Grant Robert Harms

It's a boy!!

Grant Robert Harms was born on Thursday April 5, 2012 at 8:44 am. He weighed 8 pounds 4 ounces and measured 21 inches in length.

Grant's birth story:

At my 40 week appointment on Monday April 2nd, my doctor and I talked and decided that it was best to induce on Wednesday the 4th if baby didn't decide to come sooner. I had a feeling that the baby was quite a bit bigger then Payton (1 pound!) and was worried he would get too big for me to deliver. At that point was dilated about 1 centimeter and wasn't really showing signs of labor. My induction was scheduled for 7:30 am on Wednesday April 4th. I did everything I was comfortable with (castor oil, no thank you) and everything everyone recommended to try to move things along on my own, but no such luck. Tuesday night came and we prepared to head to the hospital the next morning to have a baby.

Wednesday morning I got a call from the hospital at 5:45 am letting me know that they had gotten swamped with women in labor the night before and wouldn't be able to get me in at 7:30. A storm had moved in Monday night and apparently sent everyone, but me into labor. They told me to call back at 10:30 am and they would give me a time to come in. Well I called and spoke with the charge nurse who told me they still had too many women laboring and couldn't tell me if they would bring me in that day or not. What!? As much as I understood why, it was REALLY hard to just wait. Kole was off and with me, we had dropped Payton at Aunt Kelsey's, the dogs at my mom's and had the car packed with what we needed to spend a couple of days in the hospital and bring home a new baby. We pretty much just wandered through the day, and it turned out to be a nice day, just the two of us. We even had a great late lunch on a roof top in Louisville, it was 70 degrees and sunny. We went back to Kelsey's to hang with Payton thinking we would be taking her home for the night. Long story short, I talked to my doctor and the hospital finally called around 5pm and told me we were on for 8:00 pm! 

A few shots of the soon to be big sister before we headed out in the morning...

We checked in at Avista Hospital in Superior around 7:45 pm and were ready to get the show on the road and meet our little one. They started my induction around 10:00 pm, and we settled in to get some sleep. Around 2:00 am I started feeling contractions. My laboring woke Kole at some point and he started helping me breathe and watch how frequently they were coming. It seemed to us they were coming every 2-3 minutes, around 3:00 am I had him call the nurse to check to see if she was seeing my contractions (I thought the monitor might be a little high on my stomach). She came in and said that she was seeing the contractions and that it would probably be sometime in the morning they would come and take the Cervadil out (induction agent) and check my progress. She did adjust the position of my monitor. I remember mentioning to Kole that if I were still only in very eraly stages of labor that there was no way I would last all night and into the morning without an epidural. Well she left and my contractions continued and seemed to gradually be getting more intense. She was back about 30 minutes later and said I was contracting a lot, too much actually,  and they were going to take the Cervadil out to see how I would do on my own. I don't think she was seeing my contractions acuratleyt before moving the monitor. She checked me and I was a 4 and we talked about my epidural options (I was trying again to avoid having one). She left again and my contractions did slow down a bit, but got really intense at the same time. I ended up opting for the epidural when I was dilated to a 6, probably around 5-5:30 am. the epidural brought great relief, and my parents joined Kole and I around 6:30. My doctor arrived shortly after to check in, he checked me around 7:30, broke my water and said I was around a 7-8 and predicted we would have a baby within an hour. I don't think any of us believed him. Well about 30 or so minutes later I wasn't feeling my contractions at all and my left leg had gone completely numb. I felt my epidural was a little too strong and asked them to turn it down, which they did. Not too soon after I started feeling my contractions and my doctor came back in to check me around 8:15, said I was complete and could start pushing when I felt the urge. That's when things got real for me and I got a little (ok a lot) overwhelmed and emotional. I asked the nurses to give me a minute to gather myself. When I was no longer sobbing like a baby, my doctor and nurses returned, I hit the point of being ready to push and 15-20 minutes later, our crying baby boy was born. He came out with his cord around his neck, but it was loose enough for the doctor to just pull over his head. I heard my doctor say "it's a boy" and then they put him on my chest. It was just like I dreamed it would be. 

Grant was perfect, crying, and looked great. This labor and delivery was such a better experience than with Payton. I think both Kole and I were in shock a little that things went so smoothly, he came so quickly and he was a boy! We were in love from the very first moment. 

Big sis and little bro meet for the first time, she was so sweet with him

Grant makes nephew #3 and #4 is on the way!

The next day was Payton's 2nd birthday so Kole ran out to get her some balloons and a treat in the morning before she came to visit with Nana.

First family pic, not the best of Payton :(

She loves to point out all of his features to us

Dressed and ready to go home!

I was feeling great and both Grant and I were recovering perfectly so we ended up heading home around 12:00 pm on Friday. We were ready to sleep in our own bed, get our little girl home to celebrate her 2nd birthday, and bring Grant home.

We narrowed down our list of names to Grant Robert (Grant we both liked and Robert after my mom's dad) and Niyah Leigh (Niyah because of it's African origin in honor of my Granny, and Leigh after Aunt Kelsey).

Life with our two precious children is off to a chaotic, beautiful, overwhelmingly wonderful start, we couldn't be happier or more thankful.