We praise Him!

I was just sitting here snuggling our sweet little baby and it just seems so surreal that he is finally here and that everything's okay.  It feels like an eternity that we've waited for him and prayed for him.  Even months before he was born we prayed and prayed that God would give us a healthy pregnancy and were so nervous after the two that we lost.  We are so blessed to have been given such a precious gift.  He's so wonderful!  Made me think of a song that we have just started doing recently at church called "We Praise Him".  I thought I'd share it with you guys since it's very fitting for how we feel about Owen's birth and having him here in our family.  It's a fun one that our kids like to sing and dance around to!

James 1:17 "Whatever is good and perfect comes down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens.."

4 Days Old

I can't believe our little man has already been here four days!  He is doing so great!  We are loving his laid back personality.  He's so easy going and just hangs out while the kids pretend he's their real live baby doll.  He's been a little gassy so he sometimes gets fussy from that, but not nearly as bad as Noah was with reflux.  I've been trying to catch up on sleep whenever I can.  He likes to be awake at night, but each day he is staying awake more and more during the day so hopefully he will start sleeping a little better soon.  Last night I got a couple three hour stretches which was awesome.

Randy spoke with his Urologist this afternoon and they are working on getting him in for both of the tests he needs this week.  Once we have the tests, they will schedule surgery.  Unless of course the issue has resolved, which would be amazing!  He pees just fine for now though.  It's kind of ironic really, the baby with kidney issues has managed to pee on us more than we ever got peed on with Ella and Noah combined.  He's a quick one so you have to be on your toes!

Here are a couple "First Bath" pictures.  It's technically his second bath, but since I let Ella and Noah help with the first one, there aren't many pictures where he's not screaming his head off.  They were great helpers...but his bath this morning with mommy was much more peaceful and relaxing ;)  He still was giving me some pretty dirty looks though!

Thanks for checking in on us!  We are all doing great.  Just soaking up every second with this precious little gift.  We are so in love with our little Owen!

Owen's Delivery Slideshow

Here are some better pictures from Owen's arrival yesterday!  Hope you enjoy them!  He's having a great day today.  We've all just been relaxing and visiting with friends.  Trying to soak up every minute with this little guy.  He is so sweet and has such a calm, laid back, personality!

Morning Day 2

Owen did so great last night! He slept really well and ate pretty descent, too. It was a little bit hard for me to get some sleep at first since I was having a lot of pain, but once I finally gave a stronger medicine a try, the night went so much better. Today we are just resting and visiting with some friends and our little guy will have his circumcision at some point this afternoon. Things are going really well! Owens's eating and peeing and all that great stuff perfectly. Already have a call into his Urologist to get him in for his tests sometime hopefully next week. Until then, everything else is checking out nicely. None of the Doctors have been able to hear a heart murmur so that's awesome! We will rule that out once we see the cardiologist. Last night they did another "naked weight" and he was at 8lbs 15oz which is totally within normal loss.

We're so thankful for this little guy. We've known him less than a day and already he has our little family wrapped around his finger :)

Hello World

I just finished a nice feeding and now I'm wide awake! Just wanted to say hello!

Stats

Owen is busy nursing away, but here are his official stats:

Owen Matthew
Born at 1:44pm
9lbs 7oz 21in long

Whoa Baby!

This morning I had my monthly visit at the Perinatal Clinic.  This was supposed to be my last scan of Owen's kidneys and growth that would help them to determine how much longer we could wait out a natural delivery and at what point we would just induce.  I had been told that they may actually schedule an induction first thing next week and that this appointment would help them decide if it was necessary.   We met earlier this month with Owen's Urologist and found out that he will most likely have his surgery sometime within his first month of life.  They are nearly positive he has a UPJ which is just an obstruction in one of his Ureters leading from his kidney to his bladder.  He will have a couple tests to confirm this and then they will schedule the procedure.  It should be a simple surgery where they just remove the block and insert a temporary stent that will be removed 6 weeks later.  After leaving there, we really feel like the scariest part of the surgery will just be having our newborn put under anesthesia, but other than that it seems to be a "simple" procedure.  So things are going well on that end.  Today they were still able to see some tissue around the kidney which is very good since it's so severely dilated.  We wont know until some testing after surgery just how much kidney function he has lost, but the Doctor reminded us that even partial function is still good since he should have full function on the left side.

So that was all pretty much stuff I knew already.  But I did get some news that really threw me for a loop and brought on all sorts of emotional pregnant lady emotions!!  The first thing that caught me off guard is that by ultrasound (which could be off....possibly) Owen weighed in today at 10lbs 4oz.  Yep. That would be TEN. POUNDS.  So that alone was enough to scare the heck out of me and just about bring me to tears.  The Perinatologist is concerned that I may indeed have Gestational Diabetes that was undiagnosed and therefore untreated this entire time.  I had failed my first test, but passed the second one so they stopped looking into it.  This could be what has caused him to not only get so big, but apparently his growth literally spiked and he put on a bunch of weight very quickly.

So where does that put me now?? Well, the plan they have for now is that I will go in on Monday for a glucose test.  I'll have to fast starting at midnight the night before and will have my blood drawn at 8:45am when I get there.  Then I will eat breakfast, wait an hour, and then have my blood drawn at the one hour mark.  They just want to see how my body is responding to the sugar I guess.  I'm not really sure what will happen after that.  The Perinatologist has passed this on to my OB who I haven't talked with yet (except the nurse that scheduled my glucose test).  They did tell me today at the Perinatal Clinic that there was a much higher chance now that I could need a Csection because of his size, but also that either way they would recommend induction by/at 39 weeks.  They said I'm in the grey area where as of today they wont insist I have a C section, but if he gets much bigger I won have a choice.  So we may be having a baby next week sometime.  Hopefully.

I'm feeling a little more at ease as the day goes on, but this morning was rough for me.  Some people will understand this and some wont, but I was just totally overwhelmed with all these wrenches being thrown into the "birth plan" I had in my head.  I really would prefer a natural birth vs a C Section.  Ella and Noah's births were both very different, but they were also both so wonderful and special.  After having Noah without an epidural and seeing how much easier my recovery and time was with him, I was really looking forward to duplicating that with Owen.  Even though it's hard and I dread it in some ways, I was actually looking forward to when Owen makes his arrival.  It's the most difficult but yet rewarding moment and I just started feeling like I was going to be cheated of that by being forced into a csection. Especially just going by ultrasound for his weight which could be off.  Do not get me wrong:  I know some of my closest friends have had C Sections and swear by it!  I'm not trying to say that it isn't as fulfilling of a birth or anything.  It's just something that's important to me.

So for now, "my plan" (which you know how well that ever works out), is to still try for a natural delivery (except for the induction meds) and see if I can still deliver without C-section.  I'm a nervous wreck, but I have to try because I will be so upset if I don't and the measurements were somehow off. I've heard of plenty of moms delivering babies that big before without problems.  So we'll see how it goes!!

For now, you can join me in specifically praying that Owen will come on his own sometime soon so that I don't have to be induced and also pray that I am able to have a normal delivery without having to have a C Section.  I feel like I have just "gone with the flow" the whole time through all of these ups and downs.  We've just tried to take them in stride and trust whatever God's plan is.  I have to admit though, I'm getting tired and I'm ready to just have my baby here safe and sound.  This morning kind of felt like enough's enough.  We are so ready to welcome this chubby little guy into our family!  2 weeks or less either way is what I have to keep telling myself.  But it's hard when I already feel so huge and uncomfortable!

Here are some pictures from today.  He's obviously really smooshed so they are harder to make out than the others.  He has his hands by his face and in his mouth every time I have an ultrasound and today they were really in the way so thats whats all over by his mouth and chin.  He was sucking on his fingers the whole time.  Sweet baby!

30 Week Update

I have some new pictures of little Owen to share with you so I wanted to get them up on the blog before they get forgotten about like the Christmas pictures I still haven't posted!  So far everything has been progressing really nicely!  I'm exactly 30 weeks today which is crazy.  In some ways it feels like I've been pregnant forever, but at times it has flown by.  Last week I had to take the three hour glucose test which was no fun.  Especially for someone who doesn't like needles. (4 blood draws!)  But praise God, I passed and it's over now.  Today I had my monthly ultrasound to check up on Owen's kidneys.  I finally got a picture of the actual kidneys to show any of you who are nerdy about this kind of stuff and want to see.  It's pretty amazing really.  It's hard to have the scans and see how much they have grown each time as a worried Mama, but thanks to the reassurance and confidence in our Doctors,  I'm really not that anxious about it.  I have a referral now to see the Urologist soon so that will be nice for us to hear from the person who will be calling the shots once he gets here.

As for Owen's overall health, he is doing great!  He's still a BIG boy.  He has once again jumped up significantly and is now in the 93% for weight.  They think he weighs about 4lbs 12 oz as of today.  Oh my.  I've been so much more uncomfortable this pregnancy and now I think I know why?!  I'm not carrying a 30 week size baby at this point!  He's measuring more like 32-33 weeks.  He has the sweetest chubby cheeks and is absolutely precious.  We are so anxious to meet him!  

Tomorrow I will see my regular OB for my appointment now that I am on an every 2 weeks schedule.  Lots of going back and forth to Madison these days!  The technician and Doctor who did my scan mentioned that my fluid levels were high so I guess my Doctor will fill me in on that tomorrow.  They didn't seem overly concerned at this point and seeing that my high risk Doctor was willing to pass it off to my OB, I'm not worried.  They said it's most likely a side effect of the kidney issue and that they would monitor it from now on.

Okay, enough "talking"...I know why you're really here...baby pictures!

Here is a picture of what Owen's kidneys look like.  The black part you see is actually the renal pelvis of the kidney and the black is because of the fluid inside it.  So the black circle down towards the bottom left is his left kidney (which is considered large itself) and the big black spot taking up most of the picture is the right kidney where the fluid is beginning to spread into the actual tissue of the kidney itself.  Each visit this gets bigger and bigger, but this was the first one where you could really see it leaking into other parts of the kidney (It used to be just a round circle). Believe it or not, it is still functioning so hopefully once he's born they can get it draining properly and it will be good as new.  They also have reminded us that heaven forbid he loose this kidney all together, he will still be fine with just the left side. Of course, we would just prefer he have both ;)  Even still, we are thankful that his left side is doing great and has actually shown some improvement!

 Here's another shot.  I'm not sure what the black shadow down the center is, but you can see the left and right sides as they are labeled.

And now for the sweetness.  Can't wait to kiss these chubby cheeks!

Owen at 30 Weeks: