Friday, October 20, 2006
Our Cute Little Boy
As I'm sure all of you that know me well have heard, my little baby boy was born on the night of October 11th, 2006! That was an exciting day. We had gone to the hospital the evening before because of some bleeding and early contractions, but they had sent us home because labor had not yet begun. Becky was unable to sleep that morning, because she started having contractions around 2:00am. She timed them and noticed that they were getting closer together. I rolled over and went back to sleep, but I got up around 4:30am when they started to really bother her. I worked on the website that would be Eric's home page while she logged the contractions. Before my work day was scheduled to start, I let my boss know that Becky went into labor. He and I had discussed me taking two weeks off when that happened. He texted me back wishing us the best.
The remainder of the day was spent helping Becky deal with the discomfort and pain that come with going into labor as we waited until we were ready to go to the hospital. She called her doctor's office at 6am and spoke with the exchange, but the on-call doctor told her to come in when the contractions were three minutes apart for an hour. At the time, they were more like ten to fifteen minutes apart. It took until about 12:30pm before they were that close. By then, she was in real pain and was doing whatever she could to distract herself from it. She found one thing that seemed to help, and kept doing that until it was time to go. We loaded everything into the SUV that we bought from my dad, during which time she had about three contractions. Then we headed to the hospital. Traffic wasn't great, but it wasn't slow either. We got there in about forty minutes. Instead of parking in the main lot and walking in like we'd been doing when she was sent to the hospital the three or four previous times due to on-call doctors not wanting to take any chances, I dropped her off right at the emergency room and then walked back after parking the car.
When I got to the emergency room, Becky was nowhere to be seen. I let the lady at the front desk know that my wife had come in while in labor a few minutes ago, and she asked for her name. She was relieved to hear that someone had actually driven Becky in, because she had watched her have three painful contractions just sitting in the emergency room waiting area, and she was wondering just how Becky had managed to get to the hospital in such a state. Then she took me around to the back where she slid her card so I could go through the door up to the labor and delivery floor. The nurses there directed me to the room where Becky was changing into her hospital gown. Then a nurse came in that was kinda matter-of-fact and insensitive--not the nice, gentle nurse we had gotten to know that had been there almost every time we had come in before. This nurse ended up being the one that was assigned to Becky the whole time. I'm sure she had plenty of experience and knew what she was doing, but the way she communicated made the whole experience more unpleasant for Becky than it had to be. She acted like she didn't believe Becky was really in labor, and gave us the whole speech about how not drinking enough water can make the uterus contract--as if Becky wasn't already five days overdue and always drinking plenty of water.
After signing a pile of papers while having contractions, she finally got some pain medicine and then an epidural shortly afterward. We dozed off for a little while, but after a bit, Eric's heart rate started to drop, and a bunch of people came in and got Becky hooked up to a bunch of wires and tubes. Eric got an internal monitor attached to his head, Becky got, among other things, an oxygen mask, an I.V., and a flush of the amniotic fluid when her water broke and it was apparent that there was quite a bit of meconium present. Her labor progressed in waves, but finally reached the point where she was able to push around 10pm. One and a half hours of pushing were followed by the doctor showing up and, after turning his head back to where it needed to be and making a couple of small incisions, finally pulled Eric's little cone head out. Immediately someone suctioned out all of his facial openings, and then out came his whole body! He had his arms up, bent at the elbows, and he was crying with his cute little cry. They laid him on his mommy's chest and I got to cut the cord. I followed him (Eric) over to the warmer and watched as people did all sorts of evaluations and cleaned him up. I then started snapping pictures and even took a few movies. Sorry, I don't have the actual birth on video. I was too involved in coaching Becky and making sure I didn't miss one second of what was going on.
After that whole ordeal was over, it was around 1am and it was time to call everyone whose phone numbers we had with us that we would dare call that early in the morning. Eric's new grandparents, of course, were the first to be called, both sets being first-timers. My dad, for one, was thrilled to get that call in the middle of the night. Then we headed up to the fifth floor with Becky in a wheelchair, and got assigned a recovery room. Eric spent that first night in the nursery, as both of his parents were exhausted, especially his mommy. He didn't seem to get the hang of nursing right off the bat, and what he was getting wasn't enough, so he got the hospital's canned, ready-to-eat formula and we got to see a lactation consultant the next morning. He didn't eat a lot and spit up after every meal, so after getting his stomach pumped and continuing to not hold down his food, he was soon put on soy-based formula. He did better with that, though he still had a little trouble.
We were all concerned that he wasn't needing his diaper changed all day long, and Becky was having some minor recovery complications of her own, so we stayed another night. Eric's close family that was close enough to come visit him and weren't sick did so that the first evening. He spent the next night in the room with his mommy and daddy, though I had a splitting headache which was probably a combination of exhaustion, sinus pressure, and dehydration. By 11am the next morning, Becky and Eric were both considered healthy enough to release, and we had changed a few of his diapers in short succession. We got everything loaded back in the SUV and headed home. A couple more of his relatives and friends visited him there, and thus commenced our first sleep-deprived night at home with a newborn. Not that we minded. We loved hearing his cute little cry and comforting him, but we both needed naps the next day and thankfully we were able to get them while he slept off a large formula meal.
We're still trying to help him become a fully breast-fed baby. We've got an appointment with the lactaction consultant on Monday, and in the mean time, she's got Becky on a strict pumping schedule, which is keeping both of us very busy all day long, that is supplemented with formula so that Eric gets all the nutrition and fluids that he needs, and is designed to train her body to start making lots of milk, hopefully before our appointment. We finally ran out of hospital formula, so I've bought a couple different kinds since then. We've got a bunch of logs that we've been keeping, including one for his feedings, one for his diapers, and one for pumping milk, with a daily summary page for each one. The logs are extremely helpful in making us confident about whether or not he's getting what he needs in nutrients and fluids. So far, it looks like his food intake is improving, and his output looks to be on track too. It helps that we're able to measure everything that goes into him in ounces rather than minutes. We're also trying to be conscious of when he's oversleeping and missing a whole meal that he's supposed to be getting, which he does a lot, though waking him up just to try to get him to eat is extremely hard to do.
As most of you know, I posted the pictures to Eric's personal website, http://www.dfzsoftware.com/eric/pictures.php, which requires a password that has been distributed (please don't mention it in your blog comments; if anyone who knows us personally wants it, I'll be happy to give it to them). I'll probably upload a second train load tomorrow with more current pictures, though I'm working on getting all of the pictures posted to my Kodak Gallery account. I've only used it so far to view my friends, Chuck & Mkensie's, family photos, so I don't know too much about it but I believe you have to have an account to see the pictures and probably get an invitation from the person who posted the pictures, but I'll look into it once I get a bit more spare time.
