Filling In

Katy has asked me to "tastefully" fill in some of the details. Here goes. Thursday night was like many of the nights we've had recently. We were preparing for the baby by getting some last minute items and totally reorganizing our house. We've been doing this a lot recently, especially the house reorganization, so by 12:30 am, we were pretty much down to a list of 10 more things to do. Katy had been having contractions throughout the day, but we were not particularly concerned because she has been having contractions on and off for weeks. Then, at 4:50 am, she woke me up. Her bag of waters had broken.

With that event, we sprung into action, unpacking the bags we packed weeks ago, and re-packing them to make sure we had everything (or in our case, approximately two of everything). I called in to work and ran a couple of quick errands to get some things we were missing, and Katy worked for about two hours (while having contractions) to wrap up things for work. Then we ate some breakfast together, and around 11am Katy called the doctor's office. She wanted to labor at home as long as possible, but when they hear her water had broken they really wanted us to come in to make sure. When they confirmed it had broken, they encouraged us to go to the hospital telling us we could always go home after they made sure the baby was ok. Of course this didn't happen. Tricky doctors...

When we got to the hospital, some nurse came in and said, "Ok, we've got a plan for you. We're going to put you on pit (pitocin is a drug that induces labor) and really get things moving." We had prepared for a natural birth by taking a Bradley class, and weren't anxious to go on pitocin unless we absolutely had to. The nurses and doctors were kind of bossy and not very respectful of our wishes. Fortunately, we were with a great practice that included midwives. Once the midwives came to see us they worked it out so Katy only had to be on the monitor for 20 minutes every hour and got the nurses into line. Labor progressed slowly from there and slowed down every time they hooked Katy up to the monitor.

Katy did an amazing job. She kept walking around and doing everything she could to move things along. Her determination and endurance were absolutely incredible. They checked her at midnight, and she had dilated 5cm. Then, although exhausted she kicked it into high gear.

Finally, around 4:45am we had moved through transition and she finally got the urge to push. At 5:40 am, she gave birth to a beautiful boy. It was absolutely incredible--the most amazing experience of my life. It was amazing to see Reuben all blue, drawing his first breaths and crying for the first time. As soon as he heard Katy's voice he turned right toward her. He knew his Mom right away and the two have been inseparable ever since. She has been wonderfully patient, loving and kind throughout the whole process. Reuben's birth was completely natural. even though it took 25 hours of labor. Katy received no pain medication or inducing drugs. She was also wonderfully kind and polite throughout the whole labor process. Everyone at the hospital was very impressed, especially because there had been a whole bunch of C-sections that day at the hospital. Katy is recovering quickly and Reuben is figuring things out well. He is already a great eater and seems to be a really sweet kid.

We were helped greatly to have Jen, Katy's Mom, with us at the hospital. She was really encouraging and helpful. I appreciated Katy letting me be there to help out where I could. I recommend Bradley classes to anyone. It was really helpful to us, and made a natural birth possible and pleasant. It was an absolutely incredible experience. We are really excited to have Reuben as a part of our family. Here are a few more pictures of our boy.