Meet Baby Hayes!

 Our sweet little Hayes was born this past Wednesday. I don't even know where to start.

He is so perfect and it is true what they say: your heart grows to make room for a new child! It's like he has always been a part of our family.

I'm going to give the shortest possible story on how everything went down. (It'll probably still be long though ;).  If you don't like birth stories, skip on down, but I love them, so I'm sharing mine.

So…I had Parker at exactly 39 weeks. I was a lucky duck, I know. Tuesday night I was coming up on my 39 week switch day and had basically given up hope of having him early like his brother. BUT lo and behold, I began having contractions at around 2:30am while bouncing on an exercise ball and watching Everybody Loves Raymond (couldn't sleep). I didn't think they were real at first, but after an hour or so, I woke up Bryan (to which he tried to "Shhh" me, and to which I responded with a few curse words before making him aware that I was having legit contractions). We started timing them, and they were only 2.5 minutes about and lasting about 50 seconds each. Believe it or not, I was still totally in denial. Like, I didn't want to go to the hospital. I called my nurse, and she said that if they continued to go ahead and go in. After I called her, I accidentally called my mom but didn't realize it and she of course freaked out and called me back. I remember thinking, "How on earth does she know that I'm in labor?" I thought she had super powers. 

Anyway, 4am rolled around rather quickly, and after pacing the house and cleaning up, we called Judy to warn her that she might need to head over. 15 minutes later the contractions were hurting bad, so we called Judy again and said,  "You need to leave NOW." We texted our doula, tried to get packed (packing while having contractions is super FUN!), and by that time Judy was there. 

The hardest part of the whole night (besides the obvious part of having the baby), was saying bye to Parker. I had been feeling really sad about not having him be my only baby anymore, and when I went into his room to kiss him goodbye, I just lost it. It was so hard to walk out of the room. And this was all happening in between contractions, mind you! So fun. ;) When I finally walked out, Judy was standing there and I just cried while she hugged me. She just kept saying, "I know." And then she said that I was giving him his best friend, which was basically the only thing that got me out the door. Gah, it's making me cry just thinking about it! Moving on before I have a breakdown here at the computer…

So, I cried out on the driveway, had a contraction, and then we raced to hospital. Bryan was a speed maniac. Also, contractions in the car suck just as much as people say they do. 

We got to the hospital, this was at about 5am,  parked, freaked out a security guard in the lobby and then went up to the L&D floor. All the nurses were just hanging around, and when they saw me it was pretty obvious that I needed to get to a room, so they put me in the very first room (Room 1) that is literally right when you walk into the L&D doors. No privacy! Yay! I didn't care at the time though. 

I walked into the room and immediately noticed the empty bassinet in the corner that would hold our baby in just a few hours. That has been one of my most vivid memories with both of my babies labors. Very surreal! I changed, they started a IV line because I was GBS+ and needed a dose of antibiotics, but I was told that once that was done they would unhook me and I could walk the halls. Well, they checked me, I was 6-7cm, and were like, "Nevermind! You will probably have him before the bag of antibiotics is done." We were both still in denial during all of this--it was happening SO fast!

I stood next to the bed for the rest of it. (Like the transition part…fun. A whole lot of fun.) Bryan had hot rice packs, which are truly little miracle packs for your back. 

So, it was about 5:45 and my water started breaking and I needed to push. I needed to push, but didn't want to…because I knew that it would hurt and was still in shock that everything was happening. Our doula walked in at about this time and so did the herd of nurses and the on-call doctor. Dr. Wilson.  I forgot to mention that right after we got to the hospital, a nurse walked in and said, "I've got a teensy bit of bad news, Dr. Suit can't make it back in until 7am…" I tell you, I am not destined to have my OB's at my babies births! I was super bummed because I genuinely love Dr. Suit. 

So anyways, Dr. Wilson was super laid back and just kind of let me do my thing. They wanted me to labor the baby down so I just sat there with the audience of medical staff and the bright lights right where no one wants them to be and moaned through it. I did this for about 10 minutes and then started to push. Now, I remember contractions being SO much worse with Parker's labor than they were this time around, but pushing was SO much worse this time around. And I only pushed for maybe 5-10 minutes (with Parker it was 45), so I'm not sure why that was. I remember my doula saying, "You are almost done, and he has a head full of dark hair!", to which I replied,  "No, I only have blonde babies!" That got a room full of laughs.  I also freaked during the last contraction when they told me I was almost done again, and I said, "Bryan do NOT tell me I'm almost done if I'm really not!", and after that my doula just grabbed my hand and put it on the baby's head. Now, I have always been super weirded out by this, but it gave me the motivation I needed to get him out in the next push. And then he was here!! This was at 6:06am. We had only been at the hospital for an hour. 

They laid him on me chest. My first words to him were, "You're here!"Another memory that is very vivid in both of our kids births is locking eyes with Bryan for the first time after they were born. Such a sweet and proud moment. We just stared at him, Bryan cut the cord, and then they covered him up on my chest. And then they tried to kill me. I'm kidding. But I was bleeding a lot apparently, to the point that they were worried, so they were pushing on my stomach a lot harder than normal and I really thought I was going to die. I did scream for sure during this part, all while holding our brand new baby.   It was definitely equal to the agony of pushing…maybe worse.

I got to hang out with him for about an hour before they did his measurements. He was 8 pounds even and 20.25 inches long. I think his head and chest were both about 13.5 inches around. I remember just being super amazed at what he looked like and how completely perfect and wrinkly he was. I told him that he looked like a tiny little bulldog which also got laugh from the nurses.  He also had so much hair, but just on the back of his head, like a little old man. Bryan and I still talk about it all the time, because Parker was blonde and pretty bald. 

We nursed for about an hour, talked to our doula and Dr. Suit, and then Bryan gave him his bath with another very sweet nurse. He hated it of course :). 

The big drama of our stay at the hospital was settling on his name. Now, we had already picked Hayes Benjamin and had announced it to pretty much everyone who had asked. BUT once he was born and they asked what his name was…we both hesitated! We didn't know if he looked quite like a Hayes Benjamin and started debating if we should name him Benjamin Hayes instead. 

Long story short, after thoroughly confusing our entire families and all of our hospital workers, we legally named him Benjamin Hayes Roberts but have still been calling him Hayes. I can't think of him as anything else but Hayes even though that is technically his middle name now (We tried calling him Ben but is wasn't sitting well for some reason). Who knows, we may pay the $15 to legally switch the name again but for right now we are happy with it. ;)

Mr. Hayes is so perfect to us. That wrinkle in between his eyes kills me. 

All cleaned up and ready to go to our postpartum room!

I got some comments after I had Parker that I was crazy to care so much about what I looked like at the hospital because I only posted made up pictures.  Here is more than enough proof that labor makes me one hot mess.

We moved to our room a few hours after he was born and started welcoming a flurry of visitors including Grammie, Abby, Big Brother Parker, Bee, Nonnie, and my best friends Kecia and Alli (along with Kelsey and Bowen). 

Parker did really well meeting his baby brother. I missed him so much that I almost started crying when he walked in the room, but he didn't pay much attention to me and either played with his new big brother gifts (which he has been seriously attached to since) or looked at the baby.

He really warmed up to him after a bit and started giving hugs and kisses and wanted to hold him. (For about 2 seconds.)

These three boys….I am obsessed. 

Hayes is quite the sweet and so far mellow baby. He has little chicken legs which I adore, big pouty lips, and really furry shoulders. He is perfect.

(Everyone doing what they do best. Holding babies, airplane playing, and sitting on the phone ;) Kidding, Nonnie!

'

Parker was mesmerized the first time Hayes got his diaper changed. He kept saying "Baby crynin!" 

Our very first family of four pictures. :) I can't complain, it could have been worse! Notice all of Hayes' dark hair! (And yes, I had actually showered by this time!) 

Snuggling with my sweet boy on his birthday after our visitors left. And celebrating with a Sonic coke. :)

We spent a sweet night in the hospital. I don't know why, but I love the nights in the hospital. You have the chance to get to know your sweet new baby and get to snuggle them all you want and everything just feels right for a bit.

We had an awesome nurse named Heather in our room. I just feel like I should mention her because I liked her so much. I was very fortunate to not need any stitches so recovery has been SO much better than it was with Parker--everything was really laid back and we were only at the hospital for a little over 24 hours. I really feel like a pretty much normal person (Minus being 5 days into nursing--if you've nursed a baby you know what that feels like.)

Me and Hayes right before we were discharged. The exhaustion had officially caught up to me! 

My mom took a ton of pictures as we left, but I don't have them on my computer yet. Parker was very amazed that we were actually keeping this baby, haha. I was very amazed that we had two kids in our car with us. It was an uneventful ride home, and a relaxing evening! 

So much has happened since then (good but tiring things), so I will save that for later. 

We are just feeling so blessed. And now that sweet baby is waking up from his nap, so I must go!