Keaton McKay Larson, The Full Story

Wow! So here's the whole story on our newest arrival. A few weeks ago I started having contractions (I've actually had them for a few months, they just got more frequent AND painful over the past few weeks). A week ago Monday I went in and had a normal check-up where I told the doctor of my contractions, but he checked me and everything was normal. As I said in my last entry about my bedrest, I went back in on thursday of that week because the contractions were getting so incredibly painful that I was spending most of my days on the couch crying. He gave me a medication to stop the contractions, I was dialated to a 1 and 60% efaced, so I went on bedrest. The medication DID stop the contractions for the first day, and Friday night I started to feel them again. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning on Saturday feeling them very strong, frequent. I took an extra dose of the medication, as ordered by the doctor if I were to feel the contractions come on strong again. I laid in bed for 2 hours feeling the contractions and then I said a prayer that I would know if I should take the contractions seriously and go in to get checked, or to let it go until my appointment on Monday. At 7:30 my kids came in and I went to the bathroom. I was bleeding. Cortney and I rushed the kids to my in-laws and we went to the hospital. When we got there, I was dialated to a 4, and still thinning. The gave me triple the dose of the medication to stop the contractions and gave me steroids to help develop the babies lungs if he were to be born. The contractions slowed, and I stopped dialating for a while, but I was still thinning. I continued contracting about once every hour, then they started to pick up, even though they were continuing to up the medication to stop the labor. They ended up giving me three different types of medication to stop the labor, but I eventually was dialated to a 9 and 100% efaced. At about 3:30 a.m. Sunday morning, they told me that we had tried everything and the baby was coming, they gave me an ephidural (I know I probably mis-spelled it!), and at 4:50 a.m., Keaton McKay was born weighing 3 pounds, 8 ounces, 16 inches long. When he came out, I got to see him for about a minute (not hold him). The nurses kept commenting that he was a wiggly little guy and looked really good. They took him away to the NICU and they worked on me to deliver the placenta (sorry, I know this is gross to read about), but I have learned that this baby was early for similar reasons Brayden was. My placenta was tearing away and I had blood clots in with it, which caused the bleeding and caused the tearing. So my need to explain it is because when I learned about this, as I did with Brayden, I had complete confrmation from the Lord that this baby needed to come out when he did. He could not have survived once the placenta detached completely. We are so lucky to have him be born so nice and healthy!!

So now, as I am slowly recovering from birth, I am feeling better every day with the help of our friends and family!! Keaton is doing amazingly well. He is on a very low setting of oxygen and is taking breat milk through a tube. He is showing all the signs of progression and they believe he will be off oxygen within a few days. He is so amazing! He reminds me of myself! (mostly because of his coloring) YEAH! The 3rd boy and I feel a little bit of "finally, all that work having a baby and he actually does look like me!" So we shall see as he gets older who he really looks like.

I cannot express how grateful I am to all the help, love and support we have recieved. I would not be able to spend so much time with Keaton in the NICU if it weren't for the help we are recieving from everyone. We have meals being brought in every night as well, and that has been SOOOO nice!! Thank you so much to everyone. We feel the prayers from everyone and know that our little Keaton is doing so well because of them.

I will not be able to blog as much as I would like to, but I will keep you all updated as often as I can. We love you all!!! Love, Elizabeth, Cortney, Kyler, Brayden and Keaton.