Baby Henry, 1 1/2 weeks

I can’t believe we’ve had this baby for a whole week and a half!  He’s still beautiful and is changing all the time.  They say they can’t smile at this age, but boy does he look like he’s grinning sometimes!  There have been some long, hard days, of course, but on the whole, he’s a great, well-behaved baby

Welcome, Henry!

Here are some pictures of our beautiful baby boy!

He already likes to make faces

The proud father

. . . and mother

First family photo

Brand new conehead baby

Grandma Jarvis

Here He Comes!

2:33 pm

So, it’s been a while. It turns out that after you have a baby, there’s a lot to do (including sleep). Here’s a recap.

At 6:45 (ish) this morning, after only 20 minutes of pushing, Danika gave birth to Henry James Dunn. He weighed in at 8 lb 5 oz and a is a whopping 21 inches long. He’s got dark blue baby eyes (which Danika hopes turn brown), and his hair matches both of his grandpas - mostly bald and red-headed. He’s already breastfeeding like a champ (turns out we gave birth to a sucker), and he smiles in his sleep. We sure love this little guy.

The nurses have remarked about how strong he is (”he must have been working out in there”) and how calm he is (he’s only cried for about 3 minutes total, something we sure hope keeps up!).

Moral of the story: we made a small human being.

Wow.

6:06 am

After a night with little sleep and even less progress, we’re glad so see some light this morning. The last check we had was at about 4am (two hours ago) and we had only dilated to a 4, so Henry is taking his time.

We got a new nurse this morning who came in, checked Danika, and said, “you’re complete?”

“Complete?” we asked, stunned. “What does that mean?”

“You’re at a  10. Let me get some things and call the doctor.”

AAAAAH! Here comes the fun stuff!!!

1:50 am

Okay, it’s all dark in here now.  After being checked at midnight with no change in the dilation (effaced to 80%, though), Dr. Ludlow decided it was time to start Pitocin. Pitocin can make for some monster contractions and Danika could really use some rest, so we decided to get an epidural. The anesthesiologist came in at about 1am and ran a garden hose down Danika’s spine. Almost immediately her feet started to tingle. Now she can’t really feel either of her legs, which she comments about all the time.

“I can’t sleep because my legs feel so weird!”

Helping her shift from one side to the other was a hoot.

Anyway, now that the Pitocin and the epidural are working together, there’s not much left for Danika and I to do but get some rest before the real work starts later this morning. The contractions are getting harder, and she’s now past a 3 (finally, a change!), but she’s feeling good, especially since the anesthesiologist gave her a Jeopardy-esque clicker that he called the ‘happy button,’ which will increase the flow to her epidural whenever she feels discomfort.

Now for some sleep (hopefully). More in the morning.

11:47 pm

We’ve finished ‘Clueless,’ which wasn’t as good as we remember it being (and I don’t think either of us remember it being that good) and we’re now halfway through ‘The Three Musketeers,’ which Danika has never seen (I couldn’t believe it either). At our last check, the uterus had moved forward (a good thing) but hadn’t dilated further (not as good a thing). Tina, our nurse, is coming in to check again in a few minutes. If we still haven’t changed after that, she’ll give the doctor a ring and see if he wants to start Pitocin (contraction juice).

The contractions are coming every few minutes - a pretty good clip - and Danika says she’s at a 7 out of 10 on the pain scale during the contractions (”say eight!”). We’ll see how far she goes before we get an epidural. It turns out labor isn’t just about pain, it’s about endurance.

9:42 pm

Okay, so we’re officially in the hospital and HAVING A BABY!

We came in this evening at about 7, having consistent, but not remarkable, contractions. We had seen our new doctor, Dr. Ludlow (we really like him), earlier that afternoon. He told us that he was assigned to be the resident doctor tonight anyway, so we might as well come in if we were having contractions (which we always are) and he would see what he could do about it.

So, we came in, he stretched Danika manually (yikes!) and about an hour later, he came back and broke her water. Hooray! For those of you that don’t know, once the water is broken, there’s no turning back. You are either going into labor naturally or they’re going to get you there chemically. So, here we go!

I’ll try to post updates sporadically throughout the night. The doctor said to count on about 1 cm/hr, plus another hour or so forpushing. Right now (9:45pm), we’re at almost a 3 (out of 10), so we’re looking at having the baby at 6 or 7 in the morning. Here comes a long night.

Pictures later (not gross ones, I promise).

The Waiting Game

Well, for anyone who hasn’t heard, we still don’t have a baby.  The doctor called off the inducement last week and now we’re 4 days past our due date.  Let me tell you, that is not a nice thing to do to anybody.  My mom had already bought her ticket to come out from North Carolina, so she’s been here for a week.  That’s been really nice.  We’ve made curtains and cute things for Henry.  Of course I’d rather have a baby, but at least I haven’t been really bored while I wait.  Anyway, here are some pictures of me this last week.  The weird thing is that I’m STILL GROWING!  Every day this baby gets bigger - a scary prospect.  The plan now is to induce (for real this time) Thursday if he hasn’t come by then.