he was done, I asked who wanted to hold him and Noah jumped right in to hold him. He loves babies and holding them and taking care of them.

Noah was looking him over and said, "Look at his little mouth! What do they feed him?!?"

Next was Simon. We had to give orders that he could only touch Sean where his pajamas were. Not his head, eye ball, nose, chin or hair. But hands were okay. He was pretty excited too. And a little confused that Mary no longer had a big belly.

Then it was Eli's turn, but he acted like he didn't want to hold him. For attention? But he did hold him and enjoyed every second of it.

And that "baby Sean" is pretty cute and alert.

Jesse of course did not hold him, but was not very pleased when I was holding Sean even though Josh was holding him. He was confused and not a fan of not being his Mama's baby. But his place is secure. I assure you!

Tim didn't hold him either-he has a sore throat and while we don't think he's contagious (he is sick like this for 2-3 months each winter) he wanted to be on the safe side.

It's a ......

FAMILY! A new little family!
They had a beautiful baby boy at 11:14 am. He's 20.5 inches and a whopping 8 pounds 13.8 ounces! That Mary can grow a baby!

Both of his APGAR scores were 9, so he's doing well!

I won't disclose his name at this time since I didn't think to ask Mary & Josh if they wanted to let the whole world know or if they planned to continue to refer to him as "Dude"!

It was so interesting to be on the other side of the birthing process. I'm honored that Mary and Josh both wanted me to share it with them. I would love to tell all of the details, but I'm not sure that they are mine to tell-and they do have a blog :-)

I will say that at one point Mary fainted or blacked out (I'm not sure the difference?)--it was after the birth by several hours and we sat her up so we could get her in her chair to move her to her to the post partum room and she got too light headed and blacked out for just a few seconds. I saw it coming on based on her eyes and and I'll tell you what, I don't have daughters but I think that's how I would have felt if she was my daughter--like I couldn't help fast enough and it hurt my body physically, like she was a part of me. I sure love that dear girl!

It wasn't a huge deal really, they just put her back on the IV and hydrated her some more. She had also only had minimal food in the prior 24 hours so all things put together made for one woozy new mama. But after that I did have to take a walk and call Tim, I knew logically she was fine and it wasn't a big deal, but the lump in my throat made me feel otherwise and I needed him to talk me down from being too emotional.

In the end, they moved her to her new room in her bed to circumvent that whole situation again. Mary asked for that the first time around and was denied--I think she new she wasn't ready to get out of bed yet. Goes to show you should trust your body! I stayed to make sure she got to that room okay.

The babe is hungry and rooting all the time. He's figuring out how to latch and is doing well with it. If he keeps nursing at the rate he's going, Mary will be sore, but proud of the strong little guy she grew with her own body.

I'm thankful to be able to have been a part of it and am utterly speechless at the magnitude of how thankful I am she and the baby are doing well and ended up with a natural childbirth (after some jumpstart assistance to ripen the cervix). Thank you for all of the prayers, but don't stop, the first couple of weeks will be difficult for Mary, and Josh too.

Baby update

Just a quick update to let you know I'm at the hospital with my sister and her husband. I know he's posting, but if don't normally check there I thought I'd link so you can see what the status is.

I got here right at six this morning, which is when they had anticipated starting the pitocin, but she's doing fine on her own so they are letting her go and see how she does.

She's currently at about 6cm and the baby is at zero station-when I got here it was at -1 so she's making progress. The water broke when the doc checked her at 6:00 right as I was coming in the door.

Update: THE NURSE JUST CHECKED---SHE'S FULLY DILATED!!!!

The pushing!

Check out Josh's posts at A little something!