Welcome Malachi Axel Larsen!!

Well, he has finally arrived....  Larsen boy #3! He is a little bit Patrick (the chin!), A little bit Cache (the eyes !) and everything else Ronin. But his sweet disposition and cute antics are all his own.  Considering the drama both preceding and during his birth, he has proven to be calm, collected and is living up to his name. (Malachi= messenger from God)  We got the message alright: life is predictably unpredictable. The more you try to control it the harder it fights to remain outside your grasp. But no matter, we are extremely grateful for the privilege to be his parents. Now lets just hope we don't mess him up too much.

The other crazy boys came to visit the next day. Of course their personalities all shine in this picture. Ronin is as excited as ever. I can't think of any time when he is out of energy. Ronin is ecstatic to have a new baby brother and has been so helpful already. Cache on the other hand is welcoming of Malachi but only from a distance. He has been clingy and apprehensive of all the changes taking place. And the baby seems pretty mellow with it all. 
The kids poked and prodded him to make sure he was a sound investment. 
Cache counted his toes to make sure they were all accounted for.  Again, no complaints from the owners of those toes. Well, at least no crying.... since Malachi seems a bit unsure of being checked out.
All in all, three lovely, crazy, rambunctious and fun loving boys. What a blessing they each are. What a responsibility. What an amazing journey this life is and I can't imagine any other boys to go through it with. 

Patrick was an absolute rock during the delivery. I bossed him around, cried, screamed and hugged him. Every emotion that could go through me did, and all in the same night. He loved me, cared for me and encouraged me. I love him dearly for that. I can say his delivery skills have improved with each baby and he still is the only man I would want to go through all of this with. He is a loving and devoted father, husband and friend. We feel blessed that he is ours for eternity.

So the story.... ahhhh, the story! Lets say it all started 9 months ago when we got pregnant during the one time of year when we shouldn't be! Patrick's work for the Olympics started over a year ago and have been going steady ever since. There has been a lot of late nights and a lot of travel. The olympics start in less than two weeks. He managed to get time off to come home for the baby's birth. Considering it was our 3rd we didn't think we would go past our due date. But again, careful what you plan for... After being checked at 39 and 40 weeks and still only being dilated to a 2 (at best, the dr. said) we were discouraged that baby kai would show up before Patrick left town again. The stress and pressure of Patrick's departure loomed over us and at 40 weeks (on the dot) we decided to induce labor. Wednesday night, February 3rd we went into the hospital. We were confident that after some medication to soften the cervix, my labor would start right away and we would be off! Of course first you have to have 2 different applications of the medicine. 4 hours apart, so after all that was said and done we were already 8 hours into it and still waiting. I had contractions here and there, but nothing coming regularly or hard in any way. That's when the dr. suggested breaking out the pitocin. Which of course was the original plan although we wanted to see if we could get away without it. Indeed, we could not. So we started the pitocin drip...drip...drip.  After 3 hours of a steady labor brought on by the Pitocin, the dr. checked me and said I was only dilated to a 4... how could that possibly be?? 

Next form of action was to break my water. Which doubled the intensity of each contraction. And lets just say, it. was. intense! I am thinking I am handling things pretty well, even though I am in a lot of pain. I am showing all the signs of transition. I am shaking uncontrollably, I am saying "I CAN'T DO THIS!", the contractions are coming in waves so strong I can't breathe through them very well. Patrick is calming me down, talking me off the ledge. The nurse is readying everything for a baby to be born. It's 7 am and the doctor checks me again. I am only dilated to a 6. WHA!?!?! A 6!!! The doctor says the cervix is tilted a bit and not lining up with the head of the baby, so the contractions aren't triggering dilation. Now I am screaming..."I really CAN'T DO THIS!!!" The idea of laboring this hard for the next few hours has me overwhelmed. There is no way to tell how long it will go on, but with each passing contraction I get more and more sure that I really don't want to keep doing this, so I order an epidural. The anesthesiologist has me sign the consent forms and gets things moving forward. The doctor has another idea to move things along, but was by far the most painful measure imaginable. While contracting, the dr. stretches out the cervix and aligns it with the baby's head. Doing this once stretches the cervix to an 8. All I can say is WOW!!! That REALLY hurts! This is where there was a lot of crying and yelling. I am sure Patrick's hand went numb from me squeezing it. The doctor was confident that with one more contraction like that (with her stretching the cervix) and I would be ready to push. I told the doc that she only had one more chance because I  really thought I would die if we had to do it any more than that. It took another few contractions and discussion in the next hour to decide what to do. But thank heaven she was right. After one more contraction (with her stretching the cervix) there was a pushing frenzy! 20 minutes and dear baby Kai was in our arms. Right after he came, the anesthesiologist came in ready to give me an epidural but was sent away without rendering her services!

 Baby Kai was SO white, covered in vernix. He couldn't open one of his eyes and quieted his cries when we started talking to him. We thought he was going to be huge but he turned out to be only 6lb. 14 oz. The littlest boy yet! Finally we could call him ours. Born at 9:12 am February 4th 2010. An amazing day to be sure. We are glad to be home after a few quiet nights with just the baby, Patrick and I. Especially since Patrick leaves for Vancouver tomorrow.  We are already counting the days until he is home and actually has some time off so we can all get into a family routine. So that's the story. The story of how Malachi Axel Larsen came to be in our family.