Remington Kayo

On a Monday morning in July, as the world anxiously awaited the arrival of Prince William and Kate Middleton's bundle of joy, Matt and I welcomed our own prince into the world; Remington Kayo Danner, born July 22nd at 11:33 am weighing 9 pounds, 6 ounces.

The story of Remington's birth is somewhat short and sweet. I went into labor around 3 am. Since the contractions grew painful and closer together quickly, we gathered up our stuff right away, woke Addy up, dropped her off at her Aunt and Uncle's house and headed to the hospital. My Mom, who had already been in town for 3 weeks waiting on the baby, met us there just as bright and cheery as usual.

My birth plan was pretty simple: give me the epidural as soon as possible. The epi is definitely the way to go. Once I had it, I couldn't feel a thing besides the big push at the end. And there's a reason I felt that one, I delivered a 9 pound baby!

The midwife, who happened to be the one I saw through both my pregnancies, was shocked at how big he was, as were the rest of us. We were also pretty surprised to find out we had a baby boy in there all along. His big sister was right on.

I was able to hold him right away.
Matt announced the sex, after a little help from the nurse and I think we were both pretty overwhelmed with all kinds of emotions.

It didn't take too long for the nurse to realize he wasn't crying like he should be. Instead of wailing like most babies do, he was "grunting" and taking short breaths. They moved him to the warmer where they tried to get out whatever he had swallowed during birth. As they called in another nurse and then the NICU nurse, we held our breathe hoping we wouldn't have another NICU baby.

Unfortunately, what we had been praying wouldn't happen did and they wheeled him down to the NICU as Matt followed. It was only supposed to be for a couple of hours, that turned into a couple of days and then after getting the results of his chest x-ray, the descision was made to keep him there on antibiotics for a full week.

Here we go again.... our second baby, our second stint in the NICU. This time was a little different though. We knew what we were getting into, we were older and a little more mature but we also had a two year old at home who needed our attention.

Thankfully, we have amazing family and friends who watched Addy most of the day, kept us fed and encouraged, did our laundry and even mowed our grass.

Before we knew it, the week was over. We brought our little guy home to finally meet his big Sister and it felt so good to have both our kiddos together at last.

P.S. In case you're curious, Remington's middle name was taken from my Dad, his Pappa, who's initials are K.O. Matt came up with the spelling and I love it!