Stetson Drew

When Austin and I got married, we hadn’t really settled the “how many kids are we going to have” argument. I always said we would have five and he said maybe two. At one point he was willing to have three. After almost 10 years of marriage, I think we’ve finally settled the argument.

Friday, February 10th we welcomed number five into the family. His conception was a bit of a surprise after our friends’ wedding weekend. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I think at this point Austin isn’t even surprised when I show him the positive tests. I don’t think anyone in our lives is surprised by that kind of news from us either.

The beginning of the pregnancy was tough on me. It was summer and heat made me feel so light headed and dizzy. I had to give up on my garden and any plans of working in our yard until it cooled down and I got through the first trimester. We knew from the beginning that this would be our last baby so we decided that we would be surprised to find out the gender until he was born. Well, that didn’t last long because Austin couldn’t take it and he looked. I knew if he knew what we were having that he would eventually slip and tell me or someone else. I looked too and then I cried a little bit. Don’t get me wrong, I love having boys but Ellie wanted a sister so badly and I had started thinking about all of the tiny pink things that come with having girls. I know that God is giving us exactly what we need and we are so excited to see what the future has in store for us.

The second trimester was pretty good to me aside from some heart rate issues and overall fatigue. By the time we got to the third trimester, we were praying that time would slow down so we could finish some projects before we brought home a new baby. Austin was working hard to get the basement bedrooms finished so we could get Addie (my cousin) moved in and get Ellie into her new room. We got Addie moved into her room and are putting finishing touches on Ellie’s room before she moves down there.

In the last few weeks before Stetson was born, the kids kept us on our toes. Austin spent most of January traveling so he could spend a few weeks at home before and after the delivery. Orwell got sick one of the weeks that Austin was gone and he didn’t stop throwing up for twelve days. Vomitting was the only symptom he had and we couldn’t get his pediatrician to give us any kind of assistance in finding out what was wrong. Needless to say, we have a new pediatrician now and we eventually found out that he had impacted stool in his intestines that was causing him all kinds of issues. It felt like Wells was trying to mark his territory before he promoted from being the baby in the family. I cleaned so much puke off of so many things. I cried both times he threw up in his car seat and seriously considered throwing it away and buying a new one.

After we found out what was causing Wells to be sick, it seemed to resolve itself and he started to perk up just in time for us to have this baby. All of the other kids had been counting down the days and asking us for weeks when he was going to be born. I had to take Emery to my very last doctors appointment and he made things very interesting. “I peed in the potty, mom. Where did you pee? In a cup?”

The night before we had Stetson, I had started having painful contractions but they weren’t consistent through the night so I got as much rest as I could and decided we would head to the hospital in the morning. When everyone else finally woke up, we called my mom and Jill and slowly started getting ready to head to the hospital. Grandma and Bonus Grandma got the kids up and going for the day while Austin and I loaded the car and got ourselves ready to go.

When we got to Kansas City, we decided to go walk at the mall and have lunch before we checked into the hospital. Austin took some work calls and we did some laps around the mall. We got to the hospital after lunch and started getting settled in. When I got there and my midwife checked me, she said I was 5.5cm and was ready to get into a room to labor down. We spent the next seven hours hanging out in our room while I bounced on the exercise ball and paced the room. Austin paced the room most of the day and I was thankful that he happened to have his “fidget toy” in his pocket to keep him occupied.

Contractions still weren’t consistent and strong so I did as much moving around as I was comfortable doing. Poor Austin was starting to get a little stir crazy by the evening. At about 9:30 the midwife asked me if I wanted checked again and told me I was only about 6cm. We had a few options at that point. We could keep hanging out and waiting for things to speed up, we could start some pitocin, or we could break my water. None of those were exciting options but after weighing our options, I decided to have her break my water. It wasn’t what I originally wanted and I could have continued to labor and given my body all of the time that it needed but I was tired and I felt like breaking my water was the best way to keep things moving. As soon as my midwife broke my water, contractions became stronger and really close together. I kept moving around to let gravity keep doing it’s job. After about two hours I was ready to change position again and knew that we were REALLY close to having a baby. The bottom of my bed was lowered so I got up onto my knees there and had my arms around Austin’s neck while he stood at the bottom of the bed. As soon as I got into that position, I had one big contraction and I said “he’s coming.” Austin took it as a general statement and didn’t take me very seriously. I said it again, a little louder and he just kept standing there. I finally grabbed my hospital gown out of the way and reached down and caught Stetson’s head. Austin finally realized that I was serious and he caught the rest of him. Austin says “I just looked down and saw the tops of his ears so I reached down there and caught him.” It was so fast and all happened in one contraction. My mom had run to the door to get the nurse and midwife but Austin and I were already holding our baby when they got in the room and put gloves on. He was born while the song Something to Hold Onto by The Turnpike Troubadours was playing. At least that’s what Austin told me later. Boy, did I give him something to hold on to!

Our midwife looked at us and said “you did it.” Unfortunately, Austin had been wearing the camera around his neck so we didn’t get any pictures of him delivering Stetson. I also made the mistake of switching my camera to Auto mode to make it easier for Austin and my mom to take pictures so a lot of them didn’t turn out very well. 👎🏼

Our kids were so excited to meet him and get him home for good. He has been such a great baby and is spoiled rotten by everyone. I’m slowly coming to peace with the fact that this is my last baby. It’s been a bittersweet thing. I’m soaking up all of the lasts but also getting excited about getting rid of all of the obnoxious baby furniture and accessories in the near future.

Through all of our pregnancies we’ve kept an ongoing list of baby names. Interestingly, the last two kids have been names that we heard/made up while we were pregnant with that child. With Stetson we had our list narrowed down to just a few possibilities and I asked Austin one day if he liked the name Stetson. It wasn’t on our list and he immediately said that he liked it. That never happens so I felt like it was a strong contender. We added it to the list and it was the one name we kept coming back to. It took awhile longer to decide on his middle name. Each of our kids have middle names that are family names. The name that I kept coming back to was Drew after one of our great friends. You know, the 3am kind of friend. The friend that you could call at 3am in an emergency and they’d drop everything to help. That’s Drew and Hailey! Drew has shown up over and over again for us in any way he could. Even when he was a single guy and we were a family of 6, he would call us to hang out knowing we would be bringing all of the kids with us. He’s a friend that volunteers to carry kids and push strollers when we do things together. The kids know him as uncle Drew and we are so very thankful for his friendship.

We are finding our new normal with one new kid and I think I’m finally used to counting to 5 every time we take our headcount. All of our kids love having a new baby in the house and fight over him a lot. Austin insists that he’s going to schedule his vasectomy soon so we will see if that happens.