Grandparents Visit

Papa Jim and GiGi were so excited about his arrival! They loved visiting and holding their first grandson.

Transition Nursery

The doctors decided that he didn't have a strong enough cry (they called it grunting) so they had to take him away to the transition nursery. I held him for a moment before they took him. We were exhausted so the 2 hours in the nursery weren't too bad. We were able to get a few minutes of sleep! The nurse brought him back to us around 4 AM. It was tough to sleep next to him because every little sound woke us up.

Art's First Few Breaths

After about 2 hours of pushing, we finally have our little guy. He was worth it! Here are the first few moments of Art's life when they were cleaning him up. He arrived at 12:03 AM on August 6th, 2009. He weighed 7 lbs 3 oz and was 20 inches long.

Epidural

Look away now if you are any bit squeamish. My contractions got harder so I opted for the epidural. I felt it go in, but couldn't see it so I had Brian take a photo for me. You can't actually see where it goes into my spine, but there is the tube that feeds the wonderful medicine to help with the pain. Good for those mothers that can bear it! I didn't feel like having painful contractions every minute for a minute.

Labor begins

Here are the joys of labor. My contractions hadn't started hurting yet so we had a chance to play on the laptop. I'm all hooked up to the pitocin and they visited every 15 minutes to up my doses. Good times...

Heading out for the hospital

Sooo, we fast forward several weeks here. We had just gone to the doctor on August 4th for a regular appointment and he told us that we still had some time. My body hadn't changed any so it wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

I woke up that morning at 1 AM and noticed that my water had broken. I hadn't had any contractions yet so I was slightly panicked and called the doctor. The one on call told me to wait and come to the hospital around 6-6:30 AM unless my contractions got harder. We got ready to go around 6AM and arrived around 6:45. The trip to the hospital was not how I expected it. It was completely calm; no craziness where I couldn't wait much longer. We parked and walked in rather than Brian dropping me off.

It was so calm that we were able to take a few family pictures before leaving. This is us just before heading to the hospital.

This is when the baby was about 19 weeks along. We were so excited to find out that we were having a boy!