Birthday, Birthday, Birthday

Today Benjamin turned three and we are so happy to have such a sweet boy in our home. He is a lot like his dad, pretty mellow and quite pleasant to be around. You can tell he has Ryley as an older sister though, his devious ways leak out every once in awhile. Happy Birthday Sweet Boy!

March 14, 2005

(A few minutes old)

March 14, 2008

(3 yrs old)

I've started telling our kids their 'birth' story on their birthday, Ryley and Ben sure get a kick out of it. For journal purposes I'm going to record how his birth went down, so feel free to skip this part. At the rate I'm going I may not remember all the details much longer.

I was 37 1/2 weeks pregnant and miserable. I was swollen really bad and had been into the hospital twice already for the swelling in my feet. It was a Friday, my brother Ben had just flown back to Virginia from a visit home and I had started itching everywhere, really bad. It started in my hands and arms, then my feet and legs and next was my belly. I managed to suffer through it until Sunday night and then I had had enough. The only thing that would make it stop was a cold shower. I was up pretty much all night, in and out of the shower and finally called the on-call doctor at 3 am. I waited and waited and got no call back. I knew, from my doctors appointment the previous Thursday, that my doctor was on call Monday morning. So I waited it out until 6 am and called, explaining I couldn't take the itching any more and that something had to be done. The medical assistant said she'd get my chart and have Dr. McClusky call me right back.

In the mean time Kev had gotten up and gone to work. (He happened to be on spring break) I got a call back from my doctor around 7am stating that she had looked at my blood work from my earlier visits to the hospital and that I needed to come in immediately. Apparently the uncontrollable itching was from the blood in my body becoming toxic. So I called Kev at work and asked if he would come home so we could get to the hospital. Not knowing how fast I'd have the baby and not having anybody to take Ryley, we made the decision for me to go to the hospital and Kev would wait for my mom to drive down, who was also on spring break.

So when I got to the hospital I hung out most of the day in triage so they could take my blood every couple hours and see what was going on. I finally made it to a labor and delivery room around 3pm. The plan was to induce me since my blood was continuing to get worse. I was no where ready to have a baby so I had to start with the gels. Kev got to the hospital around 4:30 and we just hung out. My blood pressure was really high and they wouldn't even let me sit up in bed. My contractions where getting pretty strong and all I wanted to do was get out of bed or into a more comfortable position but the nurses where adamant that I stay in bed flat on my back unless I had to use the restroom. This had continued on until about 9pm and then I told Kev I couldn't do it anymore. I was only dilated to 4cm and had at least twelve more hours until I was close to delivering a baby. I wanted an epidural if this nonsense was going to continue. Just as I was saying that my doctor came in and said she had some bad news. She suspected I had what is called HELLP Syndrome and the only way to stop it is to deliver the baby. I really, really did not want to have a c-section and asked if I could continue with an epidural and have this baby the regular way. She was very hesitant and recommended that we not wait any longer and just do the c-section. She said that the blood tests showed my liver enzymes where increasing rapidly and if we waited to long I could be in liver and other organ failure. She then left the room to give us a minute to talk it over. We called Ralph to ask what he thought and decided that the concerns Dr. McClusky was having where valid and we should proceed with the c-section. It was just after 9:30 when Dr. McClusky had came back to the room to explain the procedure, the nurse then called the OR and asked them to prep for an emergency c-section. It went so fast, Ben was born at 9:50pm. He was a very healthy and big baby, for me anyways. He weighed 7 lbs 13 ozs and was really broad shouldered. They couldn't get him out of the incision at first and my doctor had said we where lucky he came by c-section because she wold have probably had to break his collar bone to get him out the natural way.

I got to hold him for few minutes in the OR and then they took him to the nursery. I was really out of it in recovery and finally got to my room around 1am. Once I got to snuggle with him and know we where both okay I was completely happy.

Kevin and I both had brothers serving over seas in the War on Terrorism and found it fitting to name our son after them. So Benjamin David Mayberry was born on March 14, 2005 at 9:50pm.