Thanksgiving...and Halloween

Well Thanksgiving is finally here, meaning there's only one more month of 2013. Today is also the day our first child, Connor, turns 4 weeks old, having been born this past Halloween. That was a Halloween to remember.

I was awoken at 1:30am by Whitney, who said she was bleeding and had called the advice nurse who advised her to come in. Turns out her mucous plug had come out, an early indicator that labor is imminent. So we drove to the hospital in Roseville, after loading the cats up with ample food since we suspected that we'd be gone for some time.

At the check-in station in Labor and Delivery they determined that Whitney was having contractions 3-4 minutes apart. Though she was not feeling them at the time (lucky her I suppose). She was dilated enough to admit her at that point, though it was right on the cusp of that so we were given the choice to be admitted straight away or to wait two hours and see if anything was progressing. We chose the former.

Most of the day was uneventful as we sat in our room and watched the contractions come and go on the monitor. Around 11:00am she finally started to feel them - and then they progressively got more painful until the point where we decided it was time for the epidural at 12:30pm. That thing is a godsend - amazing how it changes the course of labor. She was also on Pitocin at that point, and actually had been for a few hours, but still things appeared to be moving a bit slowly. At 1:00pm we were calling the nurses station to notify them that her water had broke. When they checked her again a couple of hours later, they discovered that her dilation had rapidly increased.

It was decided to start active pushing at 5:30pm, which we did, and for the next two hours it was like riding the waves of the ocean; with each swell on the monitor she began pushing to try and get him further down. It seemed like a horrifically slow process, but in reality the whole thing was over in two hours - a mere wink of time compared to some of the labor horror stories you hear about - and Connor was born at 7:37pm.

It was quite an amazing thing to watch; surreal really, to see this human child come out of its mother. He actually got a little stuck at the shoulders and they had to twist and pry and prod him a little to get him to come out. But then he was here! The doctor's first words were, "Wow, I didn't expect him to be that big". They had guesstimated 7-8 pounds earlier, but he came out at 8 pounds, 15 ounces. The first thing they did was to put him on Whitney for some skin to skin bonding time, where he stayed for several minutes before I cut the cord. He must have liked it because he pooped all over Whitney and himself. And the bed. And the sheets. And the floor.

Cutting the cord, incidentally, feels just like they described it - like cutting through a deflated balloon.

So now, four weeks later, we have a healthy (and large) baby boy, who spends his days eating, sleeping, and pooping. And yet he still finds time to complain about that by crying his head off. Fortunately he's not colicky, and in reality, as babies go, and actually pretty mild mannered. And what a personality! It's amazing the facial expressions and body movements he's capable of at such a young age.

So here's to four weeks, which have flown by really, and to many more to come. Maybe next year we can actually be home to hand out candy on Halloween...