Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Welcome, Baby N!

As foreshadowed on Monday, our friend A was induced this morning, and Baby Boy N arrived at 8:12 pm, after only about 20 minutes of pushing.

I went up to the hospital for a while this morning before work, but there wasn't much going on then. I texted with her a bit while at work, prepping my students for tomorrow's final.

One of those students, as luck would have it, is DoulaK, with whom I've been texting back and forth for the past week or so, relaying message to A about natural induction methods and such. When we started the exam review, I just handed her my phone, and said, "If you see anything from A, just go ahead and reply."

After work I came home for a while and worked on lining up a sitter for Peeper. Thank you, thank you, thank you to T who was willing to have her over until bedtime, which turned out to be past bedtime.

Here's a photo she texted me of Peeper and her girls. Her caption was "All on their 'phones' talking to each other. I'm seeing evidence of our future ;) "


When I got back up to the hospital around 5 pm, another MOMS Club friend of ours, R, was there, along with some of A's family, of course. R and I ended up in the room from then until time for her family to pop in and out for a quick visit before time to push (which was just her and her husband.) We were each really glad that the other was there, since it would've been kind of weird for either of us to be the only non-family member.

She had an epidural by then, so we were just chatting for most of the time, while I texted back and forth with DoulaK, giving her a centimeter-by-centimeter report of A's progress.

At one point, I asked her "When you become a midwife (that's why she's in nursing school), can R and I work with you as doulas?" (At which point, A said, "Me too!") That's the first time I've actually voiced that desire out loud to her, but it couldn't have been a surprise.

I don't know when it would be practical to make it happen, since there's that whole on-call, gotta go when you gotta go thing, but it really is something that I think I love to do eventually.

When R and I left to let A's family in, it was pushing time for me to go pick up Peeper, and for her to go home for an online class, but we made plans to come back afterward. A was probably pushing for just a few minutes when we left, and literally as I pulled into T's driveway, I got the text from A's husband that "He's here!" In response to my question about stats and photos, he said (when N was about 20 minutes old) "Apgars 9/9. He's nursing now; they will weigh him in a little while."

T, R and I all had to get verklempt about that one. A's big concern about the induction and all the interventions that can lead to was that she might not be able to hold and nurse N immediately, but as it turned out, he went straight into her arms, and nursed pretty much immediately - for about an hour!

I collected Peeper, and we met up with R for a bite to eat and then went back up to the hospital, where her family was still waiting to see them. A and her husband have said all along that H would be the first to see the baby, and we were waiting for her to get there. Once she arrived and had a visit, the family went in for a while, and when they were done, R watched Peeper out in the waiting room while I went in, and then she took a turn when I left.

He is beautiful. I even got to hold him for a little while, because A was eating a well-earned dinner. I took a couple of photos to show Peeper, because she was really mad that she couldn't go in and see him, "That's not fair! H gets to go in the room!" Yes, honey, that's because H is his sister.

Congratulations to A, M and H and thank you for letting me share in your special day!

Oh, and we finally did get those statistics - 6 lb 15 oz and 19.5" long.



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