baby wall, take 4.

the first four pictures are of mw. he slept more in the hospital and the first few days after the baby was born than the baby and i combined. i have to say in his defense, he had the worst stomach bug i have ever seen. ever. in the midst of his severe suffering he discovered that the boppy doubles as an airplane pillow. i love the picture of mom and cw and gw. gw's eyes are crossed. mom looks so peaceful. and cw looks thrilled to be part of it all. there is also one of mw and the kids. i think the kids spent more time in the hospital bed than i did. they found the "off" switch at the bottom of the bed and flipped it. and i didn't realize it until about 1am, when i was ready to go to bed and there was no one to climb to the end of the bed and turn it back on. so i slept sitting up. i love the picture of aw. she looks so deliriously happy. and she was. our first attempt at a picture of the four kids went very badly. the baby's bruise is finally fading. it must have been worse than i thought. because it still looks bad in pictures and i hardly notice it anymore. his eyes are rarely open. but when they, they really are. cw has found a new home. the green chair. and gw must be in his arms. aw jumped in at the last second and he was not happy. i found aw and bw watching dora under the table this evening. i think theirs is the start of a beautiful friendship.

the following is for posterity. and me.

gmw was born on november 15, 2008 at 3:24pm. mw and i left the kids at home with mom on saturday morning and drove to the hospital at 6am. it was very cold and rainy and the forecast called for a few snow flurries. aunt mimi and her kids headed to indy to help mom with the kids and take cw to football. the nurse started the antibiotic drip and the pit around 7:30am. the next two hours passed without event. mw left to watch cw play football at 9am. i tried to nap and started to feel the contractions. i also finished the book i had been working on. the russian concubine. i wouldn't recommend it, but i wouldn't condemn it either. mw returned from cw's game around 10:30am. the nurse recommended that i schedule my epidural fifteen minutes before the doctor planned to break my water, as i tend to progress really quickly from that point. in hindsight, i should have passed on the epidural. i asked the anesthesiologist to give me the bare minimum. that numb-leg feeling is not for me. and yet, when it came time to push, at about 2:40pm, i had feeling in my legs, but that was about all. after ten minutes of pushing and wondering aloud whether or not i was pushing correctly -it crossed my mind that i may have forgotten -dr. b turned off the epidural. as i started to regain feeling i realized that i had been pushing so hard the wrong way that i was lucky i didn't bust every blood vessel in my face. the baby arrived about three pushes after the epidural wore off. it turns out that he was face up and his forehead was lodged in my pelvic bone. his poor head was horribly bruised and he looked like a unicorn, with a big bump protruding from his forehead. luckily the swelling went down quickly. the bruise took a little bit longer to heal. he was a little pale and had a slight catch in his breathing and the ob nurse called nicu for a consult. by the time the three nicu nurses arrived his color was better and his breathing had settled down. the senior nurse told us she wasn't really sure he needed to go to the nicu, but mw and i asked that they take him to check his blood oxygen level and make sure that everything else appeared to be okay. they obliged us and agreed that it was best to error on the side of caution. i asked for a few minutes with the baby. the two doctors, three l&d nurses, three nicu nurses, and any other hospital personnel left us alone. mw asked me what his name was and i said i didn't know, so he was given a blessing as "baby boy wall." apparently it was sufficient. we sent him with the nurses, who promised to bring him back as soon as possible. mom and mimi and the kids came in moments later. mw followed the baby to the nicu. the kids couldn't wait to see the baby, but they were too little to go into the nicu. mom and mimi went in to see him and the nurses assured us that he was totally fine and extremely adorable. i was reprimanded by one of the nurses in the nicu when i reached out and brushed the back of my finger along the baby's cheek. she informed me that only the parents were permitted to touch the babies. mimi retorted that i was the mother and the nurse stared at me and then said, "your hair isn't even messed up." i assured her that it hadn't looked that great to begin with. in the midst of all this craziness we moved from a labor and delivery room to a postpartum room and lost mw and cw in the process. the rest of us crowded into my teeny, tiny room and waited. as it got later and later we made the decision to send mom and mimi and the kids home. cw cried. surprising, i know. aw had developed a fever earlier in the day and just wanted to go home. bw had a bit of a hard time. mom said he cried the whole way home. unfortunately, the nicu nurse brought the baby to our room about ten minutes after they left. the nurse had taken a few pictures of him hooked up to the monitors. she stayed for a few minutes and spoke with us. she told us that the nurses in the nicu thought he was great. and he is my kid, but he's dang cute. he was wide-eyed from the start, just like cw. mw finallly found the room. and then he crashed on the couch. from saturday night to monday afternoon mw barely functioned. he and aw came down with the worst case of the stomach flu i have seen in a long, long time. he was totally down for the count. he told me later that he started to feel really bad saturday afternoon and that while i was pushing he was so lightheaded he thought he might pass out. in retrospect, he did seem very quiet. almost irritatingly so. he was smart enough not to hold the baby. he went home early sunday morning and mom stayed with me at the hospital for the next day and half while mw suffered at home with aw and the boys. by that point, we had already decided on a name. mw really loved the name and because i refused to give in to his first choice, tait, i relented. and i see now that he really is a grady. he's like the other wall boys. he loves to sleep -he's averaging about 20 hours a day- and has finally started nursing enough to lessen the anxiety i always feel during the first few weeks. his bruise is gone. he has lips, like bw. kind of a big nose, but turned up at the end like aw's. blond hair with a touch of strawberry, just like cw. really big hands and feet and the softest skin i have ever touched. he smells good all the time. this is perhaps one of the greatest perks of nursing. he never has that formula smell. mw has finally recovered enough to catch up on all the time he missed snuggling the baby the first few days. he is a permanent fixture on mw's chest from about 8pm to 11:30pm, when he wakes to eat before bed. he curls into me in bed and now i can't remember what it was like before he came to us. one gorgeous little girl and three handsome sons. oh, and one mw. life is good. i would even say that it's fantastic.

the boys love their jerseys. cw had his last game on saturday. sadly, i had to stay home with the younger three, as it was freeeezing. gw just keeps getting cuter.