Baby Brady is Here!

Brady Frank O'Farrell 7lbs 3 oz 20.5 in

Feb 3, 2010 6:45 pm

Dear Kate and Riley,

Well, I did NOT catch up on all of my blogging before baby Brady came but I do want you to know that we did celebrate his pending arrival and that we did do some preparation! If you looked at this blog I don't think you would even know we were having another baby! But since its been almost a week I decided to give up on trying to catch up and focus on his arrival.

Last Wed., Feb 3rd we headed to Hoag hospital in the morning for me to be induced. My induction with Zach was SO fast and SO easy that I didn't hesitate to do another induction and even though I hadn't progressed nearly as far as I had with Zach I still (naively!) thought that this induction would go equally fast.

We lucked out that Grandma Janice was arriving at noon that same day. So we dropped Zach off at his buddy, Will's at 6:30 and they took him to playgroup later that morning. Megan picked up Grandma from the airport and they picked Zach up from playgroup so that all went pretty smoothly and was hopefully not too crazy for Zach.

In the meantime we had a late start. Got to the hospital late, they had lost my early admission information so we had to re-do all of that, got in a room which had a broken computer so we had to move, and we had a student nurse shadowing ours so everything seemed to take about 10 times longer. Sometime around 8:30 or so they started me on pitocen which, in my expert labor and delivery opinion, was not enough! It didn't do anything so eventually they came in and broke my water. Still not much was happening so we kept upping the pitocen every half hour. Dad and I tried to pass the time by reading, napping and watching tv shows on hulu. You can tell that if I was doing all of that I wasn't in true labor at all.

Finally around one things got moving-- a little. I got a great epidural, man I am SO grateful that it was a good one considering how much time I had left ahead of me. I took a nap, my blood pressure got kind of low, I had to go on oxygen, all the while we're just trying to get me to progress. Poor dad was going stir crazy with nothing to do. FINALLY around six I was almost ready. We did a practice push and baby was ready. We called the doctor and waited what seemed like a long time. It was really amazing how calm and laid back this delivery was. We were joking around with the doctor and nurses, it was just so relaxed (again, thanks to a good epidural!). I actually watched the birth with the help of a mirror which seemed really weird but was actually really cool! His hand was up by his face so he had a little bit of a hard time getting out but after about 30 min of pushing he was here!

He weighed 7 lbs 3 oz and was 20.5 in long. He was SO perfect and pink the nurses were all talking about how perfect he was, they wanted to give him a 10 on the apgar but I guess no one gets 10's so they didn't do it. (I don't really know what that means, just that he was really healthy!). Dad called Grandma as soon as he was born so she could come up with Zach. They arrived after about an hour and got to meet Brady. Zach was really nervous and didn't want to touch him or anything, it was really funny.

Brady has been easy and laid back. He caught on to nursing right away and that has made things 100 times less stressful than they were with Zach. I feel like I got to really enjoy my time with him at the hospital and that I'm getting to enjoy newborn time which was hard for me to do with Zach since I was always so stressed about nursing. I am SO thankful that Grandma Janice is here to help out since my recovery seems to be taking longer than I remember and I really need her help in dealing with Zach.

We are so thankful to add another little boy to this family. I know Zach will love having a brother even if he is a little jealous right now. I know that you girls were watching over him and helped him to get here safely.

Love,

Mom