A new addition to the family

Wow I can't believe my baby is already almost 4 weeks old. Oh how time flies! For those of you who don't know the story and for journaling purposes I will tell how it all began. Saturday morning November 29th I was going about doing my normal things and I felt like I needed to go to the bathroom literally like every 30 minutes. It was the most frustrating thing, I felt like I lived in the bathroom. This went on all day and I thought it was kind of strange. By the end of the day I was beginning to wonder if my water had broke, though I was not having any contractions. Well I chatted with my mom about it and came to the conclusion that indeed it had broken. Well I am stubborn and decided to wait it out for contractions to start rather than just going in to the hospital. I didn't know if it would be that night or a day or two. That night around 11:30 I felt a couple of contractions but nothing was consistant so I just went to bed. The contractions stopped and then I woke up with a few more around 2:30am but again nothing consistant but I had a feeling it was all beginning. I went back to sleep for about an hour and then I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep. My contractions became very consistant around 4am so I decided to just start getting things ready to go to the hospital so that whenever the time came we could just go. About 5:45am I called my mom to come be with my kids and by 6:20 we were out the door to the hospital. We got to the hospital and I knew I was in labor but of course the nurses have to check it all out just to make sure, because they couldn't tell by the way I would grit my teeth every time I had a contraction (note the sarcasm). They knew right away that my water had broke and the nurse said she was going to go get a room ready, call the doctor and then they would check me in. Well in the mean time I am really wanting to get my epidural so I tell Steve to go let them know I am ready for it at any time. They told him that I had to wait until they had checked me in. In my mind I am thinking "ok that shouldn't take too long, maybe 10 minutes." Well apparently it takes a LOT longer, it was about 40 minutes later before they could move me to the delivery room and then another 20-30 minutes before I was checked in and then another 10 minutes before I could get my epidural. Mean while I feel like I am going to die! By the time I had my epidural it was 10-15 minutes later that they told me I could start pushing. All I can say is that it is a good thing they got me medicated when they did because I definitely didn't want to have that baby without. Oh the torture the women of the past had to go through! Anyway, we welcomed Jack Bryant Gardner into the world on November 30th at 9:01am. (almost 2 weeks early) He weighed in at 7lbs 12 oz and was 19 in long. He has had my heart since that day. He might only eat, sleep and poop but he is the cutest eater, sleeper and pooper I have seen in a long time. I love every second I get to spend with him. Even though I know when he smiles that it is just gas I like to pretend that he is really smiling because he knows me and loves me. Steve, Raleigh and Jett love Jack so much. Raleigh is constantly wanting to hold him and help take care of him and Jett just wants to give him kisses all the time. I wondered what it would be like having a 3rd kid and how the boys would react but so far so good. Hopefully things will continue to be this easy.

I thought this was a cute picture of our sweet little Jack.

Raleigh loves to lay by Jack and snuggle up close to him.