He’s here! He’s here! He took his time arriving, but our baby boy has arrived and we couldn’t be happier to add him to our family. I’m sorry for taking so long to update the blog but as you can imagine, life with two children is significantly more challenging than life with one. To be quite honest, I’ve been drowning, which I’m sure is not a unique sentiment for parents. This is hard guys!

 

That said, I’m tickled to share the story of Barrett’s long awaited arrival. As you know, we made it to 40 weeks. With Cody, my water broke the day after her due date at the hospital, so there wasn’t too much post-due-date anticipation. This little guy really wanted to take his time. By 40 weeks and 3 days, my doctor started talking and planning for a potential medical induction, which was not appealing to me.

With that, I decided to do everything I could to encourage labor to initiate. There is no shortage of methods to encourage labor. Some of the more interesting ones I tried were eating eggplant parmesan (supposedly, eggplant, oregano and basil are known to induce labor), pineapple core and dates. I also went in for an induction massage and acupuncture on back to back days. Shout out to the awesome therapists at Whole Body Balance who I’m positive helped push me over the edge.

When I went to bed after acupuncture on Tuesday evening (March 22), I had what felt like a bit of a stomach ache. This continued throughout the night but because I’d had so many false alarms up to that point, I really didn’t trust that anything would come of it. Sure enough, I woke up Wednesday morning to our second story bedroom windows completely covered in snow from the craziest blizzard of the season. I told my husband I’d been experiencing some discomfort but that I didn’t think it was the real deal yet. Boy was I wrong! Within 30 minutes of waking up, labor hit me like a ton of bricks. My contractions were about 2 minutes apart and increasing in intensity.

 

Of course I went into labor during a blizzard. Thank goodness for our awesome neighbors, one of which helped us clear the snow from our driveway and another who came over to watch Cody. About 90 minutes after waking up thinking there was no way I could be in labor, we were in the car making the crazy drive to the hospital. We passed no less than 4 cars that had slid off the road.

 

 

Thankfully, Craig got us to the hospital in one piece while my contractions steadied at about a minute apart. By the time we arrived at Labor and Delivery, things got pretty exciting. I was GBS positive and ideally needed at least two rounds of antibiotics to help protect the baby. Unfortunately by this time the contractions were so intense that I started to fade. My blood pressure dropped to a pretty scary level and all of a sudden there were 10 medical staffers in the room trying to place my IV and get us situated. Thankfully, about two hours later things were significantly better. Our doula arrived, I opted to have an epidural, which actually worked this time and I was a whole new woman! It worked so well, in fact, that literally an hour after Barrett was born, I told my husband, “I’m definitely getting an epidural for my next baby!” To which I think he nearly fainted. After that point, things were pretty calm and easy. I continued progressing for about another hour and then they said we were ready to push. Because I needed another two hours to get a second round of the antibiotics, I asked our doctor to hold off on breaking my water and thankfully baby boy cooperated.  After that, I pushed for about 15 minutes and voila! They handed me a super cute baby!

 

Barrett Kay Buell was born on March 23 at 2:43 p.m., weighed 9 pounds 4 oz and was 21.5 inches long. Yes, I make BIG babies! His middle name comes from Craig’s late grandmother, a wonderful woman. He’s the spitting image of his big sister, complete with blonde hair and blue eyes (for now, at least). Thankfully, he had no issues resulting from GBS and was pretty happy to snuggle following birth.

 

We spent just 24 hours in the hospital following his birth as we were anxious to get home to Cody. She wasn’t quite as interested in checking out her new brother as we thought she would be at the hospital but has definitely been super tuned into him since. So far, Barrett has been super snuggly and seemingly more wakeful than his sister was at this stage. Since bringing him home we’ve been battling a massively plugged duct, latch issues and acid reflux but we’ve taken most everything in stride and are trying to embrace the chaos that comes along with this season of life.

Life with two children has been a big adjustment but I feel incredibly blessed by our growing family.