She's Here!

After waiting 37 weeks and 3 days, our baby girl has finally arrived!  She was born on November 20 at 2:04 pm.  Weighing in at 7 lbs 3 oz, our baby girl has a head of black hair and she looks a whole lot like her big brother.  What a blessing to have this little one join us right in time for Thanksgiving!

I wish I could say that Baby G's birth was without drama, but births in our family are always a little crazy.  When I went to my OB for my 37 week appointment, I pretty much experienced deja vu when they told me that afternoon that I had preeclampsia and would need to be admitted to the hospital sometime in the next 24 hrs.  (This all happened with pregnancy #1.)  Anyway, I was admitted on Tuesday morning, started on my day's worth of Magnesium (can you say one permanent hot flash?), and Baby G was born a few hours later.  Thankfully, my blood pressure and labs were stable this time around, so Baby G and I were able to move to the Mother-Baby unit the next day.  That's when the craziness happened.

I got a phone call that evening from my mother informing me that my youngest son had somehow reached onto a shelf and had ingested someone's prescription medication.  Per my school nursing instincts, I requested that she call poison control and follow their advice.  Poison control then directed my mom to take my son to our local children's hospital for further care.  As a result, Dear Husband left the baby and me at our birth hospital and drove across town to spend the night at the children's hospital with our 2 year old.  Poor daddy got very little sleep as they monitored our little one all night long and had to restart his IV 3 times (thank you nurses for catching the infiltration and saving his arm!).  Anyway, on Thanksgiving morning, Dear Husband called and said that all was well and that he and our little guy had been discharged and were heading home. 

So as it turns out, we had lots to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.  We didn't get to enjoy a big family dinner with turkey and stuffing.  And we didn't get to enjoy a day of relaxation and football like we had hoped.  What we did get was a reminder of how precious life is, how precious children are, and how wonderful it is to be a family of 5.  Watching my healthy 2 year old bounce off the walls of my hospital room on Thanksgiving afternoon while my 4 year old posed for pictures holding his baby sister was priceless.