Baby Harrison

He was born at the end of the summer.  It's now winter and I'm finally making the time (at 12:51 am) to write a post.  By now he's not a floppy baby anymore.  The clothes he wore when he was born are already packed away.  He can see us and smile and coo at us and can even roll over from front to back.  He can get his hands to his mouth so he can suck on his fingers.  He is an amazing sleeper and has been since the day he was born.  Except for a 3 week period around 4-7 weeks old, he has slept from 11pm to at least 7am.  This baby has rocked our world like nothing I ever imagined.  I knew once he was here I would wonder how on earth we ever lived without him and I was spot on.  He has changed our lives in every aspect while also managing to make it feel like this is the way it's always been.

Harrison William Goodwin 9/15/2016

  My heart literally bursts with love every time I see his face. He is seriously a precious, special baby.

For now I just want to talk about his birth and our hospital stay.

On September 15th I went to the city for my twice weekly NSTs.  My blood pressure was elevated and my platelet count had been going down.  They didn't want to wait to deliver him any longer and risk them going down so low that I would need general anesthesia to deliver him.  I was sent to the hospital and about 7 hours later (9:37pm) he was born while listening to "Home" by Phillip Phillips play over the speakers.  I cried listening to the words and how fitting they were and that it was playing as they were taking him out of me.

He was perfectly healthy and stole our hearts.  Unfortunately I just don't deal well with anesthesia and I continued to throw up for 12 hours after getting my spinal.  I remember desperately wanting to look at him but every time I would open my eyes the room would spin and I would throw up.  Around 10am the next morning I finally started to feel human again aside from the horrible pain from the c-section and I could start to focus on Harrison.

The thing I was most excited about was seeing Madison and Jackson meet their baby brother for the first time.  They were so genuinely happy to welcome this baby into our family.  They never talked about anything negative or selfish.  They just couldn't wait to have him with us. As usual their reactions weren't quite as animated as I expected but the video is still so sweet.

Madison holding her baby brother for the first time

Jackson holding his baby brother for the first time

Our first picture as a family of 5

They kicked me out of bed so they could lay with him

The second night in the hospital Harrison's blood sugar was in the 30s and even though I was trying to breast feed him all day I just had nothing in there to give.  I remember pumping 5 ml of colostrum and feeding it to him with a dropper hoping it would get his sugar up.  It would work but then it would go down again.  The doctor told me he was going to need to go to the NICU if I didn't give him formula to get his sugar up so I told them to go ahead.  He spent that night in the nursery drinking formula.  When he came back he spit up for hours and smelled horrible so I was determined at that point for him to never have formula again.  I pumped and breastfed my butt off and we never had another issue while in the hospital.

Harrison had many visitors while in the hospital including my parents, Chris's parents, Shauna, Bryan, Keira, Aunt Karen, my grandmother, Ana, Danielle, Uncle Mike, Aunt Kristen, Raphael and Alyssa, Brenda, Rachael and Nichole (hope I didn't forget anyone!).

My 97 year old grandmother holding Harrison

I continued to have high blood pressure the whole time I was in the hospital so I had to stay a 6th day.  

And just like that it was time to go home...to my parents house.

These pictures already seem like a lifetime ago.