Bringing Zoey home and Newborn photos (June-July 2017)

The day after we came home from the hospital, we had Zoey's newborn pictures taken:

I regretted only having a few pictures of Kyler and the twins during their first few weeks of life. Sooo…. I went a bit overboard on Zoey. Enjoy the picture dump! Also, just ignore any typos, grammatical errors, and misspellings…I'm still sleep deprived here!

Lyla was slightly jealous (and obsessed at the same time) of Zoey, she kept wrapping herself up in blankets and asking to be held like a baby.

Ryan is finally starting to talk! He went from only saying a few words here and there, to (3-4 word) sentences and imitating what we say… so proud of this boy.

Her first home bath:

We had tons of family over and friends visiting those first few weeks. Never a dull moment here!

My parents stayed another week after Zoey was born to help with the kids, which I was so grateful for! C-sections are so hard. I remember one night Ryan was crying so I walked into his room and realized he needed a diaper change, but I couldn't lift him out of the crib or bend over to change his diaper and I felt so helpless that I started crying too. haha. Jared told me not to worry and that he would let me change as many poopy diapers as I wanted once I was healed and that he would remind me how I cried over not being able to change a poopy diaper once :p.

The first day I had the kids by myself was rough... I got an infection from the C-section  :/ Antibiotics kicked in pretty quickly though, and Jared was able to work from home a few extra days, and family helped out with the kids!

Kyler's first time holding Zoey standing up. He was so excited! He loves holding her.

Finally got a date night in!

…and just like that our baby is 1 month old!

Also, I want to remember how sweet of a big brother Kyler has been lately. At Zoey's checkup they had to prick her heel for blood work. Kyler got so upset and thought they were "stapling" her foot and felt so bad that she was crying and hurt. Also, at the aquarium, Lyla was crying at the top of the climbing structure, Kyler went to help her and witnessed a girl. who for no reason, was pinching and scratching Lyla (she drew blood!). Kyler was so upset he started crying too. 15 minutes later Kyler (still sobbing) said "Mom, can I please go to bed now? I just can't stop thinking about that mean girl hurting Lyla and I want to sleep so I can stop thinking about it." He sure does love his siblings!

Father/son date:

and last but not least, sweet Zoey girl:

Zoey Mackenzie (Birth Story)

Because I had 2 previous c-sections, baby girl was no different, and had to be a planned c-section as well. We were told to arrive at the hospital at 6am on June 19th (6 days before her actual due date). I didn't expect to sleep the night before (with Kyler I was too excited to sleep, and with the twins I was in labor and in too much pain to sleep).  This time, however, I surprisingly slept really well and was slightly annoyed that I hadn't gone to bed earlier when my alarm went off at 5:00 am. My parents were visiting from NC, so we left the kids with them and headed to the hospital. We enjoyed this pretty sunrise on our way to the hospital:

 At my last appointment the week before, I was fully effaced and dilated to a 2. The pre-op nurse observed my contractions from the monitor, told me they were 9 minutes apart and that I was in "early labor". I could feel the contractions (had been feeling them for weeks!) but they weren't painful so I didn't think anything of them. Here's my last "bump" picture:

After I received several IV bags of fluid, Jared got dressed in his OR clothing (sad that I don't have a picture of this!) It looked like a white bunny suit. The material was see through (almost like a disposable thin paper fabric) and the nurse said "leave your clothes on underneath!" I was thinking "duh" in my head, but then she went on to tell us the story about how one patients's husband didn't realize he was supposed to keep his clothes on underneath…hahaha so now she clarifies.

After that, we all walked into the OR together, and I sat up on the operating table while the anesthesiologist attempted to give me the spinal block. I say "attempted" because it took him 3 tries to get it in the right place! I was squeezing Jared's hand so tight the entire time. He took so long and kept apologizing for messing up and it gave me anxiety! It wasn't the most delightful way to start major surgery so I was a bit stressed out at that point. I was shaking and so nervous, but then the anesthesiologist (Dr. Peterson) put a heater near my face and played Jack Johnson pandora station (which distracted me) and I calmed down a bit. Jared and I listened to Jack Johnson a lot in our dating days. I thought it would've been cute if one of "our songs" came on, but none did. However, the song we were listening to while she was born was "Sitting, waiting, wishing" which I'd never really paid attention to the lyrics to that song before, but part of the song:
Just wait a minute
Just sitting waiting
Just wait a minute
Just sitting waiting
seemed very appropriate for our (then) current situation of waiting on baby girl to be born haha. One of the nurses leaned over the curtain and asked us "Did any of your other babies have hair?" We said "no…" and the nurse replied "Well this one sure does!" A few seconds later, we heard her glorious cry and Dr. Kaelberer showed us our baby girl over the surgical sheet that was separating us. She was beautiful and had a head full of dark hair!

7 lbs 12 oz and 20 inches long. She was our heaviest and longest baby!

They encouraged us to do skin-to-skin in the OR which I was never allowed to do with my previous babies, so that was new!

She had a heart murmur when she was born, so she had some extra testing done, but by the second day her heart murmur was completely gone!

We named her Zoey Mackenzie Antczak. We had decided on her first name a few weeks before she was born. Her middle name we still weren't sure about until the day after she was born.

We sent pictures and got to FaceTime our kids/Schrammparents the day she was born, but I was feeling so sick from the spinal block that we waited until the next day to have the kids come meet her.

First picture as a family of 6!!

Our 3rd day in the hospital was the day we noticed Zoey's birthmark! She had been wearing a hat most of the time we were in the hospital, and it is dark like her hair...and we weren't really looking for it, so nobody noticed it! I remember Jared saying "What's this on her head? a birthmark? a bruise?" and then the nurse saying "Oh my goodness how did we not see that before?! I don't know what that is! Maybe a birthmark?"  The pediatrician confirmed, it's a birthmark!

She's perfect in every way, and we are so glad to have her in our family!