Long overdue update! We now have a baby! Eleven days after my due date I started having contractions 5 hours before we were scheduled to go in for an induction. After 15 hours of not much progress I gave in and got an epidural. Two hours later they inserted a fetal heart rate monitor and the baby's HR dropped into the 60s and didn't rebound after 5 minutes. Suddenly there were a dozen people in my room and I was being whisked away for an emergency C section. Not exactly the way we hoped it would go but 11 minutes later he came into this world crying and perfectly healthy. I awoke 30 minutes later to see Dave holding our beautiful baby boy. We did not know the gender of the baby and I had come to believe we would have a girl based on friends and family who swore that my body looked to be housing a female. So I was a bit surprised but totally in love with our new little guy.
The past 7 weeks have been an adventure. The C section recovery has been frustrating as my incision decided to open up slightly after a week. Because of the emergency nature of the surgery a blood clot likely formed beneath the incision and the accumulated fluid needed to drain. This has taken over a month and is still not fully healed but luckily I am back to feeling mostly normal and my range of motion is much better.
Most importantly though, Thomas is healthy and perfect. He unfortunately had a one night stay in the NICU (for a temperature .1 degree above the fever threshold) but has been fine since leaving the hospital. The kid eats like a champ and was back to his birth weight after 6 days.
It's amazing how much he's changed in just the past 7 weeks. He smiles and makes little cooing noises and he's much more interactive than those first couple of weeks. And his lungs have developed a little more as well so his cute little baby cries occasionally erupt into some full blown screams!
We've been trying to integrate him into our lives so he's gotten out to a couple of Farmers Markets and of course some bike races. Collegiate Nationals happened to be on Mother's Day and we got out to see the crit and visit with a lot of our friends in the cycling world. We also got to see my friend and former teammate Kaitie Antonneau take the win in the Women's D1 crit. It was fun to introduce Thomas to so many people and to bike racing!
We've also had a couple of weddings to go to and we discovered the Baby Bjorn is great for hands free baby carrying. Dave even played some lawn games with a sleeping Thomas strapped to his chest.
I had 8 weeks of maternity leave so T and I have gotten to spend a lot of time together and it's been great. Getting out and about with an infant can be kind of challenging but he loves being in the Bjorn so we've made a few trips to Trader Joe's and Target. And we've gone for lots of walks around the neighborhood with it or the BOB stroller.
So I'm not really sure if I'm going to continue this blogging business. I have to say that my motivation to keep up with it is not very high right now! I'll probably try to do occasional posts and perhaps I'll get back into a routine with it at some point. Cycling is obviously taking a back seat for the time being and it remains to be seen whether I'll race cyclocross this year or not. Either way I'm just totally grateful and happy that we are now a little family of 4 - I've got to include Cider in there - she's such a good big sister. Here she is hanging out with Thomas while he sleeps!
So perhaps this will turn into a baby blog or more likely just a very erratically updated blog on our new adventures as a family. Thus far it's been a fun ride and we can't wait to see what awaits us in the future!
