Bradley Brooks Rickett is here!!!

Bradley was supposed to be a scheduled c section on January 5. Plenty of time to organize all the baby stuff, decorate his room, take care of Christmas, Cole's bday party and hopefully catch up on sleep.  Apparently, God had a better plan. 

On December 4 I was up wrapping Christmas gifts and Ryan was still at the office (it was around 930).  I'm walking back to wrapping central (aka, the dining room table) and suddenly my water breaks!  I immediately call the doctor's office and they said I should head on in.  I call Ryan and tell him he should probably head home, we have a baby on the way.  At some point Cole gets out of bed and makes his own assumptions about what is going on, when Ryan walks in the door Cole boldly tells him "Mom peed in my closet". Hmm, we can straighten that out later.  My parents and sister meet us at the hospital and about this time it is 1030ish.  Because of ebola, we had to go to the er, then we get to go to prenatal triage, meet with a nurse, fill out some paperwork and get hooked up to machines.  At about 11, they come in and tell me we will head to the operating room at midnight, yikes!  Just two hours ago I was thinking of going to bed and suddenly we will become a family of 4, it was very overwhelming!

Bradley Brooks was born at 12:18 am and was 6 lbs 3 oz and 19 in.  When he was first born I could not believe how much he looked like Cole!  Before we went in there they told us there were three options about where Bradley would go: 1)back to my room with me and Ryan, 2)the nicu, or 3) a transition area where they take some more time assessing him before determining if he can go with me or if he needs to go to the nicu.

After a short while they decided he needed to go to the transition area.  After about an hour and a half there they decided he needed to be moved to the nicu.  His lungs weren't developed enough and he was lacking the surfactant necessary that would prevent his lungs from sticking to themselves when he tried to inhale.  This was causing him to take very rapid, shallow breaths and he was basically wearing himself out. It was devastating going back to my room without a baby and knowing that we were powerless to help our baby.

We were very fortunate because even though Bradley's breathing rate was too high, his oxygen levels, heart rate and blood pressure were where they needed to be. It was very shocking to learn that we really shouldn't do anything to overstimulate him, like talk to him, spend time loving on him, all the things you would normally do with a new baby.  Add to that we had 4 monitors on his body, an iv in his tiny little hand, a feeding tube (which wasn't initially being used) and a cpap machine pumping air in his lungs (to help keep them open), December 5 was a very sobering day.

Bradley was quite the little fighter!  They initially told us we could be there til his due date, then it was a couple weeks, then a week and a half and shocker, we came home at 6 days! Just in time to come home for Cole's 3rd birthday!

We had several wonderful doctors and nurses that really did a wonderful job explaining everything to us (even multiple times, and I'm still not sure if we got it all right:)) and reassuring us. We were so blessed to be in and out and there are so many babies in there who have been in the nicu for several weeks and will be for the foreseeable future. There is nothing that makes you realize your blessing like spending the night in the nicu and hearing constant beeping, an occasional baby cry and alarms going off.

We have been home a little over two weeks and we are adjusting to having as many children as adults. Cole is absolutely smitten with his baby :). I cannot believe how many times I have said Cole instead of Bradley, whoops! Life is good!