Holden Ryall Brown

That's right, he has a name. Sorry for the delay. Holden is a name we just happen to like and Ryall is the name of my (Rachel) Irish ancestors. Thanks to Jordan for doing my family history. I will recap the night Holden decided to join us. Gavin woke up from his nap at about 4pm. We let him open his birthday presents (a toolbox, a few cars from Cars, and Mack and a shake and go Lightning McQueen). He was loving his presents. Jordan ran to the store to get a few things to make the salad dressing to go with our Cafe Rio Pork imitation. I'm playing with Gavin and feel some pretty bad stomach pains so I decide to go to the bathroom. I stand up and cough and my water breaks. So I call Jordan and tell him to hurry; he's already on his way. Liz, our neighbor and best friend ever, is playing outside with her kids so I open the door and tell her my water broke. She comes in and helps get Gavin's things together while Jordan and I are getting my things together...that's right I hadn't even started packing. That's what Tuesday was for. Well the contractions are pretty hard and pretty close. Liz takes Gavin, feeds him dinner, does his birthday cake, puts him to bed, and stays with him until Jordan gets home around midnight. Meanwhile, Jordan and I arrive at the hospital, I'm getting "water" all over the floor (sorry janitor), and we head up to the second floor. We get checked in, get in my room, and the contractions start to really hurt. At this point they are a minute and a half apart. They page my doctor and he is in surgery, so they give me a shot to slow down the contractions. Doesn't work. They won't give me any pain medicine because they are waiting to get into the OR. I'm pretty desperate at this point. With a scheduled C-section, natural pain management strategies were not learned. After an hour and fifteen minutes and dilated to a 4, they wheel me into the OR where I see Dr King - not my doctor. I thought he was assisting, but turns out Dr Dozier was still in surgery. Turns out that surgery lasted 2.5 hours longer than expected. Glad we moved on. I was in so much pain I didn't care anymore. Finally the epidural came and it was heaven. A couple of minutes later, Holden was out and they started working on me. After I was all sewn up, they wheeled me to recovery, where I waited for about an hour and a half. This was new. It was 4 hours before I finally got to hold Holden. One of my bigger complaints about the experience. With Gavin, I had him within an hour, even with a C-section. Second biggest complaint: no access to a sink for the majority of my hospital stay. We now have Holden safely at home where he weighed in at 10 lb 4 oz today (2 weeks). He was 9 lb 7 oz at his 1 week checkup. Here are a few pics to go along with all of this text. And by a few, I mean a lot.

I call this one thrashing-in-pain-hair

Gavin got possessive of a few of his old things

My favorite boys

He needs a tool belt

He's found his thumb a couple of times

Brothers

Seriously he has to have a turn whenever Holden does