Greysen's Birth Story

Trevor and I are so excited to announce the birth of our baby boy. Greysen James Lang was born on September 2, 2021. We were induced at the hospital, and while labor and delivery didn’t go as planned, we wound up with a happy healthy baby in the end. I can’t believe that we have been home with our little bundle of joy for over two months now. We are adjusting to life with a newborn really well and can even say we’re getting some sleep. He’s perfect in every way, and we are so in love!

We previously shared our announcement of baby Greysen on the LVP Studio’s (my business) blog with some Fresh 48 pictures. To see those and watch our Name Reveal Video click here. And also, in true Trevor and Danyell fashion, we’ve been vlogging some of our experiences now as a family of three. If you aren’t already subscribed to our YouTube channel, you definitely should be.

The Birth Story

The birth of Greysen James Lang starts with you knowing that I had gestational diabetes. Because of this, we were required by our doctor to not go over 40 weeks in pregnancy. We tried to walk this little boy out naturally, and went on many evening walks around our town, but he didn’t want to come yet on his own. So, we scheduled an induction for the morning of Thursday, September 2nd.

We spent that morning trying to stay positive even though both Trevor and I were so anxious and had hardly gotten any sleep. We swung by McDonald’s to grab some breakfast before heading in through the Emergency Room doors bright and early to get checked in. Once in our room they first hooked me up to monitors to keep an eye on baby’s heart rate, and that’s when the worrisome news started.

Instantly Greysen’s heart rate seemed to be dropping whenever I had any sort of contractions. I was having some mild braxton hicks contractions and those too seemed to be causing issues. They monitored me almost all morning, and didn’t do any induction methods until later that day. They first started with a foley balloon (which did not take), and then moved on to medications.

Every time I would have any sort of contraction, Greysen’s heart rate would go down. On top of all of that, I wasn’t progressing at all with the induction. Due to the heart rate concerns and the fact that baby boy just was not coming, my doctor talked with us about a c-section.

A c-section was actually the last thing that I ever had wanted to do! I was so against it. But after much talk, and lots of tears, we knew that it was the best option for us and our baby, so we agreed to go in for surgery.

This was a really traumatizing experience. We talked about it extensively in our video linked below! Basically as soon as we agreed to a c-section we were rushed around and treated kind of like it was an emergency. They inserted a catheter, they changed my clothes, rolled my bed around, and got Trevor all scrubbed up too. Once in the operating room it was scary! I was all alone because they wouldn’t let Trevor in until I was fully prepped. I had to get the spinal anesthesia without him holding my hand (which at the time terrified me), they put up a screen, cleaned my incision site, and were one step away from cutting me open when they finally let Trevor come sit by my head.

After that, Greysen James Lang was born! We still got to see him and hear him make his first cry. Trevor still got to cut the umbilical cord. And I still got to hold him right after he was checked out and wrapped up. All this happened while the doctors continued to finish my surgery. We cried while we looked at our baby boy, I pet his head and tried to stop my hands from shaking because of all of the adrenaline, and we told him over and over again how much we loved him.

Because of my gestational diabetes, this meant that Greysen could have some complications after birth too. And he did. We had some issues with his sugars being too low. It was scary there for awhile, but we got it resolved by “force feeding” him lots and lots of food.

I say “force feeding” because we had to give him way more food than he wanted. Since he was a c-section baby he had a lot of fluid in his body that didn’t get expelled the same way that it would if he was pushed through the vaginal canal—this made him feel full and not hungry. Also, he had just been born (which is of course exhausting), so he didn’t want to eat. All of this to say, that we NEEDED him to eat in order to get his blood sugar up. We were also trying to do breastfeeding, but that was not enough for him in that moment, so we supplemented with formula via an SNS feeding tube.

Breastfeeding was super important to me. Since I did not get the chance to have the vaginal birth that I had originally wanted, I was super passionate about still being able to breastfeed like I wanted. I would have been devastated if everything that I had dreamed about had been taken from me, so I pushed hard to continue to breastfeed even though we were working hard to feed Greysen in multiple ways. A few scary nights went by where Trevor and I literally did not sleep (we were feeding every two hours), but Greysen’s numbers gradually started to improve and we finally got to go home!!

How’s home life?

I’m not going to lie, being new parents was rough at first. I struggled with some postpartum anxiety that made me feel like I needed eyes on my baby at all time. I didn’t trust anyone else with him, and I didn’t even want to take a shower or a quick 2 hour nap. I don’t think family and friends understood how much I was struggling, but it was really hard.

Baby blues are totally common because of all of the hormones that are changing so quickly in the body of a woman right after she gives birth. I felt totally not like myself and often times doubted whether I could be a good mother. But now after over two months, it has gotten LOADS easier.

When we took Greysen home for the first time it was like a breath of fresh air after all of the stresses we had with his blood sugars. That all to say, we were now entering an entirely new and stressful part of parenthood which was simply taking care of our baby on our own at home.

The first thing we did when we got home was introduce the animals to our newest addition to the family. Skye, our husky, paid no mind to him and only wanted our attention (she still acts like this now), and the cats sniffed and were slightly interested but mostly scared (and that’s how they still are with him too). After we had a little bit of time home alone, we messaged our families and had them come over to meet us. Trevor’s mom arrived first, then my mom and dad, followed by sisters, and later aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends.

Our little boy is growing up!

At the point of writing this post, Greysen is now two months old! It has simultaneously been the longest and the shortest two months of my life. It feels like he has grown so fast and time has just flown by, but it also feels like every day is so long sometimes.

The first few weeks of Greysen’s life were probably the hardest days I have ever experienced. While I loved my little boy, I was totally unprepared for how to take care of him. I wanted that instant, take-your-breath-away, I love you so much kind of feeling for him, but I didn’t have that. I was so sleep deprived, so stressed, and probably malnourished too, that every day was just about surviving. Now after two months things are sooooo much easier. We have a routine, I usually know what he wants when he cries, and we can almost sleep through the night now!!

It’s funny because within those first few weeks of his life if someone were to ask me if we were going to have more kids I would have been wide eyed and told you that I didn’t think I could do it. I didn’t understand how people had a toddler and then had another newborn. I was struggling with just one, let alone thinking about two?! But now, I know that we will have more. And thankfully, I know that the next babies we have will be so much easier because Trevor and I have the experience of raising one little one under our belt.

If you are a first time mom, a new mom, or a mom-to-be, just know that it gets better! I want to write a blog post all about the anxieties and feelings and stresses that I had as a first time mother because I think that it needs to be talked about more. I love my baby boy so much, I am so excited to introduce him to all of you, but know that it is not always sunshine and rainbows and all of the perfect pictures you see are not always real life.