Introducing Zachary Braden Molyneux

So I'm about 18 days late blogging about the birth of our sweet baby, Zachary Braden Molyneux. But I have been trying to collect all the photos taken and post about it. I've also been trying to survive having three children and taking care of a newborn. I haven't had much time to myself to blog these days. If you are interested in reading about the birth story, here it is. Otherwise, you can just glance of the pictures.

With my older kids, I was able to go into labor myself and reported to the hospital when the contractions came. This time we were fortunate to plan the event since Logan's mom flew in right before my due date. She arrived on Halloween, Oct. 31 and we attended Leah's school Halloween party and helped her and her friends make a cute craft. That night Logan and his mom took the kids trick or treating around the neighborhood, and I sat and waited to hand out candy. It was my last night to be pregnant.

It was nice knowing ahead of time when to the go into the hospital and have someone right there at our house watching the older kids. The down side of getting induced was all the waiting that happened. I thought it would happen a little quicker because it was my third baby, but it was pretty much all day. We arrived at the hospital at 5 a.m.  - that's right, bright and early - on Thursday, Nov. 1. They hooked me all up and then we sat there. Logan brought his computer and was able to do a little work for school while we waited. And I watched T.V. and played on my phone.

By 11 or 12:00, my doctor came in to break my water to help move things along and soon after I was having stronger contractions so I decided to get my epidural. After that medicine kicked in, I was able to take a good nap. That sure didn't happen with my other two births. When the doctor came to check on me after I woke up, I was sure that I had progressed more than the last time she came in. But I think I was still only dilated to 4 cm so I was pretty discouraged. She came back around 3:00 and decided to bump the dosage of pitocin up some more so I would finally progress quicker. I think that finally did the trick because after 4:00, I went from 5 cm to 10 cm in about an hour.

By this time, I was starting to feel all the contractions and asked the anesthesiologist to come back in give me some more medication. But for some reason, I was only feeling the numbness in my legs and was not getting any relief from contractions in my pelvic area. Then by 5:00 I was starting to feel like I needed to push. They called the doctor and she came running from her office across the street. And after pushing for about 15 minutes, I delivered our sweet baby boy. He was 8 lbs and 19 inches long. Zachary's middle name is after Logan's brother, Braden, and we waited until Zach was born to surprise his brother about it. Braden was thrilled to hear the news, and Logan was emotional about telling him.

And now I guess I finally got to feel what it was like to give birth naturally. It took me 3 hours to push with Leah and an hour to push with Cameron so I was so glad that Zachary came so quickly. And the other great thing about it was the recovery time. I felt back to normal in a week and this was so great being able to do activities with my kids and my mom. She came to visit us on Nov. 6, the day Logan's mom flew back to Utah, and it was so nice to have help from both of the grandmas.

Now on to the pictures:

They were so sweet holding Zachary and touching him so gentle. They have been great older siblings.

 Leah really wanted to help Logan change his diaper.

Little Zach with his eyes open. It was one of the few times he opened his eyes after we brought him home. 

The day we came home from the hospital and began our life as a family of 5!