Harper’s Birthday in pictures

I finally got around to getting all the photos off Jonathan’s camera and putting them on my computer.  Here is Harper’s big day in photos.

This time I don’t think Jonathan was as nervous as he was the day the boys were born.  I know I wasn’t, I was just anxious to finally meet our little girl.

I have to add this funny part.  As I am laying there in the bed with the contraction and fetal heart rate monitor on me, the nurse looks at me and asks, “so how long have you been having these contractions?” They were about every 3 or 4 minutes apart according to the monitor.  I just looked at her and laughed a little…I said “oh, since about 20 weeks.”  She just looked at me, “oh!” I did proceed to tell her that the intensity and frequency had picked up the last day or two, but it was funny to watch her face.

At this point, I was just trying to breathe.  The epidural took a little too well and actually numbed me higher than I think it was supposed to.  I was having some trouble breathing throughout the entire c-section and couldn’t even talk much because I couldn’t feel like I could get enough air to speak.

Since you can’t see anything, you have no clue whats going on when. The only way I knew she was out was to hear that glorious cry! It doesn’t look like she enjoyed that exit too much, huh?!

Harper is a full 2 pounds heavier than both the boys were but she is still soo tiny.  The boys just looked like (cute) little old men – ha.  She isn’t just tiny, she’s so petite, her little nose and mouth are petite and its all so proportionate.

 

Just like with the boys, Jonathan got to put her first diaper on while we were still in the OR.

 

At this point Harper was having some problems breathing and keeping her oxygen saturation where they wanted it so they were giving her some supplemental oxygen and her saturation level would go up.  They would take it away and it would go down….then she finally kept it where they wanted for a short period of time so they let Jonathan bring her over to me to see her and have some “mommy time”….which later the nurse told me she did on purpose because she knew that would help with her oxygen/breathing issues.  Sure enough it did and she was stable enough to then come with me to the recovery room.

But not before a quick photo shoot with mommy and daddy and Dr. Monti.

 

Once we got to the recovery room our parents and family started to come back a few at a time to see the newest addition to the family.

After a few hours in the recovery room we were taken to my room up on the post-partum floor.  Once we got there the pediatrician check Harper out and said everything looked good except she was a little jaundiced and she was still having a little trouble with her breathing.  Because of her breathing she gave us the option to either do more skin to skin or “kangaroo care” with Harper or send her to the nursery so she can stay under the heat lamps.  We chose to keep her with us and do skin to skin care.  I got to do it for an hour or two and then Jonathan got his turn at it for about an hour.

Later that evening her breathing got a lot better and her grunting started to disappear, and by the next day her breathing problems had resolved completely.  She was still jaundiced but it got better over time and now has gone away too.

Harper had a lot of visitors come see her in the hospital and I tried to get a photo with all of them, but I wasn’t able to get a photo of the birthday girls together, Stephanie and Harper.  Brian and Stephanie were there the day she was born but because of her breathing issues, no one was able to hold her except me and Jonathan until the next day.

This hospital stay was a lot less stressful than the previous one with the boys. We didn’t have to divide our time with one baby in our room and another one in the NICU and then worry about spending time with visitors as well.  We got to spend a lot of quality time with just the two of us and Harper, getting to know her and bond with her.  It was great!

After 3 days in the hospital we were ready to go home and start our lives as a family of 5.