C and D

C and D

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Plans? What Plans?????



Oh boy - where to even begin with this amazing last 6 days.........I cannot begin to describe the love that both Paul and I feel for our little boy, our family and our friends. Truly, you think you know what love is but this is just a different level, in such a good way. Paul and I keep saying how we never thought we'd be "those parents" who talk about their kids ALL the time but we can't help it - its overwhelming and we are just so stinking proud of this little boy, we want to share it with everyone. I dare say I love Paul even more than I did before......and I never thought that would be possible. Constantly amazed at how much  love the human heart is capable of holding and feeling. Thank you to everyone who has helped us, visited, sent notes, food, phone calls and love our way - we are so very lucky.

Now for the story :)
 - February 11th, 7:30am.........we go in for the induction. They used a gel to get things going for me and boyyy did they ever! If there is one thing I've learned these last 5 days, it is FLEXIBILITY and PATIENCE. My plan going in to this delivery was to do it as naturally as possible. We had massage tools, I brought my bathing suit and planned on laboring in the tub, Paul spent hours making a soothing mix on the Ipod for me etc etc etc.......the doctor came in at 8am to induce me, by 8:30am I was having strong contractions 2 minutes apart, Paul was holding the trash can for me to throw up in and I was on the toilet - all at the same time. It was then that I told my mom and Paul I was going to need drugs and please don't judge me. I held out for a strrrooong 30 minutes though with the whole "natural" idea :) So plan #1 - out the window. I got the epidural around noon where I was 4cm dilated and by 1:30 I was 9cm and completely effaced. Thank HEAVENS I did not have to feel those contractions, I might not have made it......not long after I was 10cm and having the extreme urge to push - you moms out there know what I'm talking about. Not comfortable, we'll say that. I pushed a couple times and Declan wasn't happy so we had to relax (ummm not easy) for awhile for his heartbeat to pick back up. Once he was stable again, I pushed for a solid 33 minutes and he was out. And he was perfect :)


Needless to say, nothing went as I thought it might that day, but in the end we have our sweet beautiful son and there could be nothing better. I must say a huge public thank you to my dream of a husband and angel of a mother. They never ONCE left my side. From 8am on, one or both was rubbing my back, whispering in my ear encouraging words, massaging my legs, holding the trash can for me..............you know - the goods :) I would never have made it thru without them, never, and I feel like the luckiest girl to have had the love of my life and the woman who gave me life in the room while we expanded our family. There is little cooler than that. Thank you Paul and mom, I love you guys more than I will ever be able to say.

On to plan #2 - breastfeeding. Declan is like his mommy: a ferocious eater, wants food immediately and has no patience when it isn't here. This whole time, the one thing I've wanted to make sure I do is breastfeed our boy, no matter how hard it might be....and its been difficult. My milk took a long time to come in so we met with the lactation specialist finally after a number of failed attempts by the nurses to get him to calm down and stop being a crazy man when he was trying to feed. She gave us a wonderful tool to help him breastfeed but even then, one time it would work, the next 3 it wouldn't.........that said, we've had to supplement with formula which has made me even more stressed because I don't want him getting used to that. Whatever we have to do though to get him fed, we will do and he is getting better every day. Again, flexibility Alli, flexibility :) The biggest lessons I've learned these last few days are to allow yourself a little leniancy, every plan is made to be broken, every child is different, every mom is different, and books sometimes are verrrrry far off. "It is what it is" as Paul would say - we're rolling with it :)


All of this said, Declan is a dream. I have to wake him up to feed, he cries MAYBE for a minute or two before soothing himself, he sleeps like champ and smiles when we say his name. He's healthy, very very content and the apple of his daddy's eye. My dad, before leaving yesterday, said he was "pretty close to perfect" and I couldn't agree more. Here are some of our favorite pictures from the past few days........he changes every day and is looking more and more handsome every single minute.

WE LOVE YOU DECLAN BRADY.

Before:

After:


DB and Daddy:


DB and mommy:


DB with GiGi:


DB and Pop-Pop:


DB and Uncle Boo Boo :)
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And finally our beautiful baby...........

  

 

    


Monday, February 15, 2010

Declan Brady Hogan - Name Origin

I know some people have asked where did you get the name Declan Brady Hogan. Long story but here goes: When we found out we were having a boy everyone was asking "Do you have a name"? So we started looking into names and throwing names out there to see how they sounded. Bill Hempen said he liked the name "D'brickashaw". I knew Nana Hogan would be thrilled with this name so as a joke we kept calling the little guy "D'brickashaw" and then shortened it to DB. Then for about 5 months we really only called him DB (even had a Christmas stocking with Lil DB on it).
I wanted to have an Irish name so we came up with Declan which is named after St. Declan and means "Full of Goodness". Brady has multiple meanings (1) I am a huge ND fan so Brady Quinn (2) the boy was conceived in Boston so (Tom Brady) (3) and lastly Brady means "Spirited".
Jim Hunt's grandfather was called DB for David Bradley so we went with Declan Brady to stay with the DB theme. I hope this answers all of your questions!!
Paul

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU......

Just want to thank everyone for all the support :) I have absolutely loved all the texts, phone calls/messages, emails, facebooks etc. Paul and I feel so lucky to have so many people that are excited about this baby and we cannot wait to share this next experience with you.

We go in tomorrow morning around 7:15 and will be induced by 8am. The party is about to begin................we'll keep you posted :)

XOXOXOXOXO

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Officially overdue....


...........and here we are. East Coast time, little DB is late. We're grounding him, don't worry :)


So we had a bit of a false alarm late Saturday, eeeeeeearly Sunday. I started noticing contractions around 5 or 6pm Saturday night and my mom and I were timing them - every 5 minutes, about a minute long. This lasted for HOURS - in our class we were told that once you have contractions for one hour, consistently every 5 minutes that are lasting for a minute (5-1-1), you should go to the hospital. Kicker here is that mine weren't painful. This whole time I haven't had any Braxton Hicks or any type of contraction that felt like what I was having Saturday so around 2:30am, after a walk with Paul around our very cold neighborhood and a lot of "should we's", we decided it was best to just go and see what the heck was going on. We checked in, the nurse checked me out and of course, whadya know - NOTHING. I'd been having contractions for about 8 hours at that point, painless, yes, but contractions no less and I hadn't dilated a millimeter. The nurse told me to walk so my mom and I walked around the hospital for an hour, met back at 5am and still nothing. They sent me home around 6am with an Ambien and told me to get some rest. A bit of a heartbreaker but what can you do - he'll come soon. RIGHT?!?!?!?!


We go to the doctor again tomorrow and we do have lots of updates from last week. I've been contracting regularly, still no pain though so I don't know what is going on but hopefully she'll be able to shed some light. I'll keep you all posted :) 


In the meantime - this was my dear husband at our brief stay in the hospital. Isn't that supposed to be my bed?!?!?! ;) All these sleepless nights are finally catching up to him....



One thing I'll certainly miss:

My very own tray:


Tuesday, February 2, 2010

ALMOST 40 WEEKS!!!!! 



And there's the belly :) We went to the doctor again today and nothing new to report. My body is ready to go, "just waiting on contractions" as my dr put it. She thinks our little man is around 8 lbs so he's a good size, full term, and reeeeeeeally low and pressing on mommy's bladder - thank you little guy! Seriously though, both of us are ready per Dr Christensen so again, we wait :) And I CAN'T wait.......
As most of you know by now, what I thought was my due date is Feb 3rd (ummmmm tomorrow) but she goes with Feb 8th so we did go ahead and schedule an induction for Feb 11th just in case nothing has happened by then. So, next Thursday is the LATEST that our boy will be here. 2/11/2010 at 7:30am we go in if he hasn't showed his beautiful face before then................................and I really hope he does. I want nothing to do with an induction, I'd much rather have this go naturally so fingers crossed and lots of prayers please. 
We'll continue to keep you updated. Love you all!

Who needs a good laugh?!?!

Paul and I LOVE to cook and we always have music going, which usually leads to dancing. Well this has just gotten amusing for Paul as my belly has gotten bigger and bigger so this past Saturday we were having a big day in the kitchen and dancing as always when Paul whipped out his new camera that has video on it and thought it would be funny if he taped it.........which he did. He then proceeded to spend 2 hours on the computer making a video he could send out to our family and my cloooooose friends. You gotta be close to get this ;)
In any case - here it is. As Paul puts it, "if you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?!" He helps me not take myself and my huge belly too seriously :) Which is nice because its easy to get worked up at how much your body changes thru this process, but thank you Paul, for always keeping it in perspective for me and helping me LAUGH thru it all. Hopefully y'all will laugh too :)

Alli's Prego Dance

PS - make sure you turn up the volume!!!!! gotta have a little soundtrack to my sweet prego moves ;)