Introducing John Cooper Greenwell | Hayti Missouri Baby Photographer

First off, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope you all have a wonderful time with family and friends and you find that you have a lot for which to be thankful. I certainly know that I do, especially with my God, my husband and my children, all for whom I'm most thankful. We've been blessed beyond any measure and only God gets credit for that.

And I'm certainly thankful for the blessings that have been bestowed upon my ever-growing business this year. Thank you to my clients for taking a chance on my journey into photography and I can only pray that you know how much it means to me and my family.

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I wanted to post earlier about the birth of our son, but having a newborn and caring for our other children and trying to recuperate, well, blogging about it took a back seat for a while. So I thought, what a wonderful Thanksgiving treat to my readers to introduce our newest addition...



Now, on with the story...

I was starting to feel uncomfortable. Well, actually, I'd been feeling that way for a while. This pregnancy had been so different from my others, but when the swelling set in the last week before before he was born, I was just praying my doctor would actually schedule an induction. Like the other times.

I don't know if my doctor was going to schedule me for an induction, but when I gained 8 lbs. in 9 days, oh, I knew he had to do something, even if I had to bring it up first.

"Oh, Doc, please tell me that we can schedule to have this baby soon?"

I was two days shy of being 39 weeks, and with my pleads, Doc decided to schedule it for Monday, October 26. Good, I got my way. And now I had 5 days to get my stuff in order. No problem.

Except that I didn't feel prepared until the day night before. I mean, getting bags packed for three kids to stay with our friends, getting my bags packed, making sure the baby's new clothes were washed, laundry done(well, that was my husband's job), batteries for cell phones, camera, & video camera were charged, making sure the monkey was caged and had enough food, er, just kidding. And we also had people in our kitchen working on Sunday to finish getting our walls done and painted, which look awesome, by the way. So needless to say, Sunday really wasn't relaxing as I was so anxious about the happenings of the next day.

I fell asleep around 11 p.m. only to have to wake up at 3 a.m. to get ready and drive an hour to Cape to be at the hospital at 5 a.m. And I was oh so hungry, but couldn't have anything to eat. Only ice chips. And they tasted like Heaven.

We got checked in around 5:15 or so, and everything started rolling from there. Tommy was doing his usual stuff, being the early morning entertainment for the nurses. I got hooked up to the fetal monitor, which proved to be quite a hassle since the baby wouldn't stay in one place. I had blood drawn, I was poked and prodded, and eventually hooked up to the Pitocin drip. Eventually, I started feeling contractions and I was getting anxious. I couldn't wait to meet my lil' man. And I was hungry. Like ravenous. Road kill would've probably sufficed if it were sitting in front of me.

At first, I thought I might tough out the contractions, but as they progressively got stronger, well, I decided that I'm not so tough. I took the darn thing. But the drawback was I think I got a little too much numbing because I felt a little loopy, but I couldn't feel much else. Well, the contractions I felt, but they weren't painful. The nurses probably thought I was crazy because I kept asking if I was supposed to feel like I felt. "I have no legs!", I kept thinking. Really though, this wasn't like my previous pregnancies I can tell you that.

Well, after some prepping and pushing and pushing and more pushing, John Cooper made his way into this world on October 26 at 3:19 p.m. He certainly was a lot larger than I expected, weighing in at 9 lbs. 7 oz. and he was 21 1/2 in. long. And he was puuurty. Just like my other children, he was chubby and pink and had a full head of dark hair. I got to hold him as soon as he came out, which never happened before. But I wanted him clean so I could kiss him without getting, well, yucky. And once that happened, I couldn't get enough of him. His soft skin, moist lips, tiny hands. Oh, I'd have ten more if they stayed babies.




I uploaded images from his birth to my Facebook account so our other children could see him. The kids stayed at a family friend's home and when I called to let them know to look at the images, the happiness was apparent. I couldn't wait for them to meet their little brother. We came home the next evening, thank goodness for that, and when they came in, it was pure elation as we had not seen the kids in almost 48 hours, but even more, the kids were happy to finally see John Cooper in the flesh. Even though he was a big baby, he was still tiny, especially seeing him next to the other kids. These days, the kids can't get enough of him, from holding him, to talking and singing to him, to making faces at him. It's almost too much. Brennan wants me to have a million more babies, he says. Dream on, son, dream on.


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John Cooper is a month old today. Hard to believe how fast the time goes by and this sinking feeling sets in when you know that the newborn and baby stages are short-lived. He's starting to smile more frequently, especially in response to my voice. Makes me want to cry even now. He's been an ideal baby, my "dream baby" as I refer to him. He breastfeeds like a champ and has now grown 3 more inches and has gained over 2 lbs. since his birth. He even sleeps like a dream. I guess God knew I needed a good sleeper after the many restless nights of not-so-great sleepers. Our lil' butterball has us all wrapped around his tiny fingers and we couldn't feel more thankful and blessed as we do right now.

When he was three days old, he had his first impromptu photo shoot with me. He had another one at 11 days old and I have to say, it's a lot harder to shoot your own baby when you just had him and your haven't fully recuperated from giving birth. He's beauty, even if I am his momma. Enjoy!