Welcome, Gavin Riley Todt!

After what seemed like only a minute, I awoke, still on the operating table. I was in horrendous pain and had to move immediately after waking up from the operating table onto my bed.

None of this mattered, not the pain, nothing mattered except for him! My baby boy! I began asking, begging for someone to tell me he was ok! I arrived in the recovery room asking about him. Finally, a nurse told me, he's fine! I asked how much he weighed as you remember I said the doctors estimated him to weigh over 8 pounds because my stomach was huge! So the nurse called up to the nursery, where he was getting his first bath, to find out for me. She came back and told me 4lbs 12ozs 18 1/4 inches long! I said is something wrong with him? Why is he so small!? She said by high blood pressure caused him to have low birth weight but he was healthy and would come home with me when I go. The doctor came in to talk to me and tell me how things went. He said Gavins heart rate was dropping because his cord was around his neck three times. That combined with my contractions coming so strong and close together, he had hardly no oxygen. And had we not got to him then, he would've died! I thanked God hundreds of times, thanked him for letting me keep my son!

After about forty five minutes in recovery, I was FINALLY going to meet my son! The hospital I was at was small, very small, therefore, Gavin was the only baby in the nursery! As my bed was wheeled by, a nurse held him up in the window for me to see! I heard his beautiful screams which was music to my ears! It felt like I'd been waiting a century to hear those screams! Finally I was a mother, a mother to a baby I would bring home with me!! Since I was put to sleep for my c-section, Jeremy and mama seen him before I did. Which kind of bummed me out because I'm his mother I should've seen him first! But I wasn't going to complain! Seeing him, period, was fine with me!!

A few minutes after I was back in my room, the nurse rolled him in! And there are no words to describe how happy I was to finally see and hold my baby! The baby that had kicked so hard, the baby that was responsible for my terrible heartburn I kept for nine months, the baby I wanted and needed more than life itself! He was absolutely perfect! The most beautiful and precious baby I'd ever laid eyes on! And he was mine, ALL MINE!! He had jet black hair, a head full, he had a big white birthmark on his back that look like splattered paint, which I said came from me pushing on my stomach so much making him move! He was so tiny! The doctor said he had to hold oxygen under his nose for just a few seconds so he would catch his breath. But that was it! He also had a mild case of jaundice which he had to stay under lights in the nursery. I had to feed him in the nursery on that first night. Still, I didn't care! I was so happy to finally have my baby! I couldn't get over how beautiful he was! I was sure he'd have red hair like his daddy but no, he had black hair like me! Visitors came and went all day. My friend Melitta who was pregnant at the same time as me, had given birth to her son on June 29th and my other friend Samantha had her baby boy, Brayden, on July 25th just 2 days before Gavin came!

Finally, I was happy! I felt like the doctors could tell me then I couldn't have kids anymore and that would be ok because I had Gavin! Although that wasn't the case! I had my happy family at last! And I just knew now that we had a living baby, Jeremy wouldn't leave anymore. We were starting our life now!

We weren't prepared for what his sister, Bethany, and her boyfriend, Shane, who we lived with, would do after we got home!

The photos below show me seeing and holding Gavin for the first time, his footprints, his birth announcement, a picture of him right after being born and a picture of him coming home (the one with the pacifier in his mouth).