It's A Boy!

On April 22nd we met our little boy, Kyler David Ross! 7 pounds 3 ounces and 20 inches of adorable baby perfection.

Here is the story of his arrival...

I started to see my doctor every week and I told him that I wasn't in a hurry for baby to come. This time I knew what I was getting in to! I knew that this little life would completely take over our life as we knew it, so I was feeling like I needed a couple more weeks to prepare. I had to finish the pro-teach, and get the house in order, and catch up on crafts, and make sure I had everything ready for Kendall to make this transition. But once all those things were done I started to get anxious. I really felt like Baby Ross would be coming around April 14th and after that date passed I began to feel over due. My doctor striped my membranes on the 18th to hopefully get the show on the road. Then my parents came to Spokane the night of April 19th as I'd been having some more regular contractions about 15 minutes apart (which was when things really started to move forward last time). This baby wasn't in any hurry though (at least not that day). In fact, I'd been having irregular contractions for a full week already and it was getting sort of obnoxious. We felt guilty having my parents here and not able to provide them another grandchild before they had to head home. But on the night the 21st I noticed a change in intensity, but didn't say anything because I didn't want one more person to ask me one more time about my contractions (because seriously people...you'd know if I was in labor!!!). We headed off to bed only to fall completely asleep. When I woke up at 12:45 for a potty trip I was so disappointed, but upon getting back into bed the contractions came back like lighting! I woke Keith up around 2am to start timing them. They were 2 minutes apart. I wasn't convinced. I had been having so many contractions lately; been so hopeful they'd all turn into labor and they hadn't. I didn't believe these were here to stay. But they were. Keith hurried to get us all ready to leave, woke up my parents to be on Kendall duty, and called the hospital to let them know we were coming. I took a bath, got dressed, put on make up, and dried my hair. This may seem crazy to some, but I felt as though it was my last moment of dignity and I didn't know the next time I'd have TIME to do my hair or make up! The drive to the hospital was not fun. Contractions were coming so close together and every bump in the road seemed to make them worse (and in Spokane there are A LOT of bumps!). Things didn't slow down upon checking in and getting all hooked up. I really expected things to be the same as last time  but this baby was READY NOW. We checked in at 3:30am on the 22nd, I was dilated to a 3. Marissa came at 4:45 before she started her shift just 2 floors up from us. Soon I requested the epidural, but the nurses (who were awesome!) encouraged me to wait since I should be closer to a 5 before they do the epidural and have one bag of IV fluid in me. I KNEW I was at least a 5 so tried again to get them to check me---I was a 7.5! Almost missed my opportunity for the epidural. It took a bit to get that epidural in, as my contractions were coming on top of each other now. I expected to get some time to relax before the pushing, but NOPE. I felt my water break. I tried to convince my nurse it broke but she wasn't in a hurry to check me again...luckily she did because I was a 9.5 and it was almost time to push. I begged them to call my doctor at 6. They did, and told him that he'd have no time to shower if he was planning on helping deliver. I pushed for 20 minutes, during which doctor arrived at 6:30 and Kyler was here at 6:42am.  Yep, just over 3 hours from arriving at the hospital and I had a baby in my arms! It was WILD and FAST! The only scary part was when I saw a ton of blood splatter all over as I was pushing, I asked my doctor if that was okay and he calmly said "everything is fine." Later I found out that the umbilical cord broke and was spraying out blood like a fire hose! YIKES! They were able to clamp it off quickly enough that Kyler didn't lose too much blood and was totally fine. With Kyler in my arms I couldn't have been happier! We cried tears of joy as we kissed him and soaked in the moment of meeting our son. I can't say I was all that surprised he was a boy...deep down, I knew. Our family feels so complete with him here and we are so BLESSED!

We wanted Kendall to be one of the first to meet Kyler so we had her come in by herself after things were calm in the room. She was  soooooooo excited to meet him! But was confused for a few days about the gender and occasionally would ask us his name. Then for the next week or so she still talked about the baby in my belly and wasn't making the connection that Kyler was that baby :) After she had her chance to hold him and ask us questions, we sent her out with a little card with Kyler's name on it to show the grandparents and invite them into meet him, too. We all celebrated Kyler's birthday with fancy cupcakes and he even gave Kendall a new dolly! He's thoughtful already. :)

We then enjoyed several visitors throughout the day and were feeling ready to get back home and settle into this new life by the next morning. 

telling grandparents the news