Welcome Baby Mason (Part 2)

The delivery itself was pretty uneventful.  We had a scheduled induction. It took 5 hours from start to delivery. The epidural only worked on my left half (again). I went from 4-10 in like 3 contractions and he was out with 3 contractions of pushing (5 minutes I was told).

Look at that cute little baby. 7lbs 8oz. 20 inches.

Because I wasn't as numb as we all hoped, Justin was able to focus on doing a video chat with mom and dad so they didn't miss the birth of their son. That was huge. We were worried we would have to start the call just after his birth, but instead they were able to be part of entire first 30 minutes of life (then my battery died).

My husband was awesome. 1 phone with a video chat, 1 phone taking pictures so they had that too. There really isn't anything worth mentioning more about the delivery.

Oh, except the glorious moment where my amazing doctor got me setup for delivery and so nonchalantly said, "oh look, you have little pimple on your butt".

Mason was such a relaxed baby. Those first few hours he cried for like 2 minutes total.  At this point everything seemed pretty normal for a surrogacy delivery.  Then we headed to our post-delivery recovery room.

Then suddenly it was just us 3.  Mason slept for most of the first day/night. Waking him up even to eat was such a pain. At some point that first night though I realized something. Mason was in his little hospital bassinet (plastic tub), all bundled, fed, and warm.  BUT he seemed so alone. This poor guy should be with his mom and dad.  And here I sat just sort of numb and watching him. Happy to see this little guy, but realizing I was definitely putting up a wall. I realized I was so scared about accidentally stealing something from his mom that I was nervous to get to close.

DUDE! What was I doing? That is WHY we were taking care of this little guy at the hospital. He needed those first few days to be loved and cuddled and that's what we were there to do. Justin did a much better job than I did. Seeing him talk to his "little buddy" is what got me out of my head.

He really was such an easy baby.  He slept pretty great (minus some gassy moments on night 2) and had sweet awake time where we got to chat with the little dude and take a billion pictures and videos to send to mom and dad.  It was really a great couple of days. A mix of "I'm so glad I don't have babies anymore, this is exhausting" and "but it'd be fun to take care of you a bit longer because you're so stinking cute". As we woke up on Sunday morning it began to sink in that it was our last few hours with Mason. It would be the last time for a LONG time we will see him in person because of Covid stuff. Usually we get the chance to meet up with the families for the next 4-6 weeks as they get everything in order to travel home to China. This time since Mason isn't with his family AND because of the worries of the virus we won't be seeing him.  That was a hard thought to process. That in a few hours we were saying our "final" good bye.

Yes we would see pictures of him, just like we do of his big sister. I am super grateful for that. I also know that with the amount of time his parents spend in the US (typically) that we will actually see him again, even if it may be a few years. But we sure were going to miss that little guy. The last few hours really were bittersweet.

So enjoy more pictures of this precious baby and tomorrow I'll tell you how the "hand-off" went.