Our Family Blog: Gabriel Bryan is here!

My induction was scheduled for Sunday, we got there at 4pm and got pitocin started through an IV. I walked the halls as much as they'd allow me to be off the monitor. Things still took a while to get going. Finally at 10pm I started to feel some slightly stronger contractions. The OB came in the break my water, but first looked over the cord blood kit. The papers weren't in there, so Dan had to run home (10mins) and get them. Thankfully he found them easily enough. She came back in at 11pm and broke my water. I told her then that I wanted an epidural. Last time the contractions were coming too strong and it was very difficult to hold the position to get the epidural, so this was a bit easier. The epidural got pretty high up, my chest was getting numb, so I asked the nurse to turn it down a bit. After that it was too low, so I told her to turn it up, but it never really seemed to go up much after that. So I ended up feeling a lot of contractions throughout the night. I was finally at 10cm around 6:40am, so the OB came in, we woke up Dan and got ready to push. I had asked for a drink of water and that was a mistake. It was uncomfortably sloshing around and making it uncomfortable to push. So I gave it a few really small half-hearted pushes and that got the head crowning. After 2-3 really good pushes, he was out! The pushing took maybe 5 minutes. One of the nurses told me that most women would hate me if they knew how easy I'd just made it look!
Gabriel Bryan was born at 6:48am on Monday, March 28th. He weighed 8lbs 10oz and 19 inches long. He checked out perfectly, he had great skin tone and cried right away. He loved the warming bed, he layed in there all sprawled out and fell asleep. He makes cute faces in his sleep.
For the first 24 hours he was spitting up amniotic fluid. Since he came out so fast, he didn't get all that squeezed out good enough. He'd wake up gagging and choking, it was a bit scary! He even gagged and threw up a bunch once. It went on for a full 24 hours and I haven't seen any since. The nurse even put a little tube down his throat and suctioned out his stomach. He had a ton of air in there as well. He's really a very calm and content baby now though. He'll spit up a little sometimes when he gets overfull. His brothers poke at him while he's sleeping and he just scrunches up his face a bit but doesn't wake up. He's so used to hearing the chaos that he seems to sleep better with things going on and lots of noise! He seems to have his days and nights a bit mixed up, it's hard to tell though. He sleeps a lot in general, still in that sleeping and eating phase. He's so adorable and cuddly! I'm really not feeling overwhelmed or overtired at all, which is great. I'm really enjoying having a newborn again. Things have really just fallen into place and I often wonder what it was I was worried about! Yes, I still have to keep a very close eye on the boys so they don't poke at him too hard, but they really are pretty good about things so far. They like rubbing the baby's head. Tyler likes checking out his fingers, which he's not always the most gentle about.
My recovery has been very easy, I'm still amazed that he's only 3 days old and I feel this good. With the other 2 it hurt to sit for at least a couple weeks! This time around I was sitting straight up with no pain the day after I had him. My biggest complaint is my back. Since the spine naturally curves a bit to help balance you while pregnant, it takes a little while for it to go back into place. I also had some back labor, so I was sore from that too. It still hurts quite a bit, but nothing like the first couple days. Thankfully I only needed 1 stitch, so recovery has been much easier just because of that too. My only other pain is engorgement from the increased demand for milk supply. He's nursing really well, caught on right away. Since I'm still nursing Tyler, my milk was already in and Gabriel didn't need to nurse as much as babies usually do just to get the supply to go up. The nurses were freaking out because he wasn't nursing much. They keep track of every time he nurses, poops or pees. He only lost 7oz in the hospital, which is pretty good.
Here's me on the 27th, before we headed in for the induction at 38 weeks, 5 days.

Laying in the warming bed. He loved it and got comfy right away. He was yawning, ready to fall asleep.

So peaceful! I'm sure that warmer felt really good!

Me and my 2 babies! Tyler looks so big now that Gabriel is here!

My 3 little boys! It's so cute seeing them all together and even just around the apartment. I may be a bit biased, but I think we have quite a cute family started. :)

Dawson loved holding Gabriel. I was surprised that he allowed the baby on his lap at all! He held him, said "aww, baby!" and gave him a kiss. So cute!

Tyler wasn't quite as open about things, he was quietly checking the baby out. He's really interested now though, he goes up to him a lot and says "baby!" and rubs his head.