Down Home with the DeCosters: Easton Luke DeCoster

Yay!! It has been a month and 4 days since my Easton was born and I am totally going to knock his blog post out ...RIGHT ...NOW. Sitting down at the computer is a hard task for me to do... it just doesn't happen during the day and at night it seems like a lot of work. However, some of the details of his birth are starting to get a little fuzzy so I best get this thing done!

Birth Story....

So I had wanted to go into labor naturally.. mainly to say that I at least did it that way once. However, the fear of having a ginormous baby, need to organize my other children, and sheer exhaustion of braxton hicks and being pregnant caused me to go ahead and go forward with an induction.

My parents arrived the previous Saturday and we were able to spend a lovely, relaxed weekend together. Induction was scheduled for 5:30 AM on Monday, January 20th. I fully expected to be holding my son by noon that day. So we were up at 4:30 AM(fully pumped of spark and excitement)and headed out the door at 5:00 when the hospital called and told us to not come in because there was no room for any of the inductions scheduled. Evidently 6 women came in laboring on their own during the night(the nerve). They said, "Go back to sleep and call back at 7:30". Yeah right... go back to sleep.. that is not happening.

Well, Emma woke up at 5:45 and declared that her mind was not sleepy. She came into our room around 6:00 having heard me run into a princess table trying to sneak through the kitchen. So Emma joined Roger and I in our room and we watched Robin Hood (the Disney one of course) in our bed.

Long story short.. Called at 7:30...no room...they said call back at 10:30 or you can go ahead and schedule it for tomorrow. At this point I was super hungry and had to weigh my options if I wanted to wait for a chance at today or go ahead and eat and maybe go see a movie. We decided to wait till 10:30 and I was able to get a little nap. It would be lying to say I was totally cool with all the change of plans.. I wasn't, I cried while my brain told me to cool it that it wasn't the end of the world.. just the end of what I thought I could control. My heart was sad and disappointed because I was totally ready to have this baby and an extra day seemed a long time.

So we called at 10:30 and they said I could come in at 12:30 but there was a chance my doctor wouldn't be able to deliver if I was in labor a long time. We said we would take our chance and headed up to the hospital.

Last prego picture!

So they hooked me up and got everything started around 1:30. I knew I was getting an epidural but for some reason I always wait just a little too long to get mine. Around 2:30 I told them the contractions were getting pretty strong so I would like my epidural (thinking it would take around 20 minutes till the doctor could come give it to me). Well an hour and a half later.... I had gone from a 4 to an 8 by the time they got that sucker in. OUCH! They also made roger leave the room while they gave me the epidural which took him a while so he missed the most painful part.. not fair. But they gave me a good dose right off the bat and I couldn't feel a thing... I mean RELAXED!

4:43 PM Easton Luke made his most anticipated appearance! 8 lbs 9 oz and 20 inches

This moment never gets old

(side note......it is now one week later from when I wrote the above portion. teehee)

anyways,

Easton was beautiful, perfect and we were just as in love with him as we are with our other two girls.

After Easton had some mommy bonding time and some daddy snuggles the wave of family came into the room. It is always interesting to see how siblings will react to a new baby. I was pretty confident that Emma would be completely taken with him immediately. She had been prepping hard core for his arrival.

As we expected Emma ran into the room looking for her beloved Easton. She had the sweetest smile which showed how excited, happy and proud she was... it is a smile that I will never forget. Evie was much more reserved and very much overwhelmed with how many people were there and the new surroundings. She didn't want anything to do with me or Roger but wanted to be held by Mimi or Nana. I tried to not take it personally:)

So after everyone had some Easton time the nurses finished up with me and Easton and got us ready for our new room. We had a pretty smooth night and Easton proved to me that he was going to be just as good of an eater as his sisters which is always a relief.

The next day was pretty laid back as well. I just rested and snuggled him. There is just nothing better than newborn snuggles. Everything about it including their smell, the way their folding little body cuddles into your own, their little grunts and noises. It almost makes me cry right now thinking of it.

The only bummer for Easton was it was time for his circ. The bummer for us was that after they completed the circ the nursery nurses took him to the wrong room and tried to give him to another family. Really!? Yes, really. Thankfully, the other mother promptly told the nurse that this was not her baby. The nurses would have caught it when they looked at the bracelets but still it felt very much like a I Love Lucy episode or something. Roger walked down to the nursery about the same time and noticed that the baby in Easton's crib did not look like ours either. Had he not been down there I'm pretty sure we would have never known that this little mishap even happened. Thankfully my hormones were semi leveled out at this point so I did not go nuts on anyone:)

We had to stay in the hospital for 48 hrs since I was strep B positive. I must confess, I totally enjoyed laying in my bed by myself and getting to hold my baby and watch TBS with no responsibilities other than feeding Easton.

We of course had visitors which was wonderful to be able to share those blessed day with our family. Evie warmed up and was enthralled with her new baby brother when she was able to visit by herself.