The Kennedy Family: Jaxon's Arrival

So, for my limited readers of this blog, I am going to share all the details about the arrival of Jaxon! And since this is the only place I write these things, it will be good for me to get it down so I can remember everything in the future!

Jaxon's due date was May 13. The previous week at my doctor's appointment, my doctor told me I was still only one centimeter dilated, and she was confident we would need to induce on May 16. She set up my appointment with the hospital, and I was preparing to have him that Wednesday. This worked great for me! I would finish out the week at work and have two days the next week to prepare for the baby. I had dreams of a pedicure, seeing a movie, and eating in a few restaurants. Kye was also getting an award at the PD ceremony on May 14, and we wanted to attend that.

The evening on May 8, I started to notice a decrease in movement from the baby. I drank cold water, ate a few jelly beans, and the baby started to move. But not as much as normal. I went to bed, but woke up the next morning and experienced the same thing. Usually the baby would move when I took a shower or ate breakfast, and I wasn't feeling much. I called the on-call doctor, and we ended up in the hospital to get monitored. The baby was fine. I had an ultrasound, and my doctor saw the sex of the baby! At this point, we didn't know if we had a he or a she! The amniotic fluid was fine, and the baby was just getting too big for his current home! But I was still at only one centimeter. Kye and I went back home, and I decided to stay home all day (we were back from the hospital at 9:00 a.m.). Kye went to a lunch where he got his 10 year pin from the City of San Marcos, and our new living room furniture came in, so we went to New Braunfels to pick it up. All in all, a pretty relaxing day!

I headed back to work on Thursday and Friday, and really prepared to be off for the next 12 weeks! On Saturday, May 12, Kye and I started running errands. We got some new bedding for our guest bedroom, went to Target for some last minute items, and went to Petco for some dog shampoo. Kye went to work, and I met him in San Marcos for dinner. That evening, I headed off to bed, but noticed I had to pee a little more than normal. I got up for what felt like the millionth time between 1:00 and 3:00 am, and thought I peed myself. It wasn't excessive, so I just went on back to bed. When I woke up about 7:30, I had the same sensation. I still didn't think anything of it. So I made breakfast, took a shower, and then started searching the internet about having your water break. I also talked to my friend Alecia, and she suggested I call the on-call doctor. Again, we headed off to the hospital.

I was hooked up to the monitors again, and everything looked fine... But my water had broke! Since I wasn't sure when it happened, they were pretty adamant that I be admitted and we try to have this baby. Turns out this baby would be arriving on its due date - and Mother's Day! We got to the hospital about 9 a.m., and I was moved from the triage area to a labor and delivery room about 10:30. I was only about 2 - 3 cm dilated, and the nurses wanted to know if I wanted my epidural. I held out for a while, but I think the anesthesiologist wanted to get home to his family. So around 12:30 p.m., I got my epidural. And the world was awesome. I was also started on a pitocin drip. They tried to increase the amount I was getting to speed up delivery, but the baby wasn't liking that, and I was doing pretty well on my own, so I wasn't given much and allowed to labor as "natural" as I could. Around 5:00 when I needed to give my temp, I had spiked a fever. Uh oh. My doctor became more concerned, and I had to be put on an antibiotic. After the next three temps in about 20 minutes, my fever had fallen, and I was back at a normal temp. But, the damage had been done - Both the baby and I would need to be on antibiotics for the next two days, and the baby would be admitted to the NICU. We had to get the NICU pediatrician in the delivery room, along with her team, and the baby would need to go with them after the delivery.

Around 7:00, my doctor came in and said we were ready to push. The best part about that epidural is I couldn't feel a darn thing! It made pushing a little interesting, but we got through it just fine. An hour an a half later, at 8:08 p.m., Jaxon Kye Kennedy made his way into the world! Kye was a great coach, and really helped during my pushing. When I reached the critical point where they were ready to deliver, Kye said he looked at me, and the next thing he knew, my bed had come apart, there were huge stirrups coming from the bed, a biohazard bag had been taped up, along with all these crazy looking tools. He described it as something from Transformers! As soon as Jaxon came out, Kye was able to see him under the warmer and get a picture of him on the scale. The little bugger was 7 pounds, 15 ounces, and 21 inches long. So almost 8 pounds and 2 feet long! No wonder I was having trouble bending over the last few weeks - he was huge!

Jaxon got to stay with us in the delivery room for about an hour and a half. After that, he went to the NICU. I got cleaned up and packed up, and we moved to our home for the next day. I was also able to go to the NICU and see Jaxon. He had an IV by this time, and was about to get his first bath. We stayed with him until about 12:30 a.m. on the 14th, and then headed to our room. Jaxon joined us there 30 minutes later. His NICU stay was only to receive his antibiotics, and other than that, he was rooming with us. That night, I think we got about 2 hours of sleep.

The next day was a pretty crazy day. My mom came, as well as our friends Chance and Ashley to visit. Our room also had a pretty crazy water pipe that would make an atrocious noise, which we reported, but finally a nurse was in our room to hear it, and we were moved to another room. That night, it started to storm pretty bad. Our dogs were outside, so I sent Kye home to take care of them. This turned out to be the longest night ever. Jaxon was pretty fussy, and didn't want to sleep! Finally the nurses came and took Jaxon, which gave me about two hours relief. Kye made it back to the hospital about 6 a.m., and I was so happy to see him.

My last day in the hospital was May 15, our two year wedding anniversary! Needless to say, our big present was being able to go home! We took Jaxon home, and had that moment where we had no idea what to do with him. So we left him in the car seat and put him on our bed. He stayed there for about two hours.

We are now about two and a half weeks in to this parent thing. There has been some really long nights, but I think we are getting the hang of it. Jaxon has slept on his own the past three nights, and has done really well. He still gets fussy during the day, but with us getting more sleep at night, we are better able to handle him during the day. We even timed it right to be able to go to Target AND Sams while he was sleeping.

So here are the photos from our little baby adventure!!