a picture is worth a thousand words...

john piper and starbuck's...enough said.

brotherly love

i have to admit that i was a teeny bit worried about how caleb would react to having a new sibling around the house. while he is a very loving little boy most of the time, there are limits to what a 2 year old can take...and i wasn't sure if asher was going to be that limit. i am so very thankful that God granted my request to make caleb's heart tender towards his brother. from the first time caleb saw asher in the hospital, he has wanted to hold him, kiss him, and tell him, "it all right asher," or "asher need his my," when he's crying. i hope that God continues to be gracious to me and allow caleb and asher to grow in love one for another each and every day.

asher trent agnew

so i've finally gotten around to uploading pictures on the computer and figured it would be a good time to post about asher's birth...especially since he will be 2 months old this upcoming wednesday! mother of the year i am not. on friday, may 1st, tom and i arrived at williamson county medical center at 5:00 A.M. (i still can't believe that i had to be there that early) to begin my induction. after the check-in, hooking up iv process, talk with the doctor, etc., the pitocin wasn't started until approximately 6:30 and i felt my first contraction around 6:45. they continued to up my pitocin intake by 2 units every 30 minutes until my contractions were 7-8 minutes apart. after that, i labored at the same pitocin level until fully dilated. i also had to have a large dose of penicillin through the iv because i was group b strep positive. to be honest, i don't know exactly when they stopped increasing the pitocin level because i was w-o-r-k-i-n-g. the only similarity to caleb's birth was the fact that i was laboring without an epidural, or other pain-blocking drugs. i had no idea how differently labor felt when artificially induced. don't get me wrong, labor is painful no matter how it starts, but the pitocin amplified the intensity of the contractions to a level much higher than i remember with caleb. at 12:45 p.m. i was ready to push. up to this point, i had been mentally complaining about the external monitors on my belly. i wanted this birth to be minimally invasive, and those two monitors (which were irritating my skin) were invasive. however, i should have kept my (mental) mouth shut because those monitors proved invaluable during the next 30 minutes. asher was progressing out the birth canal slowly, but steadily with every contraction/push and receding back into the birth canal (a little less than before) when i was not contracting/pushing. the old saying "two steps forward, one step back" really is true when it comes to birthing a baby. dr. scott and the nurses wanted me to turn on my side to see if that would help speed the process along. however, the longer i pushed, the lower asher's heart rate dropped. it fell to 68 at one point and prompted dr. scott to order a room ready for an emergency c-section. since i had had no drugs, i would have had to been completely knocked out for that procedure. thankfully, that didn't happen because i just kept pushing. every time i felt a contraction, i pushed. at one point nurses were rushing around getting ready to move rooms and didn't notice that i was pushing until tom said, "uh...she's still pushing!!!" my stubborness really paid off because with a few final pushes the amazing dr. scott was able to help me birth a healthy 7 pound 14 ounce baby asher at 1:18 p.m. asher was a full 1 pound 3 ounces bigger than caleb at birth. after delivery, dr. scott told me that his umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck causing his heart rate to drop when i pushed...poor thing! thankfully, he had absolutely no ill-effects from the dramatic labor and delivery. later that evening, big brother caleb came to visit with gran and grandad. caleb was soooooo excited to see baby asher. he asked to hold him as soon as he got there. in fact, he held him almost the entire time he visited. tom and i were, and continue to be, extremely humble and thankful to be the parents of two sweet boys.