Look who's here!

Andrew Hinckley Taggart was born last Monday, Dec. 10th at 10:49 p.m. He weighed 4 lbs 11 oz. at birth and he is 17 1/4 inches long. We love him so much and he is such a joy to us! We're so thankful to have him join our family! Anders came to us 6 weeks early but he is doing very well. His birth was quite eventful but thankfully the extra excitement has slowed down quite a bit.

We were having a normal evening, last Monday, until right as we were done with Family Home Evening, I stood up and my water broke (which was about 7:15 p.m.). I was scared of course, just because it was so early for him to come and we had just been through all this with my niece, Chloe who was also six weeks early. (What are the chances?!) So Mason ran around the house gathering things to take with us to the hospital; we weren't prepared at all! I had been planning to do that stuff when I got done with finals. Oh well!

Anyway, we got to the hospital around 8:00 and I had my first contraction in the car on the way over. I got a room and got settled and in the meantime, my contractions started getting worse and more and more frequent. The doctor checked me and I was 3 cm. dilated. Mason and I were getting ready to walk around the floor and help me ease into the contractions somewhat but we never made it out of the room. They just started coming so hard and there was hardly a break in between for me to catch my breath. I was progressing really quickly (which was a surprise considering this is my first). I was planning on holding off on the pain medications for as long as could but it was getting so bad and I started getting nervous that I was going to go too far for them to give me anything. So they checked me again at which time the nurse ran out of the room. I was hurting so badly that I hardly even noticed but soon she came back with someone else who also checked me. I was just mad that two people had to check me because it was so painful at that point! Anyway, I guess they felt Andrew's little foot while checking my progress and realized that he was breech. Suddenly there was a thousand people in the room it seemed like and they were getting me ready for a c-section. I have to admit that I was grateful at that point because I knew that meant they were going to numb me which was such a relief considering the pain I was in. The bad part was that I wasn't keeping my IV's (yes, multiple IV's!) in very well at all so they were trying to get that taken care of and they had a little bit of a difficult time with the spinal. But finally the pain subsided and not too long after, little Anders was born. In fact, one doctor told me that was the quickest c-section he had ever participated in. :)

We have been so blessed through this experience. Anders has been in the NICU since he's so early but he has never needed to be on oxygen which is quite remarkable considering that boys are generally less developed than girls when their born, especially preemies. He has been making slow but steady progress all week. He did have an IV for a while but they have since removed that (I think it was Thursday or Friday but the days are all meshing together). He is eating 38 ml per feeding and they are hoping that he will start gaining weight soon as he is still losing a little bit each day. We don't know when we'll be able to bring him home - the doctors never say too much I guess because they don't want to get your hopes up - but in the meantime we are doing pretty well. The nurses and doctors are all so kind and caring to him and I really appreciate the wonderful care that he is receiving.