henry.

this is henry.  henry is now one week and two days old. it has been quite the week and two days for the rytting family. its amazing how quickly your life can change.  looking back on the last week it seems like some sort of a dream. since he’s arrived he’s completely stolen all our time and attention.  and we wouldn’t have it any other way. we are obsessed, to say the least. we think he’s pretty much the cutest.

as for his arrival story, it was completely unexpected. thursday day (the 10th) I wasn’t feeling quite right. the baby wasn’t moving as much as he normally does and I was having  some major back pain.  I had been having back pain for the last few weeks so I wasn’t too concerned about that. that night the pain was getting worse and I was starting to have feelings similar to cramps. around 1 am we called the dr. just to be safe. he told us to go to labor and delivery just to get checked out and make sure everything was okay with the baby. we drove to the hospital, expecting to be 20 minutes. the nurse checked me and surprise, I was 3 1/2 centimeters dilated and 90 % effaced. we were shocked. apparently I had been in active labor and had no idea. I kept asking, “so I’m not going home tonight…?” over and over. I was two days away from being 36 weeks. we had no bags packed,  very little baby stuff set up at home, hardly anything purchased for that matter. panic.

I don’t remember the exact timing, but things progressed pretty fast. in what seemed like no time at all I was far enough along to have the epidural, which was lovely. my water was broken and things went even faster after that.  the hardest part of labor was how sick I felt. I was throwing up constantly. other than that I feel extremely lucky with the way labor went. contractions felt more like mild cramps and I only pushed for about 30 minutes.  baby boy was born at 11:59 am on Friday, February 11, 2011.  he weighed 6 lbs 7 oz and was 19 inches long.

because he was early,  he is considered “late pre-term”, he couldn’t stay with us for very long. we both (me and the baby) had a fever and he was taken away to the special care nursery. he was put on an iv, antibiotics and oxygen. they started running tests to check for infections. he also was having a hard time maintaining his temperature so they had him under a heat lamp. he was strapped to so many wires and had iv’s in his hands and his heels were bandaged from where they drew blood. it was so heartbreaking to see him like that. it was such a helpless feeling knowing that your baby was so uncomfortable and struggling and not being able to do anything.

the dr. let us know that he would have to stay in special care for a while, 5-10 days. on saturday we named him henry. he didn’t look like a nixon or a william, which was our second choice. henry had come up on our list of options when we first found out it was a boy, but mckay wasn’t too sure about it. but he was a henry. the name just fit.

we were discharged on sunday and left the hospital without him. this was the hardest thing. it was so strange to go home after the hospital and not have our baby. we weren’t really sure what to do with ourselves.  while we were waiting for his blood tests to come back we started working on weaning him off the iv. with every good feeding they were able to lower the amount of fluid from the iv. every 2-3 hours, day and night, we drove from home to the hospital to feed him. luckily we live about 7 minutes from the hospital. this was such a stressful and exhausting time but every time we left for the hospital we were so excited to see our guy. slowly he got better at eating, late pre term babies struggle with eating, and often fall asleep while eating, they also limited us to 30 minute feedings in special care. not knowing if he was getting enough to eat was so stressful and I felt guilt and anxiety constantly. he soon was able to maintain his temperature and no longer needed to be on oxygen. two steps forward. then he developed jaundice and high blood pressure. two steps back.   the jaundice and the blood pressure postponed him leaving the hospital even more. he was put under lights for his jaundice. trying to improve his eating was difficult considering we were dealing with so many tubes and wires, etc. and the lights were making him very agitated. the tests came back clear of infection which was wonderful news. now we had the jaundice and the high blood pressure to worry about. we were told we would be able to take him home tuesday. we took care of all the necessary discharge stuff and were so excited that our baby was healthy enough to finally come home. tuesday morning we got to the hospital early only to have the dr. tell us he still wasn’t ready to go home. we weren’t expecting to hear that. we had the diaper bag, the car seat, all the nurses had sounded so optimistic. we had to leave again without our boy and start another day of back and forth for feedings. wednesday came, and the dr. wanted him to stay under the lights until the afternoon but he was almost certain we would be able to take him home that day. in between feedings we ran errands to make sure we had everything we needed. that afternoon we were finally able to take him home. it was an amazing feeling. our  little family was finally together :).

(newborn clothes fit a little too big)

since bringing him home we have been in heaven. a very sleepy, sleepy heaven… its amazing how one can live on such little sleep. we’ve had dr’s appointments the last few days to check on his billiruben level (jaundice) and to check his weight, he had lost quite a bit while he was in the hospital. 

henry is doing great, we’re working on fattening him up. already he has such a personality. he is so mellow and pleasant. he’ll cry every once in awhile but it never lasts long, it seems like he’s only crying because he thinks he’s supposed to, but he calms down almost instantly. he is incredibly strong. the nurses nicknamed him squirrel because he was so wiggly and he would push himself out of his bed with his skinny little chicken legs.

sorry this is so long, but I don’t have time to write this down anywhere else. being the proud mama that I am I have to share some pictures of our sweet boy. we love him more than we can say.

he did not love his bath.

but loved the warm towel after.