The Merriest of Christmases

Holy WOW!!  The past 28 hours have been an absolute roller coaster!  I'm sitting here, on Christmas Day in my hospital recovery room next to the sweetest newborn I know.  My son!  I have a sweet little boy.. what?!  Here's how it all went down...

Last Saturday (4 days ago), I woke up in the middle of the night itching and scratching like crazy.  Every part of my whole body itched, but particularly my hands and feet.  It was the strangest thing but I didn't really think anything of it.  I couldn't sleep through the insane itching so I decided to look at my baby center app on my phone... because what else do you do at 2 am when you can't sleep?  I was just randomly reading people's posts and came across one that said 'extreme itchiness.'  So weird... that's what I had.  I read the girl's post and found out that this can sometimes be related to pregnancy... I had no idea! The condition the girl was posting about was called cholestasis so I googled it and started to read about it.  (Read more about it by clicking on that link but basically - pregnancy hormones cause your gall bladder to stop functioning properly, which can be dangerous for both mom and babe). I had another night of itching on Sunday night which made me start to wonder if maybe I had this rare condition. Luckily I had a doctor appointment scheduled for Monday morning.  I brought it up to my doctor and she did blood work to check some levels in my gall bladder and liver.  She said she would call me if anything looked abnormal but left it at that.  We went about the rest of our day Monday, grocery shopping and making final plans for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with our family of four.  Monday night was AWFUL.  I was wide awake from 11pm -2 am scratching my feet.  I felt like I was going insane from the itchiness.  I really felt like either I had this condition or I was going crazy.  I tried telling myself it was all in my head... my feet really didn't itch... I tried to stop scratching... but nothing worked!  It was horrible...

Tuesday morning (Christmas Eve) was a normal morning... we were starting to get food ready for our Christmas Eve dinner, had Christmas music going, everyone was happy and excited about the day, etc..  Then at 11:30 am my doctor called me and said, "Your lab work came back and shows that you have cholestasis.  You need to come in ASAP and we need to induce you today."  I got off the phone, ran downstairs to tell Justin, and started bawling.  The last thing I wanted was to be away from our girls on Christmas and have a baby on a holiday.  After a few minutes of freaking out, Justin calmed me down, we called our amazing friends who left their family party to come and pick up our children, and packed our bags.  By 1:15, we were on our way to the hospital.  Everything went really quick once they started pitocin, and by 11:10 pm, we were crying tears of joy as we cuddled our new baby boy. A true Christmas miracle!  We've been rejoicing all day over this special gift to our family.  In Claire's words, "God gives the BEST gifts!!"

Charlie James

12/24/13

11:10 pm

7 lbs, 21 inches