Camden David Tracy

Our little boy is finally here! He was due to come on June 2, but I was really hoping that he would come a bit earlier than that because the girls were early and I was really feeling done with being pregnant! Bubba had to travel from about mid-April until mid-May and then planned to stay in town until the baby arrived, so as soon as he was done traveling, I started climbing up and down stairs, jumping on the trampoline, etc. in order to get things moving! At my doctor's appt. on the 23rd, I was already dilated to almost a 4 and the dr. told me that if I started having any contractions and came to the hospital, they wouldn't send me home so I did a bunch of stairs that night but nothing really happened. The next morning, I woke up and after I'd been up for a while, I realized that I was having contractions about every 3-4 minutes. I had been having a ton though for the last couple of months, so I didn't think too much about it, especially since they didn't hurt but by about 10 am, I realized that they were getting a little more intense and were staying regular no matter what I was doing. We called my mom and she arrived and we went to the hospital around 11. I didn't want to get checked in quite yet so we walked around outside for a while and then finally got checked in around noon. My contractions stayed regular and were about every 2 minutes but still not hurting too bad. During the whole pregnancy, I kind of thought about skipping the epidural, but wasn't 100% decided either way. Since the contractions weren't too bad and I was dilating fairly quickly, I figured I would go for it. I was curious as to what it was like and since we are pretty sure this is our last baby, I figured it was my final chance to experience natural childbirth. My nurse had 5 children naturally and I was really lucky to have her...she was great! Around 4, the contractions started getting pretty painful, but I still felt pretty good about the whole thing and I was already dilated to a 7-8 at that point. Bubba did a great job helping me breathe through the contractions and it honestly was not as bad as I thought it would be at that point. The most annoying part of the whole thing was that my hands/feet/legs/arms were all mostly numb for the last couple of hours before the baby was born....the nurse said it had something to with how I was breathing and I even tried breathing into a bag, but it didn't help at all and it was so annoying! My dr. came in at 5:10 and broke my water and then the contractions were right on top of each other and super painful! About 5 minutes later I felt like I needed to push and sure enough, it was time. At that point, I think I panicked a little bit and I honestly don't really remember much about the next few minutes except that I was screaming and trying to push (and Bubba says I almost bit his hand off) and it was the strangest feeling but luckily I only had to push a few times and Camden arrived at 5:25! The cord was wrapped around his neck but he was fine and they let me hold him right away. I'm not sure that I would do the whole natural birth thing again if I had the chance, but I'm glad I did it and got to have that experience this time around.

Camden David Tracy weighed in at 8 pounds exactly and was 20 inches long at birth....my heaviest baby! His poor face was super bruised and the last of the bruises finally went away a few days ago, so all of the pictures we have of him are pretty bad...the poor baby looks like he was hit in the face with a bat! When the pediatrician saw the bruising they told me that he was more likely to have problems with jaundice because of the bruises, and sure enough, his levels were too high at his 3-day check-up. They gave us the lights to set up at home, which he hated and when we had him tested the next day, his levels had still gone up too high (21) so they told me to go straight to the hospital and set him up with the lights there. We checked in at about 2:00 on Sunday and by the next morning at 10 am, his levels were down to 13 so they let us go home. We continued to get his levels checked for several days after that since they went back up for a few days before finally going back down...the poor baby had to get poked every day for about 2 weeks straight! He is fine now though and the bruising is gone, except for the hemorrhages in his eyes, and the dr. said those may take a few more weeks to disappear. At his 2 week check-up he weighed in at 8 lbs, 2 oz. so he is slightly above his birth weight and doing great!

Camden sleeps great at night...I haven't been up more than once at night with him since we brought him home! He usually does a 5-6 hour stretch and then goes back down for a few more hours after I feed him. He nurses great and is mostly content when he is awake...and so far, he is awake a lot more than my girls were at this age. In the morning, he will stay awake for a couple of hours before taking a nap....none of the girls could stay awake that long until they were several months old...at least!

Having 4 kids is definitely a little bit crazy! Luckily Bubba has been around quite a bit to help...I don't think it would be so bad if Madison didn't want so much attention, but I think she is finally realizing the baby is here to stay and has realized I can't hold her all the time...the last few days have been much better. The other girls think Camden is pretty cute and are so busy playing with each other that they haven't seemed to really care too much...I'm sure that once he starts waking up and becoming more interactive they will be more involved!