Since I obviously have lots of catching up to do, I'm going to take you back to the Friday before Henry's birth. The short version of the back story is that after my diagnosis, the doctors knew they wanted to deliver Henry early. The goal was to wait until 37 weeks, but we needed to be sure his lungs were ready for the outside world. Therefore, they performed an amniocentisis (loads of fun, by the way) and determined his lungs were immature. The solution was to give me shots of steroids to give his lungs the boost they needed. So, I arrive at the hospital on Friday the 17th for my second round of injections. I had done this the day before, so I pretty much knew the drill. Now keep in mind that at this point I had been through about five doctor's appointments in the last week which meant pelvic exams, cervical checks, sonograms, non-stress tests...the works. Being "examined", in all of its many forms, was quickly becoming no big deal.
So the nurse tells me to go ahead and lay on my side on the table because she is going to give me the shot in a pocket right above my butt. While I positioned myself, she left to get the needle. I proceed to go ahead and drop my pants, heave myself onto the table (I'm 36 weeks, 6 days, remember?) and lay on my side so that I'm facing away from the door. I waited a few minutes, chatting with my mom (who drove me to the hospital), and somewhat dreading the painful infection. Next thing I know, I hear the nurse return and say, "Oh, honey, you're a little exposed here. You could have waited until I got back." I turn my head to see that not only was the door to my hospital room wide open, the curtain was definitely wide open as well. Nice.
It's hard to believe that our sweet Henry is one month old today! I am obviously soooo far behind on blogging, but I'll try to catch you up to speed little by little. As most of you know, Henry surprised us with an early arrival. At 36 weeks I was diagnosed with a rare condition called cholestasis of pregnancy. In a nutshell, this meant that my liver wasn't quite keeping up and the baby would need to be delivered at 37 weeks. After several trips to Des Moines with the expectation we would be induced, we ended up finally being admitted to the hospital on December 18. After about 12-13 hours of labor, my body just wasn't getting into gear and labor was not progressing. I was having lots of contractions but nothing was changing. We decided to have a c-section and Henry was born on December 19 at 4:25 in the afternoon. He is such a good baby -- great eater, great sleeper, great personality, and cute as a button. 
