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!