One enchanted evening - I added two photos

Dan is so astute. I do try to get him to post as much as possible. Believe it or not I think I enjoy his posts as much as everyone else does. He just puts so much of himself into them I love reading them. But, I guess it's time for the mama to talk. I feel like I've been able to spend so much more time with Quinn lately. While we were in Providence they pretty much kept him sedated because of his surgeries and he had a lot of tubes and wires in him, so all I could really do was look at him and stroke his head. Also, they had rounds and change of shift at which time (understandably) we had to leave the ward. But this happened every couple of hours for at least an hour. Here Quinn has been much more awake, we don't ever have to leave the room, and as you've seen he has much less equipment sticking out of him so, as Dan mentioned in his post, I was finally able to hold my son!!!!!!


(I have more pictures, the camera died before I could get them on the computer, I will put them on later)

I had such a wonderful even with my son yesterday. It was pure bliss. I sat there holding him stuck in one of life's most perfect moments for hours fighting back tears (unsuccessfully might I add) thinking that this is the way life should be for all babies. Babies should be held by people who love them as much as possible, especially when they are in pain.

I feel like I've been waiting so long to hold him. In the same instant though, I look down at him and can't believe he's here, a little mix of Dan and I. It floors me what an enormous thing this is and what a little miracle he is.

It's funny, one of the nurses today moved a chair for me today even though I told her I could do it. She looked at me and said, you just had a baby remember, you should still take it easy. To which I replied, hmm, I guess I did just have a baby, but I swear that has to have been like a month ago. He was actually a pretty good delivery (I think, I have no comparison). No, contractions are not fun, but all in all it wasn't bad. My sister convinced me to call my doctor at 4:30p on Tuesday the 21st. I had been having contractions since 1 am the morning before, in fact Dan and I had gone into the hospital on Monday but were sent home due to lack of progress. So when I was still contracting on Tuesday and hadn't had much sleep since Sunday night I just wanted a little break to be able to sleep. I knew though if I called the doctor that they would tell me to go to the hospital. Since I didn't feel like anything had changed since Monday I didn't want to go to the hospital because I was sure that they would just send me home again. It turned out to be a good thing Sarah told me to call the Doctor because I had actually progressed to the point where they admitted me to the hospital. I called Dan to tell him to come home from work and Sarah stayed with me at the hospital until he got there. I was doing really well drug free until the doctor decided I wasn't progressing well enough and that they should give me Pitocin. After 1hr 20min of pitocin induced contraction on top of contraction, drugs couldn't come soon enough. Dan would tell you I was hitting him at this point, although I don't remember that, if he says I did I'm sure I did. I had really wanted a drug free labor, but anyone who has had pitocin the way I did will tell you how difficult that would be. Once the doctor put in the block (pain killer) life was great. I could feel contractions but only just enough to know when I was having one. When it came time to push, I didn't feel any pain at all, what a beautiful thing. Quinn came an hour after I started pushing without any tearing or the necessity of an episiotomy (yeah, thank you soo much Dan). So this is the point in the story where we find out there are complications and you all know what happened from there. I just didn't want Quinn's birth to be swept away in all that has happened since. It was a happy and eagerly anticipated moment. One that I'm glad Dan and I had without knowing what lay ahead. I think had we known there was going to be complications ahead of time, things would have been very different.