2 Weeks old already!

Hi all!

As most of you already know... little Ethan David Ackerman graced us with his presence on August 20th (his daddy's birthday) at 10:13am. He weighed in at 8lbs 4oz and was 21.5 inches long.

We're both doing well and loving spending time together :) I must say that I'm quite smitten ;)

The procedure when well... it was a very surreal (I know I use that term a lot but it was) and interesting experience. It only took about an hour. I didn't feel any pain, but I did feel everything else... i.e. pressure, tugging, pulling, 'things' moving around... yeah it was weird. Overall I did well. I only had one issue... I kinda had a slight panic attack because I couldn't feel myself breathe (since I was numb from my chest down)... so though I was breathing fine my brain thought I wasn't so yeah that was fun... but they gave me something to calm me down and we were smooth sailing from there :) Dave wasn't able to join me in the O.R. until I was prepped and set to start so he didn't witness the spinal or anything. Once Dave was in there I'd say it only took them about 15 min. for 'baby time' to arrive as our Doctor put it... Dave got to look over the curtain and announce what we had so that was really cool. Dave looked down at me and said "Little Ethan David is here" ... :) ... Once they pulled Ethan out he came into the world peeing all over the place apparently... all the way across the room to the warmer lol. That was when I finally got to see him across the room. My first thought was ... "Whoa... he's huge... no wonder I was so uncomfortable" ... and then, maybe because of the drugs they had running through me, it took me a little bit for it to hit me that he was our baby... very surreal. The closing up process took the longest. I had to lay there while Dave got to go over and be with him.. not fair lol.

So then from there we went into recovery where they waited for my spinal to wear off and make sure that Ethan and I were doing okay. That's where I finally got to hold him, he got his first bath, and him and I and Dave got to bond as a family for the first time. We were then moved to our mom/baby room where we spent the next 4 days.

We had many visitors while we were in the hospital and we were released to go home the following Monday mid morning. Since then I've been healing pretty well. I've been quite mobile from the beginning so I'm thankful for that.

So today marks 2 weeks since our little man was born. We love him so much! Every day is a learning experience... and I'm proud to say that I haven't had any freak out moments yet. Everything seems to be going well (knock on wood) ...

We're so thankful to all of our family and friends for coming and bringing us food, the prayers and for visiting. We're truly blessed :)