Benjamin's Story

It's been over 48 hours since Benjamin came into this world.  His journey here was quite a story.  Since Liz is still recovering in the hospital, I figured I'd go ahead and write this story.  Also, Allison has gotten to spend more time with Benjamin over the last day or two and below are some pictures of some of the first real moments together.  There are also two adorable videos at the very bottom of this post.

When I woke up to go to work on Friday morning, Liz told me that she had been up since 2:30 a.m. with major pains in her stomach.  She thought it was just stomach bug acquired from Alli since she hadn't been feeling well in the days leading up.  So I told her to call me if she needed me and I'd come home to help.  Liz got up shortly after I left to get ready for an already scheduled Doctors appointment to check-up on the baby and to also do another sono-gram to help get a better idea of the baby's size.  So still in pain, she drove to the appointment.  When she got there, the pain went away.  She went through the whole appointment and sono-gram with almost no pain at all.  While being monitored, the Doctor said she had a small contraction, but nothing to be worried about.  The actual c-section date was January 28th, so we were assured that we had time.  We also found out that the new baby was breech like Allison and weighed around 8 pounds, 1 ounce.

So after the appointment, she comes home to get some rest and sure enough, the pain starts again.  So much that she calls me and asks me to come home from work to help with Alli.  When she called, I knew something had to have been going on.  Liz is such a tough person that almost never complains of any kind of pain.  After about an hour of being home, she decides to call the Doctors office to let them know that the pain had come back.  They told her to go come back to the hospital to be monitored again to make sure everything was ok.  Since we had gone to the hospital twice to be monitored when she was pregnant with Allison, I had learned to bring something to read.  So I just grabbed a couple of magazines and got Alli's stuff in the car, and away we went.  Luckily, I had just gotten the suitcase down for Liz when I got home and she already had stuff ready to go and just had to place it in the suitcase.  We went ahead and brought the suitcase with us, just in case.

We got to the hospital about 20 minutes later and made our way to a room so that Liz and the baby could be monitored.  By the time Liz got in the bed, she was in some serious pain.  The pain would come every 3-4 minutes and would last 30 seconds (at least I learned to do something in the baby planning classes - how to time contractions).  They gave her some medicine for the pain and I knew it was bad because she let them give her the medicine.  She never takes any kind of medicine.  After about 30-45 minutes of still the same pain, they come back into the room to give her medicine to help stop the contractions.  10 minutes later, she still had the same contractions.  Then the nurses came in with a bunch of paperwork and let us know that the baby would be here within the next 30 minutes!  About 15 minutes later, our Doctor walks in wearing some nice going-out clothes.  He says that he had to leave his wife's birthday dinner down the street to come in to deliver the baby!  We felt so bad, but he said that it comes with the territory.  We very appreciative of him doing that for us. 

By this time, Liz's parents got to the hospital to watch Alli for us and away we went back to the room to have the baby.  Shortly after getting to the room to do the c-section, the baby comes out and the Doctor asks me what it is.  "It's a BOY!", I said.  We couldn't have been happier.  We are so blessed to have the opportunity to be parents to both a girl and a boy.  We had decided a long time ago that if we had a boy his name would be Benjamin Scott (we didn't have a girls name picked out until about 10 minutes before going into the room to have the baby!).  We think Allison and Benjamin has a nice ring to it.

Later on, we actually found out some crazy information.  I'm glad that we went to the hospital when we did because the labor that Liz was having actually tore her uterus.  Had we not been at the hospital and did the c-section when we did, things could have been really bad.  Despite the experience and the pain that she endured, Liz is recovering well.  She's such a tough person and such a great mother.  Allison and Benjamin are so lucky to have her as their mom. 

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of special moments (that's what men do), so I'll let Liz catch everyone up on everything else when she gets back home.  :-)

Below are some pictures from the past few days.  Allison is really cute with him!  They are definitely going to be best buds.  Remember to look at the videos at the bottom of the page.  Enjoy!

 He got to watch his first Steelers game in the hospital

 Crying after the Steelers went down 21-7 to Baltimore

 They both had a really long day and needed some sleep!

 Allison's Godmother Nina came by to visit

What a cool dude!

Smiling after the Steelers won the game

 His shirt says "Bananas Over Mommy"

 Opening his eyes really big for one of the 1st times

 Mee-ma came by to visit!

 Alli was so happy to get to sit with Benjamin

 Alli giving him hugs

 Look at that smile!

 Alli giving him kisses

 Relaxing with Grampy

Our little Monkey!