TEAM Hardison: Burton Christopher Hardison

Our second little love is here! Burton Christopher made his surprise appearance on February 7, 2015 at 1:17 PM. He was 7 pounds 7 ounces and 21 inches long... And as precious and wonderful as his sweet big sister. "Meet my kids"... plural, a statement I still can't wrap my head around. We are just so incredibly blessed to have two beautiful, healthy, children. God is so good.

A little back story on Burton's arrival. We were to be induced on February 12. I would have been 39 weeks 2 days pregnant, and with it being my second child, I was ok going in a bit early to get things rolling. I had just finished all of my clinical hours for NP school on the Thursday beforehand (with my OB doc no less)...little did I know it was literally just in time. Friday night M and I were lying in bed discussing all the things we had left to do that weekend before his arrival...the list was not short. We had rented a movie, I was starting to fall asleep and in the process of rolling over when all of a sudden my water broke... I tell M, "I'm pretty sure my water just broke!" and he replies, "are you sure?!". I then get out of bed, and there was no question that indeed this was the real thing. We then had to complete packing our not finished bag, call Mollie and Geoff to come over to stay with Avery, call both sets of parents, before heading into the hospital.

The doctor that works really closely with my beloved doc was on call that night, so I felt good going in that at least I knew him and had a relationship with him having just finished clinical rotations in their office. As soon as he saw me, he laughed and said, "I knew this was going to happen!". M and I both wrongly assumed that since my water had broken on its own, and that I had progressed so quickly with Avery that he was coming and coming quickly. I had no idea that if your water breaks before you are actually having regular contractions that you could go a long time (like 24 hours) before you are in active labor. I had some regular contractions throughout the night, but nothing very consistent... I was bummed at this point because the doctor I knew was going off call at 8AM, and a new doctor I didn't know AT ALL was coming on call the next morning.

8AM they start pitocin to try and speed things up, and from then on I progressed fairly quickly, got my epidural around 10:30 (yay anesthesia!), and we were ready to push around 1PM. I had been texting my doctor's nurse that I had been working with all semester in clinical. But once my contractions got stronger I forgot to update her. M kept texting back and forth with her and little did I know, but she was texting my doctor keeping him in the loop as well. When my L&D nurse (who was AMAZING) came in to tell me we were about ready to push, I got panicked because I hadn't even met the doctor on call! Next thing I know, my doctor comes strolling in, and I was about in tears. Sweetest man on the planet, came in just to deliver Burton... I will forever be grateful to him. His nurse later told me that he called her afterwards all excited saying, "he's here! he's here!", and told her that it had made his day being able to come in to take care of the baby and me. I would have 5 more babies just to be able to see that man on a weekly basis ;)

Thanks to both sets of parents for driving down to Birmingham in the middle of the night, Geoff and Mollie for staying at our place until 2:30 in the morning waiting on mom and dad, to my parents for taking care of Aves while we were in the hospital, Jonathan and Kristen for watching Aves the day we had Burton so that my parents could be up at the hospital. Also, to my siblings and Randal for driving down and sleeping packed in our little house like sardines!

Enjoy the multitude of photos from our stay in the hospital.