Introducing Brayden Allan Staker

Yesterday I woke up and like most days, woke up the girls, started getting breakfast ready, and getting Allan out the door. Allan left at 7:15, like always, and right after he walked out of the house I had a really big contraction. I had been having contractions for about a week so I didn't do anything about it. I got the girls ready and on the bus at 7:45 and had had a few more contractions, so at 8:00 (about the time Allan gets to work) I called him and told him what was going on and I would call if anything else happened.
(this is just a funny Lilly story to tag along) A little bit after the girls were on the bus Lilly woke up and I got her some oatmeal. I tried to get her to eat it in her booster seat, but she threw a fit and I wasn't in the mood to fight her so I let her eat on a regular chair. A couple of minutes later, that bowl of oatmeal was all over the floor (like I knew would happen) so I cleaned it up and made her another bowl and put it by her booster seat and tried to put her in. She freaked out, so I let her cry and went over and sat on the couch till she was done. A few seconds later, she pushed her booster seat out of the way and pushed this chair up to her oatmeal and proceeded to eat her breakfast. At least she didn't spill the second time around!

My contractions continued pretty regularly about 15 minutes apart. Natalie's preschool was scheduled for a field trip to Craigos at 10:00 so we got ready and headed over there. The kids each got to make their own little pizza's, it was very fun.
I don't know if this picture does it justice, but I just thought it was funny that our little preschool of 6 kids went to Craigos with 6 adults and 14 kids! All of the preschoolers have a little sibling and there was one older sibling and one friend.As we were all eating our lunch, (and before) my contractions continued and were pretty hard so I asked my good friend Zoe if she would take my kids home and I could go to the doctor. She did and I headed over, but my doctor was at the hospital so they sent me over there. I had called Allan while we were eating and told him I planned on going and getting checked, so he headed home from work and got to the hospital a few minutes after I did.
Shortly after I was checked in and they checked me and I was at 5 cm. I was pretty surprised because I have never gone into labor before (always been induced) but they got me all hooked up to things and my epidural in by around 12:45. I was pretty sure it was going to go super fast because when they had called my doctor he had said he would be there at 1:00 and break my water. Well, long story short, he didn't get there until 3:30 and sitting in bed for 2-1/2 hours had pretty much completely stopped my labor. (bummer) I was hoping that just breaking my water would start the labor again, but after another hour of nothing they started some pitocen and got things moving again. When I was just about to the point that he was ready to come out his heartrate started dropping when I would have a contraction. The nurse figured his umbillical cord was wrapped around his neck but by the time the doctor was there he was ready to come out so we went ahead with a vaginal delivery. He came out at 6:01p.m. and was 7 lbs. 2 oz. and 20 in. My lightest, and also longest baby!This little guy gave me more problems than my other four kids combined! There was also mecconium in the amniotic fluid so they had a respiratory therapist ready and the nurses took him right over and started working on clearing his lungs. After they had worked on him for a little bit and I had delivered the placenta they gave him to me and I tried to feed him but he wasn't latching or sucking. They took him to the nursery and monitered him for a little while. His heart rate was elivated and they wanted to make sure it came down. When it did come down, his blood sugar was low and they didn't want to give him a bath until it was up and he could hold his temperature better.
This next picture is after they brought him back from the nursery. He finally ate and I called the nurses to let them know they could check his blood sugar again, but another baby had been delivered about that same time so we hung out for an hour or so because it was a slow night and there weren't very many nurses on.
When they took him I got to take a bath and get cleaned up as well, which was nice of course. Once I was all cleaned up and moved to a mother/baby room, I headed over to the nursery to see what was going on with baby. His blood sugar was up and they were just finishing giving him a bath. So here he is all cleaned up!
It took us a while (until today around 11:00) but we finally decided on a name Brayden (which you already know from the title of this post) We are super excited to finally add a little boy into our family. He is very handsome and I was surprised how different he looks from my girls who all looked very similar as babies. Because he was born in the evening and then everything was kind of crazy for a few hours and then they had school and doctors appointments and ballet, my girls haven't even gotten to come in and meet their baby brother yet! They will probably be over in another hour or two and I am excited for that! We will see how Lilly handles having another baby around!