Oh How We Love The Hospital

The weeks since the arrival of our precious little boy have been filled with new learning experiences and lots of surprises. One of those surprises has been finding out that I have a blood clot in my left leg. OH MY!!! After the swelling started going away after the birth I noticed that my left leg was still slightly swollen and it was in a lot of pain most days. At my first check-up the docs thought all was well and weren't worried. However, when the pain did not go away and only seemed to get worse, I made another appointment and this time they sent me for a doplar (sp?) on my leg to rule out a clot. They really didn't think I had one. I guess the joke was on them! This meant being admitted to the hospital and the possibility of having to stay 3-7 days. UGH! I can't begin to tell you how much this idea did not sit well with me and frankly is still not. So here I am getting pumped full of blood thinners and waiting until they say my blood levels are where they need to be so that they can send me home. Right now it's looking like Sunday is the magic day and we're hoping they stick with that. Michael has been great though and I have been able to see, hold, feed and change Xander while I've been here. Michael's family have also been great helping us to take care of him while Michael is at work and at night so Michael can get some sleep. All I can really say though is I miss my boys and I just want to go home.

Home

I just realized that we forgot to update this thing and let everyone know that we're home. I got to come home on Friday which was great and not so great at the same time because we had to leave little Xander at the hospital. The encouraging part was that before we left they had taken him off of the IV since he was able to start maintaining his sugar on his own. The only thing left was 24 hrs of observation and we'd be able to bring him. And we did! By 6pm on Saturday we had him home and feeding on his first bottle. Since then everything has been great. He's really a pretty mellow baby and easy to make happy. But like most babies he pretty much just eats and sleeps so there's not really much to report. As for Mom and Dad, we're adjusting. Amazing though is that it hasn't really been that hard. Michael went back to work on Sunday so he's soaking up all the time he can with his little man. I am still recovering but doing better everyday. I can't wait for the swelling and ligament pain to be gone so I can get this little one in a stroller and get outside for more than 5 minutes at a time.

Wow! Did I do that?

First off I want to thank my most wonderful husband for trying to keep everyone updated on what was going on throughout the day yesterday. And I want to thank everyone who has sent us their well wishes and congrats. We find ourselves to be very blessed today!

So what's been going on? Well, I'm still not sleeping much. Since about 1pm on Tuesday I think I've had about 3 hrs of sleep. I'm not sure how much better this is going to get since I'm in the hospital and we all know how comfortable that is! It turns out that we will be staying a little longer than planned. Without going into too much detail, I lost a lot of blood during the birthing process so they're going to hold on to me until Fri. or Sat. Xander was going to have to stay at least 48 hours for observation because of strep b anyway so I'm actually kind of happy I get to stay with him. The peds dr just came to talk to us to let us know that the little one has been having some trouble keeping his sugars up so they were putting him on an iv for probably the next 24 hrs. He told us not to worry, it was kind of typical for a baby who was so big and went through such a stressful birth. The downside is that he has to stay in the nursery as long as he's on the iv and I am in no kind of shape to head down there at this time. But! I tell myself this is all temporary and soon the 3 of us wil all be home.

I think that about takes care of it for now. We'll make sure to keep everyone updated and we definitely promise to post pics soon!

Thanks Again!
Kristan

The time has arrived....so as Xander

Well everyone, it's now 3am and we have finally finished what we started 40 weeks ago.
May 14, 2009 @ 1:09am EST. Xander Lee Rudd was born. 21" long and weighing in at
8lbs. 15oz. We would like to thank everyone for all the well wishes and support through this time. We would also like to thank Dr. Eric Ebner and everyone on the staff that assisted Kristan and I during this wonderful day. Be on the look out for post alittle later, there has been talk of "Meet the baby lunches" we will keep everyone posted on those events. Also we do have a lot of pics, however I do not currently have the correct cord to upload them right now.(even if I did, We have been here for 19hrs, Kristan hasn't slept in 3 days and I have had 3 hours of sleep in the last 2 days. So everyone would just have to wait anyway!)

Thank you everyone for your support, we love you all and thank you for joining us in this journey and we hope you'll be part of our future endevors.

Michael, Kristan and Baby Xander

Just about there

Here we are, it's 7:45pm Kristan is currently 9cm. Dialated and we are about 15mins from getting the epidural turn down just alittle and then we should be about 30mins away from beginning all the fun stuff!!....With any luck Kristan will begin the pushing about 8:30 and then if Xander isn't as stubborn as me yet he should be here between 9:00pm-9:30pm. Unless something changes, the next post will be after he is here and we will have all his stats and hopefully some photos as well. We will also be getting a baby webpage through the hospital and will be posting the link to his page so everyone can see the little guy and leave comments. Thank you all for joining us on this wonderful journey.

See you after the delivery.
Michael and Kristan (and soon to be here Xander Lee)

Alittle more info

Well it is now 630pm and right now Kristan is 8cm Dial. We are waiting for the magic 10cm number to get here. at that point Kristan can begin the push and hopefully we can get the little guy here shortly after that. Everything else is going well right now. Kris is OFF the petosin and is able Dialate on her own without the medication. Thus far we have been here for about 10 1/2 hours. Kristan has been awakee since about 8am on Tues. and I slept about 3 hours last night. So needless to say We are all very tired and just want this to happen soon. That's it for now..

More updates as they become available.

Baby update

Well it is now 4pm and so far Kristan is dialated at about 6cm. and She had the epideral at about 3pm and really began to feel much better :) and her water broke around 2pm up until that point she was having the really bad contractions and was in a lot of pain. Right now we may be looking about 730-800pm for baby arrival......I will keep the updates coming as much as possible and try to post the first photos as well.....

Stay Tuned.

(I know I went backwards in the timeline , I decided to Q. Tarentino it.)

We have arrived

Kristan's regular contractions started about 5am this morning and now we are currently at the hospital right now. it's almost noon and we have currently been here for about 4 hoursand the doctor says that the was things are going we are looking at a night birth. Kristan is hooked up with the petosin drip and the anti-biotics. So for right now we just kick back and wait.....

Update will come a little later.