Grant William Smith

One of the cutest little guys ever just joined our family. He decided to make a quick entrance on his due date... he’s so considerate. I figured, based on my other two deliveries that this one would be fast, and although the doctor wasn’t too concerned about me delivering a baby on the side of the freeway as I was driving myself to the hospital, I was completely freaked out about it. Cameron’s mom Louise sensed my anxiety and came up early to help. Tuesday we found ourselves doing typical running around with the kids, going to the library, park, Mc Donald’s and shopping, around 4:30pm I started noticing contractions, they weren’t painful but they were regular… every 15 minutes, I called Cameron, he came home and we left, during traffic, to go to the hospital. It took about an hour and during that time my contractions stopped. We stopped at the mall and walked around a while. I would have a contraction every once in a while but nothing to write home about. Cameron was exhausted but I was determined that as long as we were down there, without kids we might as well make a date out of it. So we went out to eat. At 8:30pm, during our meal we called Louise to tell her nothing was happening and we were planning to come home. Ten minutes after hanging up I started having contractions again, this time every ten minutes, then 7 minutes, then 5 minutes. So I tried to rush Cameron along to get me to the hospital, he seemed to be dawdling, apparently when you’re not the one having contractions you don’t have the same sense of urgency. We got to the hospital at 9pm after an incident with a wasp, Cameron got stung in the car, the good news is, apparently he’s not allergic, that could have added a bit more excitement to our night…
All the rooms were full so I was taken into triage where I changed into those oh so flattering hospital gowns that open in the back. They checked me, asked me a million and one questions and decided I could stay. We all walked to labor and delivery, which was just down the hall and my water broke gushing everywhere. So gross! I was so grateful I wasn’t walking around the mall at this point. That would have been very embarrassing! It didn’t phase anyone in the hospital. It was brownish which apparently means there was meconium in the fluid… or in other words…the baby already had his first poop. So they called in a few more people to be there when the baby was delivered so they could clean out his air passage ways before he could breath it in and affect his lungs. No big deal because by the time you actually deliver a baby you don’t really care how many people are there. Soon after my water broke the contractions started coming much stronger and much faster.
They took my blood to see if my platelet count was high enough for an epidural. Apparently if your blood platelet count isn’t high enough you could bleed to death…which didn’t sound all that bad at the time. So we waited for the results. Cameron was so good, he did everything he could to make me feel better; I am so blessed to have such a wonderful husband. Finally a nurse came in, said everything was fine and we prepared for the anistgiologest. She came did what she does best and I felt immediate relief. A few minutes later the doctor showed up, checked things out and told the nurses to have me start pushing with the next contraction. I was kind of hoping I could just enjoy the relief of the epidural for a while but I started pushing instead. 4 pushes later Grant was born and he peed all over Dr Cazes. They cleaned his lungs and he’s as healthy as can be.

So that’s probably way more information then you bargained for. We are home now. Louise is taking good care of everyone. Laundry is magically getting cleaned, folded and put away, the house is getting cleaned and meals magically appear. The kids love having both mom and grandma around. Louise goes home this weekend and my mom comes in tonight. I’m sure they will love having her here as well.

Katelyn loves the new baby. She is so helpful and considerate. She wants to bring him toys, blankets, and anything else he could possibly need. She loves smothering him with kisses and holding him on her lap. Dallin seems to like Grant as well but is too busy doing his own thing to really notice this new little guy. When he does notice he enjoys pointing out Grant’s facial features and saying wah wah wah, which is Dallin’s word for baby. Grant is quite the eater. So far he does pretty well at night. We are so grateful to have him in our family