The Hagberg Hoopla: Our hospital stay

I follow a few friends blogs and I'm particularly impressed with my friends who have small children who blog often! It's inspiring me because I have been wanting to blog a bunch about Clark and I just don't feel like I have the time, but I need to make time because the reason I started this blog in the first place was to document life. I don't have the best memory and I just really love going back and seeing pictures and reading about memories, so I really want to document my little guy's first moments!

First of all, back to the birth of Clark, I had an AWESOME experience at Abbott, where we delivered. We had wonderful nurses and I felt well taken care of, and my doctor, Dr. Gibeau, was fabulous. I would recommend Women's Health Consultants and Abbott to anyone! We were blessed with a huge room for my recovery which made a big difference in our experience, too. A friend of ours who is a nurse there said that they try to give the bigger rooms to the moms recovering from a C-section because they stay longer, so that was awesome. I even had great food! I guess I just didn't expect to love my experience as much as I did, which makes it easy to think about doing this again :) Don't worry, not RIGHT away!

It was so fun having our parents get to meet their grandson for the first time at the hospital. I wish I wasn't in such a fog and could remember it all a little better, I do remember my eyes were shutting the whole time they were there! All that really mattered was that they got to meet him, though. What a feeling!

Our parents are such a huge part of our lives and we are so excited for them to be a significant part of Clark's life as his grandparents. Each one of them is so unique and brings so many good qualities that I know Clark will appreciate and learn from, as Jeff and I have. What a special thing it is to have loving grandparents, we feel so blessed and are so happy for Clark.

Jeff was so helpful in the hospital. I had a hard time doing much at first because of the C-section, so Jeff was helping me get up to go to the bathroom, making sure I ordered my meals on time, keeping double track of my pill schedule with the nurses to make sure I didn't have pain, and of course, taking care of Clark! Here is Jeff changing his first diaper :) I love this picture.

We had all this lead up with Rupert (our other baby) and making sure he was prepared for the baby to join him in the house...we even took a 6 week course on how to introduce your dog to the baby! We had a plan to have Rupert be taken care of at home by friends and family while we were in the hospital for the short stay so he would be in his own environment and comfortable before the big change. That was the plan before we had the C-section and the short stay in the hospital quickly turned into a long stay. We couldn't have someone let him out 4 times a day for several days, so we decided to send Rupert away to "sleep away camp," the breeders where he came from.

I cried when that decision was made because he was going to be there for a week after we got home too so I wouldn't see him for pretty much 2 weeks! But it was for the best. So Jeff had to go home from the hospital (already exhausted himself from everything), pick up Rupert and drive him to the kennel which is an hour away from our house and drive all the way back home. It was all later in the evening so he wasn't going to be able to come back to the hospital until the next day.

I realized how much Jeff had been doing and how supportive he had been when I had the thought of him not being there for the evening. I almost panicked. How would I do this on my own? I simply couldn't ask the nurses to do everything Jeff was doing because they would be in my room constantly and they have other patients!

It was an aweful night, I have to say. At one point, I tried to get out of bed on my own because Clark was crying. I had to change his diaper (my first one since we had him!) and I couldn't figure out how to put his outfit back on (hadn't done that yet either). Oh no, suddenly I had to go to the bathroom and Clark was crying and he was cold and he was pretty much naked, not to mention I was very slow moving still from my incision and probably from being drugged and tired, so just the simple act of going to the bathroom was an event. Before I had an emotional breakdown, I called the nurse and had her hold him while I went to the bathroom so he wouldn't cry! She looked at me like I was crazy, but I didn't care...I probably was a little at that point.

After she left I got my phone and called Jeff sobbing and said through tears, "I can't do this without you! Please come back?" He said he couldn't keep his eyes open to drive back to the hospital and that everything would be ok. I felt so helpless, so tired, so weak and yet filled with joy to realize how good I do have it. The whole 'you don't realize what you have until it's gone' thing, well I was definitely realizing and I missed it...I missed him. It was a bitter-sweet moment that I probably won't forget.

And you can imagine how excited I was to see this face again :) Oh, did I mention he came back to the hospital at 5 am so he could be with me again as soon as possible? What a guy!

Man, I love those men :)

And here is my Grandma, Bama, with Clark!

Something that was very special for Clark was meeting his great-grandma, "Great Bama." Great Bama has been waiting to add the "Great" to her name for quite sometime now, so was VERY excited for Clark's arrival, which was so fun!

Bama and my mom and I took a road trip this fall while I was pregnant with Clark so we talked about it a lot then, and she also came to MN for Christmas before I had Clark. She also helped host a shower for me, so it was SO fun having her be part of the lead up to Clark and for her to be so excited about him.

When Bama was in MN for Christmas, she unfortunately fell and broke her shoulder. We were so bummed about it for her because it meant surgery and therapy and recovery, but we were so happy to have her here in MN for a couple extra months, something that wouldn't have happened otherwise, and what timing! The birth of Clark! It was so special and meaningful for her to be there to meet him at the hospital and see him a few times before she left to go back to Michigan. He loves his Great Bama already! We are looking forward to her return in a few months to see a slightly older baby Clark :)

We also had our best friends Kate & Mike and Matt & Lindsey come visit us right after Clark was born which was so fun, but again, a bit of a blur for me! ;)