*nods off*.

Nurse woke me up to take out garbage. I swear Labor and Delivery nurses are the other reason you lose sleep in the first 24 hours after baby is born (The main reason of course taking care of the new infant… well and in Mama’s case, just good old-fashioned pain). Where was I?

Oh yeah.

So Mama had her Doctor’s appointment about 4:30 or so on Tues Nov. 5th. The doctor determined she was about 2cm dilated and 70% effaced. To those of you not familiar with the process, a baby needs to be 100% effaced and the mother’s cervix should be around 10cm dilated for the baby to be born.

So after the appointment we all went to Red Robin. Mama had a Whiskey River burger and we all split a Mountain High Mud Pie (Those things just aren’t the same without peanut butter). So maybe it was just the extra sugar, maybe it was the burger, and maybe it was just time, but Mama started to feel contractions a little more heavily around dessert. (6:30 or so).

By around 8:00, the contractions had not stopped and were a bit more regular. Mama said she had timed them around 6-8 minutes apart. So we started to put our plan of action into motion.

***sidebar****

Do you know how hard it is to plan childcare for a 5 year old kindergartner when you can’t say exactly when you will need childcare, and that need, when it arises will be at least for 24 hours and may start in the middle of the night?

Think about it. Jonny has to be at school at 8:50 and someone has to be home to pick him up at 3:30 each weekday. Planning for this…Easy…it was not.

So the contingency we had for this time was to take Jonny to his old nanny’s house. They would keep Jonny overnight and bring him to our house the next day to catch the bus. They would then come over to our house to get Jonny off the bus after school and take him to their house until my parents could pick him up. My parents would then keep him overnight and take him back over to my nanny’s house until we went home from the hospital.

So many logistics to coordinate without any idea the time frame we would need it.

So a very big thank you to our nanny and her husband (and their kids!)

Also, a very big thank you to my parents who came and took Jonny.

I want to also extend a big thank you to my sister, Auntie, who not only brought our favorite restaurant food to us in the hospital, but also made us weeks worth of frozen food so we wouldn’t have to worry about what we were going to eat for the foreseeable future.

****end sidebar****

Anyways, around 8:15pm, I put Jonny down to sleep and checked on Mama. The contractions were still persisting (5-6 minutes apart). By 9:15, I called our nanny to let her know the baby was probably coming some time that night. Jonny was asleep so we packed him up in his jammies and brought him out to their house to sleep. They would then make sure he got to and from school okay.

So from there we went back home while the contractions persisted. At around 11:30pm the contractions were still around 5 minutes apart, but being a 2nd child, they wanted us to just go ahead and come in so there weren’t any babies born on the side of the road.

The experience with Jonny’s birth was the only experience we had with childbirth and apparently it was not easy, but it was what we knew. We prepared for more of the same.

This labor was not (speaking from a guy’s perspective) the same…and in a good way.

Mama was actually able to talk between contractions, was able to laugh a bit, and was even able to labor a bit in a jacuzzi. She was unable to do any of those last time. By about 2am, she was 3cm dilated, but could not receive an epidural until she was between 4cm and 5cm. They would not admit her until she was about 4cm. So we walked up and down the hallway for a couple minutes. I recall doing this for several hours last time. She came back and labored a while longer on a birthing ball (which is pretty much an exercise ball)

When we came back, around 3am, she was dilated enough to receive an epidural, and after our experience last time she wasn’t about to say no.

And of course, being a nurse, she had a “nurse’s luck”. Wouldn’t you know it, at that precise time, the doctor who could administer the epidural was “finishing up” a C-section and would be in “shortly.”

An-hour-and-a-half later (around 4:30am) Mama received her epidural. She (and I) fell asleep shortly after. Around 5:30, I woke up to about 5 nurses in the room. Apparently Mama’s blood pressure had dropped after she fell asleep and they didn’t like the numbers. She was also laying on her side which (I guess) can skew the readings a bit. Either way, her heart rate was okay, but they were concerned it would drop again. They were also concerned about the baby’s heart rate so they attached a monitor in-utero to Jonah’s head.

It ended up being fine and she fell back asleep (and so did I). She woke up and paged the nurses around 7:15am because she felt “pressure”. Sure enough, the nurse called the doctor and by about 7:45am or so, Jonah was born. All 9 pounds and 8.9 ounces of him (21 inches). He is a big baby, but he was easier for Mama to push out than Jonny was. The labor was about 12 hours from start to finish compared to about 17 hours with Jonny

And (as far as we know) he is a completely healthy baby. Jonah is fair-skinned with brown eyes and I have even caught a glimpse of a dimple when he “smiles.”

Jonny was also a fantastic baby, but Jonny… shall we say “made us work a bit more.” If you followed my blog at all, you know what we went through with Jonny and his first years.

Jonah didn’t even cry when he had his first shots and his blood sugar drawn 3 times. He has none of the health issues Jonny had when he was born.

It has been a surreal pregnancy. We are still at the hospital waiting for the pediatrician to finally clear Jonah for discharge but he has passed every health test thus far with flying colors. His first night at the hospital, Mama actually had to wake him up to feed!! I got about 6 hours of sleep. (which is around what I usually get).

I know it is still very early, but the fact that the first night is down with no problems is a huge confidence booster. He was awake and alert for a good portion of the morning (it is currently 1pm) which is a good indicator that his sleep schedule will be easy to keep on track.

We are excited and hopeful for this baby and getting used to the new addition. Jonny loves his new little brother and we love our new son.

Thank you so much for the love and support from all our friends and family. I will be sure to keep you posted on how we are doing in the next couple months as Jonny and Jonah grow up together.