I was due November 23rd. This pregnancy kicked my butt! I was sick and uncomfortable the entire time. No, uncomfortable is too light of a word, I was in straight up pain every single day. Getting off the couch to get Palmer a drink was enough to almost make me want to cry. Needless to say I was begging my doctor to induce me as early as he felt comfortable doing it.
We had my inducement date set for November 17th or 19th (already can't remember for sure). Everything seemed to be progressing well. Just like with Palmer I was measuring way behind but the baby always seemed to be growing as he should so Dr. Jones never acted concerned.
I went in for a regular checkup on November 12th. Dr. Jones measured me and I was measuring around 30 weeks which wasn't surprising to me, but he acted surprised and maybe a little concerned. When he put the thing on my belly to check the baby's heartbeat it was slower than Dr. Jones wanted to hear. He said it wasn't scary slow, but definitely on the low end of normal and definitely slower than it had been before. He told us we might need to get the baby out sooner than planned. I wanted the baby to cook as long as he needed but I'll be honest, I was ok with getting him out earlier than planned. Oh also, when Dr. Jones checked me I was dilated to a three with a "very favorable cervix" and the baby was low he said. He stripped my membranes and said there was a good chance I'd go into labor that night even without getting induced. He had the nurse hook me up to a monitor and called in the ultrasound tech to check fluid levels. His heartbeat stayed on the slow side and the fluid levels were low too. Dr. Jones said it was our call. He said the baby would probably be just fine to wait until the next week and if that's what we wanted to do he would feel ok about it. But he said his feeling was that the baby would be fine to come early and it is usually better to be safe than sorry. With that info there was no way I was going to go home and stress for the next week about whether or not my baby was ok. So he told us to head home and get our bags and get Palmer taken care of and head back to the hospital whenever we were ready. Oh man was I ready!
We got our stuff and made a couple of calls. Palmer was happily playing at my parents' house. We gave her loves and tried to get her excited about getting a baby brother. It was hard saying bye to her knowing how much her world was about to change.
We got admitted and settled at the hospital by about 5:30. My mom's birthday is the 13th so I thought it would be cool if the baby waited until after midnight to come. He definitely waited. The nurse checked me and I had progressed to a four, so I think the baby was ready to come even if I hadn't been induced. They got me all hooked up with monitors and IVs and such pretty quickly. They got the pit going and asked how soon I wanted the epidural. I said I wanted it sooner than later. I didn't want to be a hero :) I just wanted to have a pleasant, easy and quick delivery like I'd had with Palmer. The contractions started to get stronger with the pit. The anesthesiologists showed up semi quickly. The anesthesiologist's daughter was with him and was in school to become one herself. She explained that she was three weeks from graduating and that she'd done a month long internship somewhere up north (as if that's supposed to make me feel as confident in her abilities compared to her dad that had been doing it for years!). She told me that it was my choice though, and that I could have her dad place the epidural and that would be fine. I felt awkward and wasn't sure what to do. Luckily I didn't actually have to make a decision cause she just came over and started doing it a minute later. Let's just say it didn't go quite as smoothly as my last epidural experience with Palmer. She had trouble getting it in and kept saying it was because I was so small...seems like that might make it easier, but I'm no anesthesiologist. Finally her dad came over to coach her (he'd been across the room talking to a nurse the whole time). With his guidance they finally got it in place. I don't do well with needles and it's kind of shocking to me that I wasn't freaking out at this point. I quickly started to feel my right thigh going numb so it seemed as if the epidural was successful and would spread quickly...not so much. I never did feel any numbness on my left side and I didn't feel much on the right, other than my right thigh. I kept changing positions hoping it would spread. I had one spot in my abdomen that didn't initially take with Palmer so I thought it was going to be like that. It wasn't. The contractions had gotten stronger and stronger and I was really feeling them. The nurse felt bad for me but didn't seen too concerned about the fact that my epidural wasn't doing its job. My blood pressure kept dropping so they were dosing me up with some meds to help with that and making me wear an oxygen mask. I started getting stressed that they would have to take the baby c-section because of my vitals and the fact that I wasn't really progressing. The nurse assured me that we weren't anywhere near needing a c-section. The baby's heartbeat was staying strong. Every time the nurse or doc checked me I seemed to be at a six...for hours. Around 1:30 a.m. they called the anesthesiologists back in to see if they could do anything about my ineffective epidural. All they did was up the dose, which made no noticeable difference to me. They said they could take it out and put it in again and that might help, but they didn't think it would. I was still a little traumatized from the first attempt so I opted to not try again. They left and I tried to survive the contractions as it was. Taylor slept off and on through the night. I may have slept or passed out a couple of times between contractions but mostly I was just miserable and felt like it would never end.
I kept staying around a 6/7. A little after 4:00 a.m. Dr. Jones decided maybe they needed to break my water because that might be what was keeping the baby from dropping lower and keeping me from dilating more. He hadn't broken my water prior to this because my fluid was low and he didn't want to break it sooner than necessary. After breaking my water things got real. I started feeling like the baby was right there ready to come out and I felt such a need to push. I still wasn't at a 10 but I was getting there much faster now. By about 5:15 I was finally ready to push. Dr. Jones and the nurses got themselves and everything ready and I tried my hardest not to push yet. Before this experience I thought that the actual delivery would be the worst/scariest part of L&D without an epidural or with an ineffective one. But at this point I was so so ready to be done with contractions that I wasn't the least bit scared about pushing. Luckily it was fast and easy. I pushed through two contractions and he delivered pretty easily. I felt the whole thing but I would do that ten times over before dealing with those contractions again.
Brock Edward Harrison was born at 5:34 a.m. on November 13 (my mom's birthday). He was 6 pounds 1 ounce and 19.5 inches long. I got to hold him immediately, gucky and all. The emotion I felt when they handed him to me was indescribable. It was different than with Palmer and I'm not sure if that was because I already knew what it was like to add a perfect little human to our family, or if it was because of my long night of miserable labor coming to an end, or if it was because this was my little boy, but I do know I was much more emotional holding him than I had been with Palmer. The instant love was the same as it had been for Palmer. Man, he was cute!
I kind of wanted to go home the same day I had Brock but the nurses talked me into staying a night. So we hung out at the hospital all day while friends and family came to visit. Camryn had stayed at our house with Palmer the night before. My parents and Blanding siblings (and Palmer) came to visit pretty quickly after he was born and of course they all fell in love with the little man. Taylor's parents had driven down in the middle of the night so they got to meet Brock on his birthday morning too. Palmer had a rough time that day coming and going from the hospital. She did not want to leave me there. And she was extra tired. I shed tears every time I had to say bye to her as she would leave the hospital. But we all survived. She still talks about when I was in the hospital and I had to stay and she had to leave. That night the hospital served us a super delicious steak dinner. Other than the epidural not working, everything else with the hospital experience was great.
This little boy has stolen our hearts from the second we met him. He is such a sweet little spirit. I didn't think he looked much like Palmer in the beginning, but I think he's looking more and more like her as time goes on. 
Brock spent the first weeks of his life sleeping, eating and pooping. Within a few weeks though I was able to tell that his tummy wasn't very happy. I could feel it and hear it grumbling almost all the time and he seemed to be more and more uncomfortable. I took him to a pediatrician and he said there was definitely something going on more than just the usual gas but that it's just a guessing game to figure out what it is in such a tiny person. He had me try a medicine for GERD which didn't seem to do anything. Then they had me try a smooth muscle relaxant medication, which also didn't do anything. In the meantime I had completely cut dairy out of my diet. Some days it seemed like that might be helping a little, but overall he just seemed to be getting worse and worse, sleeping less and in more pain and discomfort each day. So I cut the other top allergens out of my diet. This included wheat, soy, nuts, eggs, dairy and fish. That was HARD! I was hungry every second of every day. I ate so much chicken and rice during the couple of months I was on this diet. I did not want to stop nursing. I love love love nursing, and it's just a bonus that there's so many health benefits for the baby from breastfeeding. Anyway, long story short, it took a lot of trial and error and a lot of setbacks, but I can say with confidence that he definitely has problems when I eat anything with wheat in it. It seems that he may have a problem with eggs, tree nuts and bananas so I've been avoiding them to be safe. I hope to keep figuring it out better as time goes on, and really hoping for his sake that he grows out of any food allergies he has.
He is the sweetest little guy, but he is a horrible horrible sleeper. I would say he spends at least 90% of his sleeping time in my arms because he will not stay asleep outside of my arms. I know I've got to teach him to do it and I truly have been trying, but it's rough. He's still waking up a bunch at night. He's getting better and better at eating and falling right back to sleep though, so at least there's that. I never intended to co-sleep, and even thought I was a little opposed to it (for myself, not in general), but he straight up sleeps with me all night. It started because I knew his tummy was upset and he was always so obviously uncomfortable that I justified keeping him in my arms to comfort him, and now here we are four months later with very bad sleep habits. I'm way too tired to take on sleep training so I just keep doing it, knowing it's going to be harder and harder to reverse. But secretly I do love holding him and I hate the idea of not having him with me all night long. We've always done so good to keep Palmer from sleeping in our bed. Oh well, remind me to never judge another mom for anything because in the last four months I've been the exact opposite of a mom to both of my kids than I ever thought I would be. Since I wrote this we have tried some sleep training methods. Today is March 29. This past week I had the worst four days of my life trying to let him cry it out. We started on Monday and I threw in the towel in the middle of the night Thursday. He had made zero progress and had cried SO much! I would rather hold him for the next three years of his life than to hear that crying and his sad hoarse voice ever again.
Brock gave us his first real smile on the day he turned five weeks old and it was directed at Palmer. He was pretty stingey (sp?) with smiles for awhile, but he's getting more and more smiley and makes the cutest little happy squeals. He smiles the most for me, but he also gives them pretty freely for Taylor, Palmer and Kristi. He really likes Kristi. He loves my parents and Livvy a lot too.
He may be teething already. Kristi and I both think we can feel one coming in on the bottom and he's got other signs that point to teething - drooling like CRAZY, chewing hard on everything and extra fussy. We shall see. So, since I was last working on this post he definitely had a bottom tooth break through the gums, but it went back down the next day and now there is zero sign of any tooth. Taylor saw it and felt it too, so I'm not just losing my mind. He can wait to teethe for lots more months as far as I'm concerned.
4 month stats from 3/20/15 - 13 lbs 3.5 oz and 25 inches long. His doctor was impressed that he has more than doubled his weight 😊
He doesn't spend enough time out of my arms to learn all the tricks he should be learning, but I'm getting better about putting him down and he's getting happier and happier to play in his swing or on the floor. He's very close to rolling over and he's pretty strong and will be sitting up in no time. 
Half roll
We tried rice cereal for the first time yesterday. He didn't love it and I'm not sure if he actually swallowed any at all. He did throw up after a few bites. We'll try again in a week or so.
Oh how we love this boy. I can't wait to keep seeing more of his personality. He and Palmer already seem to be developing a sweet little bond. She is obsessed with him and he always perks up when he hears or sees her. I have to ask her to be extra quiet when he eats cause if he's eating and hears her voice he just wants to see what she's up to and can't focus on eating. I sure love these kiddos of mine and I'm so so humbled and grateful that they were sent to our family.
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