Day One

Aaron and I checked into the hospital at 11 a.m. I got hooked up to the monitors, Aaron got dressed in his scrubs, and we met with all of the doctors and nurses who would be performing the surgery. I was scheduled for surgery at 1 p.m. but they had to push my surgery back to 1:30 because they needed to preform an emergency c-section. Up until that day I was nervous to have the surgery, but that day I felt really relaxed. I was just anxious to meet our little guy.

At 1:30 exactly I was wheeled into the operating room. I was given a shot to numb me up for the spinal tap. That shot was most painful thing about the surgery. I squeezed Aaron's hand waiting for the spinal tap to hurt, but the doc said it was over and I hadn't felt a thing. Within two seconds of receiving the spinal tap, my legs went numb. The doctors laid me back, put up a sheet and the surgery began. I had no clue that they had even started until Aaron told me. Aaron went ahead and recorded the surgery. The anesthesiologist encouraged him to do it by reminding him that he could always delete it later. I have yet to watch it though. Aaron says it is pretty gruesome.

After the surgery started everything happened so fast. At 1:49 our little guy arrived. They lowered the sheet so I could see him. Then they took him to get all cleaned up and suctioned off. Aaron cut the umbilical cord. Then the nurse came and laid Ethan on my chest for a minute before they took him to the nursery.

I had to have additional surgery to get my ovarian cysts removed. They also had to sew me back together, so Aaron went with our little guy to the nursery while they finished up the surgery.

After the surgery was complete I was taken to the recovery room. Just after I arrived, the pediatrician came to inform me that Ethan was struggling to breath. They needed to take him to the ICU for the night to monitor his breathing. I guess the poor little guy still had some fluid left in his lungs which can be common in c-section babies. So they rushed Ethan into see me. Once again they laid him on my chest so I could see him again before they had to take him away.

Aaron spent the rest of the day dividing his time between Ethan and I. He would take lots of photos of our guy and then he would come back to update me on how he was doing.

Ethan also had lots of other visitors. Both sets of grandparents were able to go visit him in the ICU.

My nurse was not going to let me take the trip to the ICU that day. I was a pretty determined mom. I wanted to hold my boy. So at 10 p.m. that night, with lots of help from Aaron and the nurse, I got up to walk around. Finally my nurse gave in and deemed me well enough to take the wheel chair trip to the ICU. And finally at 11 p.m. that night we got to hold Ethan for the first time.

Ethan only spent one night in the ICU. By 8 a.m. the next morning he was released, and he got to spend the rest of his hospital stay with us in our room.