One day old

Brax had gone home with Dave and Julia the night before and Braylee with Kara and Matt. Brecca was with my mom and slept in a little the next morning. We were bad parents and let her just skip the whole school day. Julia and Kara had to work the next day so the plan was for them to take Braylee and Brax to my grandma's and then my mom would pick them up and bring them out to the hospital a little later. Braylee was too excited to wait so Kara brought her out first thing in the morning. She got to see Brynna and hold her for the first time. Braylee was pretty excited she was a girl. Brax came out a little later andhe wasn't quite as excited as the girls. I mentioned earlier that he kept saying, " I thought it was going to be a brother." He warmed up to her pretty quickly though and is a very loving big brother. Brynna has a small umbilical hernia so her umbilical cord stump stuck out pretty far, especially with the cord clamp on it. The first time Brax saw her, he thought that it was something else... something that may have indicated she was a boy! We had to explain to him that that was just her belly button and not what he thought it might be! :)

I was having a pretty rough day. I enjoyed all of our visitors and really truly enjoyed seeing everybody but I was just worn out. I didn't get much sleep the night before and people started showing up to visit pretty early so by early afternoon I was pretty tired. I never had a chance to get up out of bed and shower and I still had my catheder in so I wasn't even getting up to use the restroom. My brother and Erin came down that evening and my sister and Tylee came up from Parsons and I could barely keep my eyes open and visit with them. I kept dozing off and they all made the comment that I looked pretty pale. We sent Brynna to the nursery that night so we could get a little sleep. They said she was perfect and brought her to me every few hours through the night so that I could feed her. I think they all fell in love with her. Everybody was shocked when they saw her and her full head of dark black hair!!!

The next morning the nurse came in and told me why I had been feeling so tired. My hemoglobin was 5.2. Normal is supposed to be between 12 and 16 and anything under 7 is considered critical. Apparently 5.2 is pretty low. They told me I would need at least 2 units of blood and said that it was a good thing I had not been up out of bed... that I probably would have passed out had we even tried it. Things moved pretty quickly as far as getting ready to give me blood. I was really nervous about it. Just the thought of someone else's blood going into my veins gave me the chills but I ended up being ok with it. They gave me two units over the course of the afternoon and then let me get up and shower. I was feeling a little better by that point but they said my hemoglobin had only come up to about 7 so I would need a couple more units. They gave me those through the night and by the next morning I was feeling much better. I was still really sore though and having a hard time getting around. They mentioned doing a sonogram or a CT scan to see if I was still having some internal bleeding but decided against it. I just couldn't figure out why I was so sore. My sister had a c-section 2 years earlier and she was getting around really well by this point and I just kept thinking that what I was feeling wasn't normal. I knew I wasn't just being a big baby!

By Saturday morning I seemed a little better and they thought I was well enough to head for home. It was nice to get out of the hospital but going home presented a whole new set of problems.

I was still soooo sore and our furniture sat too low. Our bed was too high and I couldn't get up into it. Brynna and I spent our first two weeks home in the living room on the couch. Our couch has recliners on both ends so although I couldn't lay down, I could recline the seat and get pretty comfy! I pretty much sat and held her all day long! At night, Nate would lay her in her bassinet (in the living room right next to the couch) after her 10:00pm feeding and when she woke up for her next feeding, he would get out of bed, change her diaper, give her to me, and head back to bed. I would nurse her and then hold her the rest of the night. He was working 6am-4pm at the time so he got up about 4:45am. He would take her, change her again, and give her back to me. This was pretty much our routine for about two weeks when I finally decided that that wasn't normal and headed back to the doctor. It turned out I had a huge, softball size hematoma in my stomach! After a CT to confirm, we scheduled a surgery the next day to remove it. Talk about relief! I walked out of the hospital that day feeling better than I had in a LONG time!!! I felt much better knowing that the pain I had been feeling was justified and that I wasn't just a big baby!!! Things slowly returned to normal and we eventually got into a little bit of a routine. Honestly, having a 4th child wasn't too big of an adjustment. Two to three was the hardest for us. I think maybe because Nate and I were outnumbered! From the beginning Brynna has always been a great baby so that definitely made it easier for us! I can't imagine going through all that with a fussy baby! Things were going well. I was on the mend, the kids were getting used to having a baby in the house, Brynna was adjusting well, Nate was a proud Daddy again..... We were loving life (and still are!)!!!