The Story of Croix - Intro

Hi Friends, I have a little someone I want to introduce you to.....

Meet

Croix Glenn Shearer

Croix was born on Sunday, December 27th at 10:26 a.m. He weighed 7 pounds 10 ounces and was 21 1/4" long. Much like my entire pregnancy my labor and delivery was drama free. No joy ride, mind you, but a pretty straight forward experience - thank God!

Photo by Zack Moye Photography

From the moment we found out my due date was December 22nd I prayed/hoped this baby would not be born on Christmas. I'm a freak about dates and birthdays and I really, really wanted our baby to have his own special day. As I mentioned in my Christmas House Tour post we hosted all Christmas festivities at our house this year. Over the course of 5 days we had up to 19 people in our house at any given time.

Christmas Eve...

Photo by Lori Foster

Christmas Day...

Photo by Lori Foster

It was so much fun and just the distraction/excuse my body needed to keep Croix inside for a few more days. The day after Christmas everyone left and Brent and I literally just relaxed all day. It was one of those perfect lazy Saturdays where you stay in your comfy clothes and lay on the couch watching shows. I left the house twice, once to get a mani/pedi and then for dinner at the Mexican Restaurant down the street. Once home from dinner we resumed our lazy day until around 10:00 p.m.  For days I had been experiencing a little cramping, but nothing too bad, that night I noticed the cramping was not just in my lower back, but was moving into my front as well. I'd never had a contraction before so I thought, hmhm.....maybe this is something and began timing the cramps when they came.  Around that time Brent came upstairs and I filled him in on my status, so he joined in on the timing as well. The cramps, or what I now know to be contractions were about 7 minutes apart and Brent suggested I go ahead and get a shower. He suggested this because I told him I was not going to be one of those people who rushes to the hospital prematurely, plus I wanted to try and look half way decent when I met my child so a shower was something I had always planned. What I did not plan was for this whole experience to happen at night. No, my ideal plan was to wake up around 6:00 a.m. take my shower and then head into the hospital around 8:00. I'm definitely more of a morning person and was not all about being up half the night having a baby. Welllllllll, we don't always get what we want do we? While I was in the shower the contractions got stronger, so much so that Brent had to help me dry my hair and that's when we were pretty sure this was it. We ended up heading to the hospital around midnight.

By the time I got into my room for them to check me, I was dilated 5 cm and the contractions were really strong. Life was pretty tough UNTIL my favorite person, the anesthesiologist, came in and gave me my epidural. It's so funny, typically I freak out over getting my finger pricked, but I have literally never been so happy to have someone shove a needle into my spine. Relief came almost immediately, it was awesome. After that, the nurses let Brent and me sleep for awhile, and around 8:00 a.m. they checked me and I was at 10 cm, but I had a slight fever so they had to give me some antibiotics before I could deliver. By 9:30 I was ready to go and by 10:26 Croix was born! The moment was especially exciting because we had no idea if we were having a boy or a girl until the moment he entered the world! The doctors and nurses were all super excited that we didn't know, so there was such a fun energy when the doctor said, "What is it Dad?" and Brent announced...."IT'S A BOY!!" It was so surreal and cool.

Meanwhile our families were in the waiting room anxiously awaiting the news. Brent and I had bought foam light sticks in both blue and pink as a fun way to announce the gender at the hospital. After Croix was born, the nurses were nice enough to let our whole crew come back into the delivery room for the big introduction. Each person got a light stick as they entered the room and on the count of three turned them on to see if they lit up blue or pink. For the past 9 months everyone had their opinions and guesses as to what the baby was, so it was so fun to watch them find out once and for all and as you can see they were all very excited!

**P.S. the God awful fluorescents in the hospital room make the light sticks look pink or purple, but I swear...we had a boy...they were blue!

Life since that day has never been the same. Croix is a good baby and even though it's only been a little over 5 weeks, I feel like he has changed and grown so much! Being responsible for a tiny human who depends on you 100% is a lot of work and it has definitely been a transition, but he is so stinkin' cute and we love him so much. I think we will let him stay...:)

Photo by Zack Moye Photography

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, Luke and Croix became fast friends. 

Unless otherwise noted all photography is my own.