The Martin Family

This post is pictures first, post at the end and the pictures are in no special order...sorry!

After we got home from the hospital, our first family picture with all 5 of us!

Elizabeth's first bath at home (March 1.) Don't mind my belly, LOL.

Sweet nap with Daddy

LOVE this picture. Madelyn loves her baby sister so much. She wants to hold her and kiss her and help all the time. It is precious.

Nana holding Elizabeth for the first time in the NICU

Bro. Rick and Elizabeth in the NICU

Pop holding Elizabeth for the first time in the NICU

Our FIRST picture with Elizabeth. The night of the 23rd.

LOVE this picture of the two of them.

My first time holding Elizabeth.

Aunt Katie holding Elizabeth for the first time.

Aunt Katie seeing Elizabeth for the first time.

Madelyn meeting Elizbeth, love at first sight! See her peeking in??

Proud Daddy

Our little glow worm. She has to go to the doctor tomorrow again to get checked for her jaundice.

Getting oxygen

Sweet snuggles at home

Our first family portrait!

Meeting Elizabeth at home. Catharine loves Elizabeth!

Leaving the hospital together!

Sleeping in my hospital room.

Loving her at the hospital in my own room!!

It all started at 6:45 AM Monday morning. I was 36 weeks pregnant. I woke up having a painful contraction and they continued at 4 minutes apart. When I say "painful" I mean that they hurt worse than normal Braxton Hicks contractions, but not nearly as much as "real" contractions like what I felt with Madelyn's labor. After about an hour and a half I called my doctor's office to ask about going in to be monitored. I was supposed to meet Andrea in Troy, AL to pick up Madelyn and Justin was headed to Birmingham for the day for a conference, so I wanted to be sure I wasn't in labor before we headed out of town for the day. The doctor instructed me to go to the hospital to triage to be checked and have an ultrasound...begrudgingly I got dressed...then I started to feel different. I got very dizzy and light headed and thought I was going to pass out. I sat at the table, thinking I was just hungry, and ate three bites of a banana and drank a glass of water, then I rested my head on my arms and weakly called out to Justin that I didn't feel good. He was getting Catharine ready to go to Bonita Peter's house while we went to the hospital. He already knew I didn't feel good, so this wasn't alarming to him. He was rushing and I was just sitting there, in pain and feeling very weak. I knew I couldn't walk to the car. He said, "come on Chandra, Catharine is in the car, let's go!" I was so weak I couldn't figure out how to tell him how I was feeling to make him understand that I couldn't walk to the car. BUT somehow I made it to the porch and then leaned on a rail because I couldn't walk any more without falling. He ran inside to grab something and then I felt a huge gush. After the gush was a couple of more gushes. I knew my water had broken. I started crying and yelling for him to come outside because my water had broken. The seriousness of what our day was going to hold started to set in, but we had no idea.

We live about 10 minutes from the hospital, Justin ran through a VERY busy intersection's red light turning onto a majory hwy in Montgomery...he had the emergency lights on and was honking the horn. He called his sister, Katie, to tell her to get to the hospital fast because my water had broken, and hearing him say this arised a groan from my mouth, I couldn't believe that Elizabeth was going to be born today. Poor Catharine was a witness to all of this drama. She kept saying, "Mommy? Mommy?" Then I realized I needed to comfort her some, sweet Khaki.

We got to the hospital in record time, and Justin came to help me out of the car...to find that there was blood everywhere. My water was not broken.

The hospital did not respond to our emergency in the manner that we felt they should. They acted as if everything was okay and that we were overeacting. I was so confused to be wheeled (slowly) to triage, which happens to be located very far from the labor and delivery wing of the hospital when I was gushing blood and not feeling my baby move. I was told over and over by everyone I asked that it was protocol and that every person that goes to the hospital for labor and delivery goes through triage first. Yeah right.

I finally got into a triage room, after explaining over and over what was going on to several different nurses, so on. The nurse in the room told me that they were going to put me on the monitor and I needed to get undressed, she would be right back. I was dumbfounded. I told her I couldn't stand up, as she walked out the door. So I stood up on my own, dizzy and then saw (sorry this is graphic) blood everywhere. Standing in a puddle, I yelled for my nurse to come back and then when she saw me, FINALLY someone knew the seriousness of the situation. Good heavens, I thought I had been speaking another language. In about 3 seconds there were 5 or more nurses in the room, all doing something specific. Questions were being yelled at me to answer across the room, someone was collecting my jewelry, someone was sticking me with needles, someone was connecting the monitor to hear the baby's heartbeat, someone was filling out my paperwork (Justin was with Catharine waiting for Katie in the parking lot), who knows who else was doing what. Then my doctor came in, and grimly said, "you know this is an emergency. We are going to do a c-section. This is called placenta abruption and you've lost a lot of blood. The baby sounds okay right now, I'm going to scrub in, see you in a minute." Woah boy. He left.

The baby did start to decel, and I wasn't doing too good. Everything was fast and I had lost a lot of blood (5 units, I later found out.) We headed for the operating room. I found out later, that as Justin was getting his "daddy scrubs" on, he overheard my doctor asking another doctor from his practice if he was busy, and that doctor saying, "no, I have a few minutes." So, he scrubbed in to help with my surgery. This was a HUGE blessing because with two doctors, they were able to do a low transverse incision (the best kind), and had the baby out in 3 minutes. Talk about stat.

This is getting long and if I don't shorten from here, then I will never get this post posted and you will begin emailing me with complaints, LOL...so here you go, the shortened version.

Elizabeth was born at 10:07 AM, on Monday, February 23. She weighed 6 lbs. 4 oz. and was 20 inches long. SOOO sweet. I was 36 weeks pregnant, making her 4 weeks early. She had some minor issues that sent her to the NICU, and caused me some stress, but God was so gracious to us and she went home with me on Friday, Feb. 27. I stayed an extra day because I ended up having a blood transfusion on the day I was going to go home due to my blood count being low. After the blood transfusion, I was a new woman. I felt so much better and had lots of color back!

We are home and trying to adjust to this new life. I'm still in a lot of pain and tomorrow is "business as usual" at our house minus my ablity to bend, drive, pick up anything heavier than Elizabeth, etc. You can pray for us this week as you think about it...lots of adjustments :)

So, Madelyn loves life with Elizabeth around. She is quite the helper. Catharine is acting out some, but loves her new sister so much.

Elizabeth is nursing well. She wants to eat every couple of hours, at night she doesn't really cry, just starts to stir and I get her up quickly to eat. Adjusting to little sleep is proving challenging, but I know it will get better as the pain from surgery goes away. Thank you for your prayers in this area ;)

If I've left something out or if you have questions, please email me and I'll add it later. This is the first post that I spent three days writing, so it may sound a little jumbled, I did NOT proof read (sorry Mrs. Andrea.)

Love to you all!!

I cannot describe in words how amazing this week was for us. The week was full of very informative meetings, small group times for sharing more personally, job researching and interviews. The entire week we were pretty confident about where we needed to go. Sure enough, it worked out that way! We have to be sooo careful how we talk about this on the internet. I will be password protecting our blog in the near future, so if you are a reader and want to continue being one, you will need a password to get in. Until then, we can't post where we are going. We can say we are headed to South Asia. We are very excited and will share more later! Our time line is as follows: July 27-end of Sept., visit with family/final good-byes for two weeks following and leave the country somewhere around the 5th of October.