3 Weeks

As you have noticed by now, we are going to have a lot of pictures of our little baby on this blog.  I am thankful that we have a way to share pictures with our family even though we don't live in the same town.

Cullen smiles at us sometimes and it has started to be on purpose.

Cullen in his elephant outfit from Grammy and Paw Paw.

First tub bath.

Cullen likes to play pirates just like daddy does.

1 Week and 2 Week Pictures

Pictures from Cullen's first two weeks:


2 Weeks

Cullen with my doctor.

'Monster Hands'

1 Week

Hospital Stay/Homecoming

Our stay at the hospital went very well. We were really blessed to have great nurses and doctors taking care of us while we were there. I am especially thankful, still, for my friend Mandy for coming in to work especially for our delivery. We were also felt very loved by all of our friends and family who came to visit us and share in our joy. We have pictures of almost everyone who came. I am sad to say that we did miss a few people due to our near brain dead state from lack of sleep. I won't be sharing all of these pictures because of the amount of time it would take to upload all of them... here are a few of just us while we were still in the hospital.

Father and son... I love this!

Cullen's special hat.

New mommy.

Deep in thought.

So tiny!

"We got ourselves a family!"

Here are some pictures of going home with our new bundle of joy.



Birth Announcement

We are loving every minute with our new little boy.  I have yet to get the birth announcements printed, but this is what they will look like.

Birth Story

On Wednesday at our weekly appointment, we found out that we would be having Cullen on Thursday morning by c-section.  We called our families and several family members ended up coming down that night.  Wednesday night, I slept less than 3 hours. We woke up at 3:30 and arrived at the hospital at 5:00 in the morning on Thursday. My friend, Mandy, met us in the pre-op area. Mandy was my labor and delivery nurse. She was awesome! It was so nice to have a familiar face there when I was so terrified, especially at the parts where Grant was not allowed to be with me. At 7:15, my doctor was there and I was sent to the operating room to get my anesthesia for the c-section.  The surgery started shortly after and Cullen was born at 7:55.

The whole thing scared me a lot.  I was thankful for my friends and family who had been through c-sections telling me about their experiences.  In anticipation of Cullen's arrival, I tried to learn as much as I could about the delivery process, but I did not anticipate a c-section and did not try to learn anything about the process.  Now I feel foolish for not studying about c-sections.  Somehow I thought it was something I had control over. Ha!



40 Weeks



This was me last Wednesday, July 27, the night before Cullen was born.  On that morning, I had my last prenatal appointment with my obstetrician.  My doctor did the normal examination for 40 weeks pregnant and found that my body was not progressing.  Softening had started, but absolutely no dilation, and Cullen was no where near his exit point. Often, babies who are still high in the mother's body are too large to pass through the pelvis.  This was the case for us.  Cullen is not a big boy, the issue was with my bone structure.  We had a long talk with the doctor and decided it was the safest option to deliver Cullen by c-section.  The thought of surgery scared me and for the next 19 hours, all I could think about was being awake on the operating table.

More of our birth story to come in the following post.

Waiting...

Not much happening around here... we are just waiting for Cullen to make an appearance. Last week at our OB appointment, our doctor guessed that we would be going past our due date because I have not progressed very far. We have another appointment on Wednesday. Hopefully we will be a little further along in the process. If Cullen has not moved down any further, we will have a sonogram to check his size and make sure he is not too big.

Crystal's Baby Shower

We threw a baby shower for my friend, Crystal, last week. Here are some pictures:

Birth Announcement

Of course, this was all Grant's idea... The real one to come sometime, hopefully soon.