Bryson Allen is Here!!!

We would love to announce that our little man has finally arrived! He was born on March 25th at 7:48 pm weighing in at a whopping 5 lb 15 oz. and was 18.5 inches long. He is truly a miracle and we are extremely thankful that he is here and healthy!


Unfortunately we ended up having an emergency C-section due to what is called a prolapsed cord. According to my doctor and all the information I have read since, this is extremely rare (1 in 300 births), which makes it a .003333% chance that this can happen to anyone...NOT EVEN A 1 % chance!!! How lucky were we?!?! This reminds me of a close friend of mine who had kidney stones really bad in high school and she ended up being in a 1% category of the chance that they would come back once they got rid of them (you know who you are!). She came to school the next day saying sarcastically "Cool, I am in the 1 % chance!" and we laughed it off...that's how I feel about Bryson's birth. I just have to think positive and be thankful that he is with us and hope that next time (I will need a few years) I can have a VBACK. Honestly, I feel like I got robbed of the whole birthing experience and it's hard not to think about the 'what if's' if we didn't have the best doctor in the world!


Here is the story (I will try to make this short and sweet): We went to the hospital with contractions at around 4:30 that day and the nurses didn't believe me when I said we were in labor. So they hook me up to find out that in deed I was and that the doctor would be coming after his day at the office. So Dr. Gayle gets there around 6:30 or so and said that I was progressing nicely and that we should go ahead and break my water. This totally freaked me out because we weren't there for very long! So he did and I couldn't believe how much amniotic fluid I had...I flooded the doctor right off the bed! TMI for some of you! The contractions started getting stronger but nothing I couldn't handle, so I didn't ask for an epidural yet. Within 15-20 of the doctor leaving, the nurses started coming in and I could tell something wasn't right. They told me to turn over because the baby's heart beat was dropping and when they checked me, they were shocked at what they felt. One of Bryson's arms had come through and they were shaking his hand. She tried to put it back in when it got critical...she felt the umbilical cord too! She started ordering Cory to take everything off of me and wheel us out of the room to the OR. She was ordering him to do this because she was on top of me on the bed holding pushing him (nice visual right!?!) up so that with every strong contraction the cord wouldn't get cut off of oxygen. Cory was white at this point because we both didn't know what was going on and he was watching his whole life be wheeled away without him.


We get to the OR and it seemed like the whole Labor and Delivery staff was in the room too. They had to bend the bed all the way back (I was practically falling off) to get Bryson to move back up. I heard everything that night...I could tell that the nurses were starting to panic and that they had called the doctor and anesthesiologist. Dr. Gayle was at church down the road, so he was on his way and the anesthesiologist at the hospital was caring for someone else at the same time, so they had to call another one that lived about 10 min. away. The nurses were yelling that they couldn't find the baby's pulse and that he needed to come out immediately. At t his point, I am trying to remain calm and breath as deeply as possible to try to get oxygen to the baby. The doctor finally gets there but no anesthesiologist! I could tell in his voice that it was getting extremely critical and that they needed to get him out immediately, so he ordered for the tray of locals. I told him to just do it and get him out! Right before he was about to shoot up my stomach the anesthesiologist walks in, slaps the mask on and within 2 minutes Bryson was out! He was not breathing and was blue. Within seconds they were able to get him breathing and was rushed to the NICU. According to Dr. Gayle, all the nurses started to cry when they heard him cry. I am so thankful to all of these people!!


I remember waking up to Cory, my sister, mom and 2 of my closest friends all of which looked teary-eyed. They had just talked to the doctor about the details and were all hoping that I wouldn't remember everything...Ha, yeah right! They told me that the baby was fine but that I couldn't see him until the morning. Come to find out later, he almost didn't make it and that the window of him either not surviving or having brain damage was between 1 to 5 minutes. This crushed me, especially since I couldn't see or hold him! My loving husband was able to go into the NICU and film him so that I could see Bryson for the first time. This was definitely NOT my idea of what labor and delivery was going to be like. I had imagined hanging out with friends and family until it was time to push and then being able to see my little man for the first time as he entered this world. It is amazing just how precious life is and that having children is definitely a miracle.


Here are some pics of our tough little guy:

Finally I was able to hold him!

His take-home outfit that was WAY too big!

We couldn't wait to take him home! Look, the buckle is almost bigger than he is.

A proud Pop with his first grandson...finally one with a 'stem'!

A proud Mimi!

Cory loves to read to him!

Happy Easter! Thanks Kiki for the basket!