It's a Boy!!!

After 31 hours of labor, and about 48 hours of being awake straight our son was finally born. We tried to hold out and hoped for a vaginal birth, but in the end it turned out that the best option for both mom and baby would be a Cesarian section. It was at 1:41 AM on the morning of July, 7 2009 that Jameson Henry was born. It was a taxing experience for both the mother and I (obviously more so on the mother). But in the end it was extremely rewarding and we are both so excited with the result; a beautiful baby boy. He was born weighing 9lbs 20z and was 19 3/4 inches long. He has a pretty substantial head of dark hair and eyes that clearly resemble his 1/8 chinese herritage. Both of his grandparents on his mothers side were present in the hospital, as well as his Grandfather, step-Grandmother and Great Grandparents on my side. His paternal Tutu and aunt will be flying in from Hawaii in the near future to meet him. It was a very proud moment on his first day of life to be able to take a picture with 4 generations of men from his paternal side.

The feelings that I had were quite mixed and hard to interpret due to the fact that at the time of birth I had been awake for well over 40 hours with only one or two less than 1 hour naps. This coupled with the fact that I wasn't able to eat anything substantial for most of that time made me an exhausted mess by the time we were all through. It was due to this and the pain that his mother was in that we left him with the nurses in the nursery for the remainder of the first morning, from about 4:30 to 8:00 before we picked him up and kept him in our room for the remainder of the time. The emotions underneath all of the physical feelings were most certainly joy and amazement. I could do nothing but hold him in my arms and stare at him for the first couple of days (not to say that it has even stopped yet). He is quite a boy!

The first couple of nights that we had him in the hospital were a bit tough because he wasn't able to sleep very well. In hindsight I think that the noisy, disruptive environment was the largest contributing factor to this. Once we were able to bring him home (the afternoon of July 10) he slept much better (so far anyway). He seems to be healthy and happy and is extremely calm at this point. He doesn't cry much and when he does he is usually easily soothed by a feeding, a diaper change or just being held (the boy loves to be held). He seems to be on a much more regular eating and changing schedule (a nice change from the 9 poops that he made the first day). He seems to be taking fairly well to the breastfeeding, although he finds it hard to stay awake for longer than a couple of seconds while he is feeding from his mother. He doesn't have this same problem when he is taking the pumped milk from the bottle.

This weekend he got his first chance to meet his maternal aunt and uncle and his two girl cousins (5 and 2 years old). It gave us a good look at how different syblings can be and what we have to look forward to over the next couple of years.

Mom was very sore and slow going for the first couple of days but seems to be recovering well. She is deeply in love with our son and is adjusting very well to being a mother. She has done extremely well in adjusting so far. We are both excited for the times ahead!

It's go time

For the past week or so I've been feeling like someone who's been told they are going to be in charge of co-captaining a spaceship. Problem is: "we can't tell you when, exactly" and I've never captained one of these things before. I've been on one, seen a couple flown, but I didn't exactly take notes. I read about half a book too, hope that will come in handy. In the end it just seems like a learn on the job type thing. Attempt to make the mistakes small and learn from them quickly.

It's about 3:00 AM on 7/6 right now, and we are getting ready to leave for the hospital. Mom is doing great handling things so far. I hope that the lack of sleep doesn't hurt her too much. Here's to hoping it's the real thing, and all goes well.

Contractions started on the evening of 7/5 shortly after my mother-in-law arrived. I am certainly impressed by their German sense of timing. On that day Roger Federer won his 15th Grand Slam title against Andy Roddick at Wimbledon.

Update 7:00 PM. It has been a long day so far. We arrived at the hospital a little after 3:30AM. As soon as they hooked Sydney up to the monitors and started watching her, the contractions lessened dramatically. We got up and walked around for about 40 minutes, during which time the contractions returned to being pretty normal and strong, but once again when they put her on the monitors and into the bed the contractions stopped again and she was still only 2cm dilated. They gave us the option of going home or staying for another hour to see Dr. Crookes (Olivia). I was leaning toward going back home but Mom wanted to stay and see the doctor. Luckily we stayed because within that hour the labor seemed to accelerate and "turn the corner" as the nurses and doctors said. By this time the pain was very very strong and the decision was made to take the epidural. This took a while to receive because the anesthesiologist was seeing to another patient who was having an emergency C-section. In the men time she was given a sedative to help "take the edge off". Finally we got the block, but this seemed to slow the contractions again and little progress was seen so a Pitosin drip was started. It was finally at about 6:00PM that they checked again and she was 6cm dilated. The nurse wasn't encouraged by this and seemed to think it meant we would be needing a C-section, but the doctor came by and said she thought the signs were good and that we could check again in 2 hours. I am watching the monitors now and it appears to me that she is in the "transition" phase of labor, which is the immediate predecessor to the "pushing" phase of the labor. This has not been confirmed, but it is what I believe.