The new baby: January 2008 Archives

I know, I know, you've all been dying to see pictures of the baby beyond his hospital shot.

Well, don't say I never gave you anything.

Here are a bunch of shots that my niece Gina took during the week she stayed with us (thank you, Gina, for staying and for sharing these pics!):

Obviously, this is Sam and Noah. You'll soon get to read about how Sam's taking to being a big sister.

Awwwwww ... he's so gonna hate me for this when he's 14 ...

This little blue outfit is one of my favorites on him!

And that's just funny. I love it!

Note: If you haven't read "Labor, Part I" and "Labor, Part II," see below.

I didn't get to hold Sam for a few hours after she was born because she had some trouble breathing and keeping her heart rate up, so she was taken to an ominous-sounding place called the transitional nursery. By the time I finally got to hold her, she had had a bath and was all warm and fuzzy and beautiful.

Noah's breathing and heart rate were just fine. He got the once-over, Daddy got to cut his cord, and then they handed him to me all swaddled up, with goop still stuck in his neck and in his ears and in the folds of his eyelids. He was gorgeous.

My mom, Damon and I got about 45 minutes with him before they came to take him for his first bath and stuff. At this point, it was 3:15 a.m., and Damon and I decided he should go home and get some sleep so that he would be there for Sam on Christmas morning.

Thank God my mom stayed.

Note: If you haven't read "Labor, Part I," see below.

So we got to the hospital between 12:30 and 12:45 a.m., and Damon tossed me into a wheelchair in the entryway. The hospital doors are locked overnight, so he had to use the security phone to have them let us in -- while I'm sitting in the wheelchair having just about the worst contraction yet.

We got in, got to the right floor and Damon darted downstairs to go park the car. The very sweet nurse at the desk, who clearly couldn't see that I was about the drop this baby on the floor, sent me to the bathroom to pee in a cup. I almost said, "Are you kidding me?" when she told me this, but -- surprise, surprise, considering I was in labor -- I was having a contraction when she sprang this brilliant idea on me and I couldn't speak.

When I finally got out of the bathroom and back to the nurses' station, I managed to wheeze out, "I'm having so much pressure with each contraction. I really feel like I need to push."

This woke up my sweet little oblivious nurse, who swept me into the exam room and got a doctor in within two minutes. For those of you to whom this tally will mean something, here's where I measured:

8 cm, 90 percent effaced, zero station

All right, cuz you're all dying to know how it went -- and cuz I'm still enjoying telling this story -- here's the lowdown on how Mr. Noah came into the world.

On Christmas Eve, I had a checkup at 11:30 a.m. The doctor, who was not my usual OB, said everything looked fine, although he thought the baby was pretty big, and he suggested we schedule me to be induced. He asked me what I thought about that.

You can imagine my response.

He called over the hospital to see if they could take me that afternoon, but they were all full, he said. So he scheduled me for Wednesday, Dec. 26, at 7 a.m. (which would have given Noah the same birthday as his Nana, who was turning 75, and one of his cousins, who was turning 21).

So I waddled out of there, drove home, rested for a bit and then went to the grocery store with my mother-in-law, who had come out to stay with us. While we were there, I started getting some pretty strong contractions. They weren't regular at all and, let's face it, I'd already had so many Braxton Hicks fake-out contractions that I didn't think twice about these.