Our sweet boys are here!

On Thursday, May 13th, we welcomed our sweet baby boys into the world! We arrived at the hospital at 4 am to start the induction process. After two rounds of cervical gel, we were dilated to just over 3 cm. We then started the pitocin, which sped things up a lot. The contractions after the pitocin were very painful, but the epidural made all of that go away :) About 4:oo or 4:30 pm, we got the good news that we were fully dilated and ready to go! Garrett's delivery went really smoothly and he joined us at 5:10 pm. He let us here his healthy set of lungs and we were able to enjoy him a little while we waited on his "little" brother. He weighed in at 5 lbs 15 oz and was 19.5 inches long. Walker briefly stirred things up as he pulled his arms and legs up toward his head, making it impossible for him to come out. After a try at breech extraction didn't work, our dr briefly mentioned a C-Section, which was our worst nightmare after a successful delivery with Garrett. Luckily, he wasn't in distress and after a few minutes of waiting patiently, he decided to cooperate and put his arms and legs down and quickly made his entrance. He arrived at 5:45 pm, weighing 6 lbs 4 oz and measuring 19.75 inches. They are both perfect!!

Things went well the next day before we found out later that night that the boys had lost a little too much weight. This complicated things a little, and resulted in their inability to maintain their body temperatures and caused a little bit of jaundice. We started supplementing their feedings with formula but it wasn't enough to allow us to leave as scheduled on Saturday. On Saturday, the peditrician recommended a precautionary round of IV antibotics to rule out an infection and wanted to continue to monitor the jaundice to see if they (especially Garrett) would need to go under the lights. The boys both got their IVs on Saturday evening and we waited for the blood work (which would take about 48 hours, as we later found out) to rule out an infection. In the meantime, the jaundice got a little worse and their body temps continued to decline slightly. On Sunday, the doctor wanted them to spend some time in the isolette, which is essentially a large warmer. They had to stay in this continuously except for an hour at each feeding for nearly 24 hours. On Sunday night, the jaundice had improved significantly and was no longer a concern and the boys had each gained some of their weight back with Garrett weighing 5 lbs 10 oz (5 oz under birth weight) and Walker weighing 6 lbs (4 oz under birth weight). After a long night in the nursery in the isolette, things turned around significantly on Monday. They were able to stay out of the isolette all day while maintaining their body temps. We were so happy to have them back with us! And with the help of a great lactation consultant, we were able to get the breastfeeding back on track. The blood work results came back negative, so the IVs were removed. The boys are both now fat(ter), happy, and sleepy! It has been a good day :) And it looks like we are headed home on Tuesday!

We appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers for us and our little boys! We have been so blessed!

Our last picture as a family of two

Daddy, Mommy & Garrett

Walker James

Garrett Daniel

Us with our wonderful doctor, Dr. Roberts Mommy with the boys
Our new family (Daddy with Walker and Mommy with Garrett)