5 years ago tonight...

I was in labor at Denton Regional Medical Center...the following is Seth's version of Ethan's birth that he wrote up the day after Ethan was born. I still love to read this through his words...hope you enjoy

Here is the time table as best as I can remember it:

Monday	11:18am	I get a call at work from Jessica's Spa telling me that she has gone into labor. Jessica's friend, who is a massage therapist, was pushing on some points that are supposed to induce labor... Well, it works. - I drove straight home to get the additional items, not in Jessica's car.
	12:25pm	I get home and gather the car seat, Ipod, etc.. and the spa calls and tells me that her labor has progressed quicker than expected, so I call Jessica's mom who was near by to pick her up from the spa and drive her home. (Contractions were still 10minutes apart, just more intense)
	1:00pm	Jessica's mom gets to the spa and prepares Jessica for her road trip, which was still supposed to be home at this time since the contractions were closer but not close enough to go to the hospital. (I get some Subway for Lunch.)
	1:25pm	Jessica and her mom leave the hospital and Jessica's contractions are now 4-5 minutes apart, so we change plans and decide to meet at the Hospital. I call the doctors office to inform them and head up to the DRMC with items in the van.
	2:00pm	Jessica arrives and I escort her to the labor and delivery floor and they check us into room 3 and begin to hook up the monitors. Her contractions decide to fizzle during this process and end up at 10 minutes apart so she is ordered to walk around for an hour.
	3:00pm	Tired from walking, we return to the room and they hook her back up to the monitors. Her contractions are now back to about 5 minutes apart. At this point it is decided that instead of sending her home, they will just bump up our schedule since we were supposed to check in at 8pm that night for inducement. So an order is placed for some Cervidil.
	4:00pm	The Cervidil is applied and Jessica is determined to be at 1cm at that time. Cervidil softens the cervix, but also has a tendency to induce labor as well. After it is applied, we see Jessica's contractions get closer and longer and her friend from the spa shows up to coach her and massage her pressure points during this time.
	10:00pm	We all get our hopes up because Jessica's contractions are 7 minutes long and about 1 minute apart, so we ask the nurses if they can check her. They measure her at only 2cm and barely that. The pitocin is scheduled to begin at Midnight, so we help Jessica though these contractions and they also allow her to take a hot shower to help cope with the pain.
	12:00pm	Jessica is measured at 2.5 cm and the Pitocin is administered. You have to measure at 4 cm before they can administer the Epidural. With Pitocin, you barely get any rest between contractions and they come fast and hard. For the next 2 hours, Jessica goes through the worst exercise of an onslaught of contractions. Jessica's mom and myself help her though the contractions and her dad charts them, since our TOCO monitor (supposed to monitor contractions) wasn't working properly.
Tuesday	2:00am	Jessica is measured at 5 cm (Hallelujah chorus can be heard) so the epidural is ordered. The person who administers it, is on call (not on site) and arrives 45 minutes later with his cart of goodies. Jessica looks at him and says "I love you" before going into another contraction.
	3:00am	The epidural is finally hooked up and Jessica is measured at 8cm. We now help Jessica through a couple more contractions as the epidural kicks in and finally we decide that we can get some sleep.
	4:00am	Jessica finally falls asleep. I got the benefit of sleeping on a pull out cot that was equivalent to a napkin on top of monkey bars.
	6:30am	All the nurses come in to check vitals, tell us that our Doctor will be there at 7:30 to check for dilation and possibly break Jessica's water.
	7:45am	Dr Reeves, checks Jessica at a 9.5cm and breaks her water. We then get to wait for Jessica to reach 10cm which happens at 8:30am.
	8:30am	The nurse checks Jessica, and she is at 10cm, so they begin to have Jessica push little Ethan down. The next three hours are a physical and emotional trial that makes it hard to believe that people have kids anymore. I watched my wife push so hard that veins would pop out of her forehead and eyelids and she even popped some vessels in her eyes. I gained a huge amount of respect for her that day. I think every husband should be by his wife's side through this process. I now understand what it takes for a child to be born and I understand that a mother will do everything it takes for her child.
	11:25am	They only allow you 3 hours of pushing before they resort to forceps and at 5 minutes till that threshold in our case, little Ethan came into this world as Jessica's mother and I watched him take his first breath through our tears of joy. The nurses then placed him on Jessica's chest as I cut the umbilical cord. As Jessica welcomed him, you could see his eyes looking for his mothers voice that he has heard for the last 9-10 months.
Thursday	2:00pm	We finally check out of the hospital which was a shame since the food was so great. They ended up keeping us the extra day, so they could monitor Jessica's healing since she had a 3rd degree tear. (Most women only suffer a first degree, but Jessica is an overachiever) We packed up everything and drove home to begin our new life together as a family. We have learned so much these last couple of days and we will continue to learn as his and our lives progress. We want to thank all of our family, friends and God, as none of this would have been possible with out everyone's help, support and prayers. I will be putting together a video, so check back in a couple of weeks to see if I have it done. I will also be adding more pictures soon.

Happy New Year!

Ethan right before he turned 1, awwww!

We are planning on ringing in the new year right here at home, with a few friends and the Wii. :)
I hope you and yours have a great night tonight, whether it be out with friends or hanging out at home. See you next year....

Surgery for Aiden....again!

Just got back from the Dr...he has to have his one tube put back in and while they are in there they are going to remove his adenoids. He just finished up a 10 day antibiotic for his double ear infection and when he was looking in there today he already had a ton of fluid build up and will probably turn into an ear infection with in a week or so. UGH!!
But at least this will help him out in the long run right? He is refusing to eat lately and would rather just drink his meals, the Dr said it is probably because it is so swollen that food hurts going down, while milk, yogurt and applesauce feel good.
I know that this is just routine surgery, but it still sucks to see your little one wheeled off for surgery. Last time he was too little to really understand what was going on, he wasn't even 1 yet, but this time he will.
I have decided that I am going to take him in for a second opinion at a pedi ENT, while I like our current Dr, the wait time is ridiculous! We waited today for over 35 min and there was no one else in the office. The parking lot was empty and so was the waiting room. The last two times before we waited over an hour. I understand sometimes people run behind, but this is consistent. I found a pedi ENT, with offices in Plano and Dallas, and they are all set up for kids, so if there is a wait, it shouldn't be too bad. At our current Dr there are usually about 5 older people there with hearing aids that do not like to hear kids laugh and screech :) Aiden was happy the whole time today, but he was happy while dancing, singing etc...
Fingers crossed that our second opinion appt goes well...and if you have a great Dr to rec, please leave me a comment or email me!

Our *Green* Christmas card

Merry Christmas from our family to yours...

Birthday party time!

So with the boys party being right after Christmas, I have to be on the ball and get invites done and out early, like before Christmas break if I want them to hand them out to friends at school. So when I got them done a whole week before school let out I was feeling so good. The invites are below, do you happen to notice anything important missing?


Yeah, the date might help huh? Sat morning I got a call from one of the little girls mom's at school asking what the date was...OMG! I ran to the stack I was about to mail out, ripped one open and yep, there is no date! After all the spell checks, and proofreading...I still screwed them up! Now now I am going through with a fine point sharpie and writing in the date...ahhhh

So when you get your invite and it looks like it was opened and then resealed, it has been. :)

It has been on of those weeks...

Last Monday I took Aiden into the Dr. He had these bumps on his elbows that were starting to bother him and I didn't know what to do. I talked to my SIl for a bit about them and she thought it was eczema. We went to the Dr and yep, thats what it was. Got a steroid cream, told to use a different bath soup and slather him down with Cetephil lotion. No big deal right? Well on Thursday he started running a fever that afternoon, and by the next morning he was kinda out of it, but back to his normal self. I headed out to help a friend out who works for a women's shelter and mom watched the boys. Aiden woke up from that nap with a raging fever and the rash had spread to his arms, legs, armpits and torso. So I called the Dr and they squeezed us in at 4:45! After looking at the new bumps, he was diagnose with molluscum contagiosum AND a double ear infection. Yes, this makes 3 ear infections in the last month or so, looks like we are going to have a tube put back in the one ear.
Thinking we finally got this under control with the two prescriptions we now have, we went home and got ready for the weekend. That night starts the coughing...it was almost bark sounding. So I thought croup right away, Seth sat with him outside in the night air, that helped for a few minutes. Then we tried the steamy bathroom, no help. We turned on his humidifier and hoped for the best. It didn't help at all, in fact we were up all night with him, he couldn't sleep cause he couldn't stop coughing...it was a rough night...and it continued all weekend. :(
We went back to the dr today, they diagnosed him with walking pneumonia. So we are home now with two more prescriptions, a z-pack and a cough medicine. He is actually sleeping right now, and I have only heard him cough once...I just pray that this works and he gets better...Ethan ran a fever this morning and they checked him out for me while I was there with Aiden, no meds except Tylenol and REST....I don't want sick boys for Christmas!!

Poor Aiden!

So late last night, we heard Aiden stirring around in his bed so we turned on the TV to see how he was doing. He looked like he was still asleep, but he was all tngled up in his blankets, so Seth went up to get him straigtened out. As he was doing it Aiden woke up a little more and decided to try and sit up, sorta. He managed to do a face plant into the side guard rail that keeps him in the bed. I ran up to help, he was screaming! Seth got him some tylenol and I rocked him for a while till he calmed down, looked at me and said "bed?"
So he walked over, climbed in and was asleep before I could even leave the room.
I felt horrible for him, I kept checking on him all night, to make sure he was fine. I never saw a bruise on his forehead so I thought we were in the clear.
So this morning when he got up and I went up there, I felt to bad when I saw him, with a huge swollen eye lid that is black and blue with a bit of red! Poor guy smashed his EYE last night...no wonder he cried for so long.

This was the best I could do at taking a pic!