Caleb is here!!!

Caleb Shapiro Rogers is here!!

Born last week, 7:55 am, 6 lbs 15 oz

He was having a hard time breathing so they took him to the NICU "for an hour" and then found out he had pneumonia so he's still in the NICU. He's doing much better now, the infection in gone so now he just needs to learn to eat and he can come home! He's still on oxygen so he might come home on oxygen but I'll take him any way I can get him. He is so stinking cute and he looks a lot like Debbie when she was born, it's kinda crazy. He has lots of dark hair and is just beautiful.

We had a scheduled c-section and left for the hospital at 5 am and it was 3 degrees when we got to the hospital. Everyone says how much better a scheduled c-section is than an emergency c-section and can I just say that they are wrong!! This was terrifying. I always get the shakes really bad after they give me the spinal block and this time I got it with the epidural he gave me. I was shivering so bad that I bit my tongue one time. So I go through these shivering episodes and then my blood pressure drops and I'm finally able to relax but then it drops too much so they give me medicine to get it back up and then I start shivering again and it's just a miserable cycle. And for some reason it's really scary to me. I was so scared the whole time.

Caleb was born about 25 minutes and the first thing the doctor's and nurses said after they pulled him out (after, of course, the mandatory "it's a boy!") was "wow, look at that hair!" He did cry when he was born but it took him a minute and you could hear the gurgling and him trying to gasp for air so I wasn't very surprised when Chad brought him in 15 minutes later to quickly show him to me (they were still putting me back together) and told me they were going to take him up to the NICU for a little while. Then a few minutes later they said he would be up there on a c-pap "for an hour" and I was totally cool with that. But then 2 or 3 hours later (the morning was kind of fuzzy, I was on morphine and nubain) when Chad called me to tell me that he was still on the c-pap and they were doing an x-ray I started to get a little worried. And then I get the call that they're officially admitting him to the NICU because he has pneumonia. It seemed so surreal, I mean, really? FOUR separate NICU babies? For basically four different reason?? I was so sure that we were going to have a regular birth this time, I tried so hard to think positive and I was certain that there was no way it would happen a fourth time. But it did. And I was so drugged up and drowsy that I couldn't even sit up in the wheelchair long enough to be wheeled into the NICU to see him so it wasn't until later that evening that I was able to even go in and see him. It was really sad, he was in so much pain. And they weren't able to get an iv in him, his veins kept collapsing so they finally had to take off his umbilical cord and put a line right into that artery. So we couldn't hold him because it's too dangerous because the line can come out easy and if it gets pulled out accidentally he could bleed out really fast. But when I went in to see him he was oozing quite a bit of blood from his belly button and then later on that evening when I called to check on him the nurse said that the doctor came in and looked at him and didn't like the look of it so he was the one who took it out. But then they needed to get a pik in him but they couldn't so they had the charge nurse come and try and she couldn't do it so they had the doctor come and he couldn't get one in so then Caleb ended up with poke marks all over his body. He looked like a pin cushion! He had 8 holes in one leg just from his ankle to his knee and I counted 5 in just one hand. It breaks my heart. We figure he must have been poked at least 20 times in their attempts to get an iv or pik in him. His little hands are both bruised up pretty good and on one of his feet he has a sore a quarter inch long (I'll take a picture when he comes home, it's not going to be healed by then) from where they tried to get an iv and just ripped his skin. So that night when I called and they told me they couldn't get an iv in I was so worried and I was praying so hard that God would protect him and help him and then in the morning I found out that just over night he had weaned from a c-pap to no breathing support at all so they were finally able to get an iv in his head! It was obviously an answer to prayer. 

It breaks my heart how sad he looks in most of these first pictures.

He was born just 3 days before the NICU started their RSV season protocol so the kids were able to go in and have a quick peek at their new brother. Although, I think it scared them to see him on the C-PAP and they saw him when he had the iv in his belly button and it was oozing a lot of blood so he looked kind of bad when they saw him.

Cosette did not get to come in because she was still recovering from a cold so they thought it was best to not risk it. She was pretty sad until Grandma Shapiro talked with her about how grateful Caleb was for her sacrifice.

Speaking of Grandma Shapiro, we are so grateful for her! She has done so much to help us out during the past few months, I don't know how we would have done it without her. She came down and stayed with us Wednesday night and it just made everything so much easier and gave us peace of mind to know that the kids were in capable hands.

This is a picture one of my nurses took of him on his second night. I was in too much pain to go see him but I really wanted to go see him so she offered to take my camera up and take a few pictures. On a side note... those nurses were pretty great.

Look at all those pokes in that one leg!

Baby dream smiling :)