Mothers Are Amazing

You think you have a good grasp on what is important until you have experiences that jog your memory again. I have never blogged, but the birth of our fourth child and the blessing of bringing your wife home when you weren't sure you would be able to can really put things into perspective. The deliveries of our children have always been hard on Jennifer so I am really nervous about how things will go and if she will hemorrhage again after delivery. We have been discussing whether we were done having children after this boy or not and yes, we are done. If we decide we need more, we can always adopt. On Monday morning, things were going smoothly, we arrived and Jennifer received her epidural and then she crashed. Her blood pressure dropped to 53/35. If you know much about blood pressure, you know that is not good. She must have had a bad reaction to the epidural "cocktail" introduced into her system. The staff worked frantically to get her blood pressure back up and then decided they had better just get her into the operating room. I usually wait for them to come get me for about five to ten minutes at the most. I actually got to stay with her through the entire process when Abigail was born. After being alone in the room for about 20 minutes, I was pretty frantic. I started going through all of the worst case scenarios and even thought about what I would tell our children. It was the longest 20 minutes of my life. I was eventually called back where I learned she had crashed twice more before they were able to stabilize her. The baby was born very quickly once the process started and I was with our boy after that. As I went with the nursing staff to clean and monitor our son, his name became clear in my mind. Even that morning both Jennifer and I believed his name would be Aaron.

His name is Asher Robert DeMille.

Monday turned out to be a very long and stressful day of stabilizing Jennifer but it prepared us for making Tuesday one of the best days of our lives. I have a wonderful wife and another beautiful son. We were then able to watch our older children meet him in turn. Seeing how excited they were to see him made all of the fear and drama of the previous day fade a little.

Another chapter in our lives has begun and as I watch Jennifer struggle through surgery recovery and the first agonizing days of nursing with a smile on her face, I am only reminded how lucky I am that she lets me be a part of her life. We feel very blessed this week. We are now a family of 6.
Mother and baby are doing very well. In fact, Jennifer did not hemorrhage and this may end up being her best recovery ever.

Here are some pictures of our week bringing Asher Robert DeMille home.


Beautiful Jennifer before the drama.

Mother and Baby.

Daddy's Littlest Boy.



I think he likes her. :)



Allie and Abbie with Asher.



Abbie loves her new brother (at least for today).



Our proud big brother.



All our babies hands.

Finally together.

His highness' first clothing experience.

Boys can only wear blue, right?

Ok, I am ready to go home!!