Caden's journey

So my mommy thought that you might want to know how my journey from her belly to our home went. I thought I'd share it with you all along with lots of pictures. Here is me and my mommy (I'm in her belly) ready to go to her last doctor's appointment and get her induction time. She was so tired since she only got 2 hours of sleep that night.

The appointment went well and she was told to come back that night at 10pm to start her induction. Here she is all ready to be hoked up to her I.V.'s and machines to watch my progress. She was very excited and all smiles but only I knew just how scared she was too and sad that our time sharing her body was coming to an end.

Now there was not much to document between when her induction began and when things really got going because mommy was not allowed to get up and move around due to her being so high risk. So what has happened by this point is that they started her on the magnesium sulfate to make sue she didn't have a seizure due to her blood pressure and her water was broken at 8am on the 31st. The magnesium was really nasty stuff and it made her feel just awful, all hot from the inside out and very nauseous. She was able to finally have some regular contractions after her water was broken and Dr. McKernan wanted her to start pitocin. But with her hip problems she wasn't allowed to go on the pit until she got her epidural. That was a really hard experience. It took 3 hours and 3 different times to get her epidural successfully in place. Her arthritis had caused most of the problems. She was in lots of pain by then and had been given some serious pain medication that knocked her out for an hour or so. But when she came to things appeared to have been successful and her pitocin was working very well along with her epidural. By 8pm she was at 9 cm and looking forward to pushing. Then the epidural slipped and her legs were very numb but her hips had come back to life. Mommy was in so much pain she was actually working at not passing out after each contraction, which were coming about every 30 seconds to a minute. Here mom was very good at talking her though the pain and Daddy would let her know when the contractions were almost over. Finally the anesthesiologist came back in and gave her a bolus of medicine and the pain had subsided again. Unfortunately so did the contractions and the medicine also stopped her from dialating to 10 cm. At 11:45pm she was still at a 9 cm and we knew I would not make it by midnight. So mommy, daddy and grandma watched the ball drop in NY and toasted in the new year with some cider. Then it was back to business.


At 1 am mommy was finally ready to push. Grandma was getting very excited that we were getting close.

Daddy was excited and getting a bit loopy!


She got about 30 minutes of pushing in and her epidural slipped again. So after 25 minutes of major pain again and feeling like her hips were going to break right in half she got another bolus of medicine and again her contractions stopped. So mommy had to try and push on her own to keep things going. It was very very hard work on both of us. Her Doctor was getting very worried by 3 am when I still wasn't very far down. So he wanted to get her ready for a C-Section. Mommy, daddy , grandma and her nurse didn't want to have to go through a C-Section so they told Doc that they needed 30 more minutes and that mommy could do this on her own, doc agreed to 30 minutes. Her nurse turned off her pit for 10 minutes and then turned it back on full speed. Mommy's contractions kicked in and she was able to finally feel like she was really pushing. Doc got the call to get to the room and he was barely able to get there in his gown when I came into the world at 3:31am making me the first baby born at Arrowhead hospital in 2009, ya-hoo.It happened very fast and mommy tore really bad all the way through her muscles. She lost a good amount of blood but they were able to stop her bleeding and she was able to stay there while I was introduced, weighed, measured and brought over to meet her.








Here's my doctor. He's the man! We love Doc McKernan!!!!!!!!!
Because I was the first baby in 2009 at Arrowhead the staff gave me this really cool basket full of goodies and samples and all sorts of fun stuff! And then the Glendale newspaper came and interviewed us for a story on my birth. I was a celebrity already at only 6 hours old!

So for my birthday I spent much of it doing this

and this
and this
and mommy did a lot of this.

Then my blood work came back and I showed really high levels of billirubens meaning I was jaundice. So I spent the next 2 days doing my best impression of a beach lounger. It was very hard on mommy to be away from me so much and to think of me in the dark with no cuddles. She did a lot of crying when she got to see me. Luckily her recovery was really hard and she got to stay in the hospital just as long as I did so we did it together.

Our great friends Toni and Brent came down and Brent helped my daddy give me a blessing so that my liver would start working right. It was a really wonderful experience. Mommy got to hold me and Toni was able to stay in the room. Then afterwards they got to snuggle with me.

Mommy only got to hold me for 30 minutes to feed me every 4 hours so she sucked up all the loving she could get each time.

Then it was back to the lights.

Finally at 4pm on Saturday the 3rd we called mommy's room from the nursery to let her know I could go home. She jumped up and ran to get me. We went back to her room and she changed me into my going home outfit. I was very tired by that point.

Daddy went and got my car seat and loaded p the car with all my gear and we were ready to hit the road. I know they thought I was asleep but I caught a moment between mommy and daddy where they realized it was really real and we were going home as a family. They were both crying and I could tell they were overjoyed.

When we got home Grandma was there with dinner and some cider to toast our home coming.
Daddy poured us all a glass.
While mommy snuggled with me on the couch.

Then it was time for me to snuggle in and go to bed with my new family. It was a long journey and there were some moments that were a little scary but all in all it was worth every minute of have my new family.

And my mommy wants to let everyone know that visitors are more than welcome, just give her a call and she'll let you know when is a good time to come snuggle me. I can't wait to meet you all!