Raegan Hope

Raegan Hope Mason was born on Wednesday, July 6th at 8:37 a.m.  She weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces and was 19 3/4 inches long.  Here's how things went down:

We checked in to the hospital at 6 a.m. and I was taken to my "holding" room where they prepped me for the c-section.  I had a great (male) nurse, Jason, who made me laugh a lot.  Until he tried to do an IV and I almost passed out because he collapsed my vein and then he didn't seem so funny anymore.  He called a Paula Deen lookalike to try again on the other arm.  She was not successful either.  At this point, I'm thinking they better get it right or I'm going to go home.  So they called anesthesia up and the nurse anesthesist got the IV in on the first try.  Her name was Misty Dawn, she was teeny tiny and absolutely PERFECT for my anxiety ridden self. 

After the IV was in, I got to drink alka seltzer and then they wheeled me into the OR.  It was FREEZING in there.  Misty and a student inserted my spinal block - didn't hurt at all - and pretty soon I was numb from the chest down.  Dr. Andrews came in and got things going.  Misty talked to me the whole time - just idle chit chat - and really kept my mind off of what was going on.  Which I loved because during Kendall's birth I had a huge panic attack and was scared to death.  I felt the oddest pulling and tugging (not pain) while he was getting Rae out - truly the weirdest feeling.  And then she was here!!

She only let out a teeny cry and I was immediately nervous.  The showed her to me real quick and then all of the sudden there were like 5 people working around her.  Turns out that she wasn't breathing very well.  Her Apgar score was a 6 at 1 minute and a 8 at 5 minutes...off to the special care nursery she went.  I was taken back to recovery and James went with Raegan.  They got me settled and I started freaking out a little because no one was telling me what was going on.

Finally the doctor came out and explained to me that Raegan was having trouble breathing due to some extra fluid, that she'd been sunctioned and been on oxygen and would have to stay in the special care nursery for a while.  I tried not to freak out and sent James back with her while they got me settled in my room.

I ended up having a visit from the doctor a little later and they had decided Raegan needed to be started on IV antibiotics because her respirations were too fast, which is a sign of infection in a newborn.  Rather than wait around for the blood culture (which takes a while to show anything), they opt to go ahead and start babies on the antibiotics.  This means a mandatory 48 hours stay in the special care nursery.  I lost it at this point. I still hadn't held her because I wasn't walking yet.  Luckily a few hours later, I was able to get out of bed and go meet my sweet girl.  It was pitiful - her little IV and other monitors.  But she was being a trooper.

The next day, I was able to get up and walk around, so I spent lots of time back with Raegan - feeding her and spending time with her.  Friday we got the news that her culture came back normal (praise the Lord), her respirations were fine and she was released to our room!  We are so relieved! We ended up being discharged on Saturday morning and we got settled in at home quickly.  Kendall is a champ with Raegan - very loving, asking to hold her and help with diapers and bottles.  It's very sweet.

We go to the doctor on Thursday for a weight check.  Hopefully she'll have gained some weight.

Kendall words

Kendall has a truly fabulous vocabulary, but she still mispronounces some words and I absolutely refuse to correct her because it's precious:

- Bathing Soup for bathing suit ("let's go put our bathing soups on")
- Assert for dessert ("can I have some assert")
- Recide for decide ("I haven't recided yet")
- Sunscream for sunscreen
- Extra duper pretty please - when she is trying to be persuasive
- Posquito for mosquito, which she thinks suncream protects you from ("you need to put on some sunscream so you don't get a posquito bite")
- Extra duper pretty please (when regular ole please won't get the job done)
- See-curt for secret ("mommy that was supposed to be a seecurrrtt")
- Pa corn for popcorn - which is her all time favorite snack...she eats at least one mini bag of microwave popcorn every single day
- Pocket purse for pocketbook
- Macaroni for pepperoni