Baby Brother

  It seems harder to find time to do pretty much anything with a newborn.  That's why I'm only now blogging about our baby brother Ian.
  I was induced Friday September 28.  They started the pitocin at 7:30 and Ian was born at 12:48 pm with only about a half hour of intense pain - probably my best delivery yet.
  Things went so fast at the end that the dr and nurses weren't ready for him.  But I sure wasn't going to try to keep him in so they could get things set up.

  Here's the proud papi

  And the tired, yet happy mami

 Brad brought the girls over a couple hours later and we asked the nurses to come take a picture of our family.  Well, I guess this nurse thought after helping deliver the baby that she was now part of the family.
 

  She was a nice nurse so we couldn't turn her away.

  Here's our sweet baby boy. 8 lbs 12 oz, 20 in.

  His fingers are almost as long as Brad's "short" pinky.

 
  This was my first time delivering at a military hospital - adequate, but not the happy place the other hospitals were.  It may have been that because I was there over the weekend the food was not good at all (just reheated leftovers I think).  The nurses were just ok.  They discharged me after 24 hrs, but didn't leave me with any medication.  So, the next 24 hrs that I had to stay with the baby were a little hard (they won't release the baby before 48 hrs).  I was so ready to go home!

Taking Ian home from the hospital.  He has lots of hair, but no traces of red like his sisters.

  The girls LOVE their brother!

They're always wanting to hold him.

  When Ian was 10 days old he got a fever.  When it didn't go away, I took him to urgent care.  I thought they'd tell me to keep a cold rag on his head or something.  But no, a documented fever in a baby this young is an automatic 48 hrs in the hospital.  They had to do lots of tests on him to make sure he didn't have a serious bacterial infection.  Then they had to give him antibiotics thru an IV.  Our poor little guy was miserable.  But, I got a lot of cuddle time over the 2 1/2 days we were there.
  They had to wrap his whole arm up so he wouldn't pull the IV out (it took them over an hour to put it in)

  Luckily all the cultures came back negative.  The pediatrician's guess is that he got roseola, which is virus where you have a spike in temperature for 1-2 days and then a rash.  They said it's very rare for a newborn to get it, more common in 6-8 month olds.
  It was a little scary, but everything turned out well.  And again, we were excited to get out of there.  Although the food was WAY better this time (probably because we were there during the week).

  More pics with his sisters.

  A sister in the Spanish branch in Mt Home made Ian this sweater, but by the time I put it on him (at 6 wks) he was too big for it.
  This little kid can sure eat!

  And now he can smile.  It makes me happy!  This smile was at taken at 7 weeks.

  We finally got a passport photo that worked (at 7 wks).  We had to put him in a straight jacket to keep his hands out of his face. :)

  And here he is at 2 months.  I took him in today and he weighs 14 lbs 6 oz!  We sure do love our chubby buddy!