Introducing Baby Luke

OK - so the kid's over a week old and I'm just getting to putting this up...a little window in to how I'm coping with 4 kids...YIKES! Actually, it's not that bad, especially with my mom here to help out. The true test will be what happens when she leaves! Anyway...

Luke is here! My contractions started getting regular the afternoon of the Wed. the 29th. By dinner they were 5-8 minutes apart and by 9 or 10 pm they were 3-5 mins. apart. Luckily Wade was back in town at this point (he was in Minneapolis until Tuesday night), but my mom wasn't coming until the 1st. OOPS! Didn't think it was going to happen quite this early! So we called our good friends the Rasmussen's who came to our rescue and watched the kids for us (THANK YOU!!!) and Wade and I headed to the hospital about 11.

I was only dilated to a 2 when we got to the hospital, so they decided to wait to admit me to make sure I made some progress over the next hour. By 1:00 am I was a solid 3 - so they admitted me and started up the IVs. The epidural came at 3:00 am and then I pretty much slept until my doctor showed up to break my water at 6:00 am. At this point I was still only a 5, but when they checked again at 7:00, we were ready to go! By the time they got everything set up it was about 7:20 and I started into the pushing phase and at 8:08 little man made his appearance! So here's the stats....

Luke John Allen

Born July 30, 2009 at 8:08 am

7 pounds 3 ounces

20 inches long

Wade picked up the rest of the crew for a visit around lunchtime - which was complete and total chaos - but fun to see even Noah excited about the new little brother...

I had REALLY hoped to go home on Friday (I HATE being at the hospital), but there was a little hiccup in that plan. Turns out little man has a heart murmur, which meant an echo cardiogram to find out why. We found that Luke has a Ventricular Septal Defect, which means there is a 5mm hole in the wall separating his left and right ventricles. Luckily, Luke is asymptomatic, which means the defect is not immediately life threatening. Many of these defects eventually close on their own, but some have to be surgically repaired. Luke's VSD is fairly large, so it will be a wait and see situation. We meet with a cardiologist when he's one month old for another echo. At that point we'll be able to see if anything has changed and make a plan for going forward. Chances are that as long as the hole isn't getting bigger and Luke continues to be asymptomatic, we'll just continue to monitor it and hope it closes on it's own eventually. At some point though, if it doesn't close, I'm guessing we'll have to go in and patch it. From what I've read so far, this can be done without open heart surgery. Here's a link with a little more detail if you're interested: http://www.childrenshospital.org/az/Site500/mainpageS500P0.html

Anyway, despite the setback, we were able to come home Saturday afternoon with instructions to keep an eye on his feedings (some infants with this defect will get too tired to eat enough) and to watch for signs of respiratory distress (poor color, sweating). So far, so good! He's eating well and gaining weight and seems perfectly healthy and happy! Here are a "few" more pictures of Luke at home...