As you may already know, Landon was born on Halloween. This was actually sort of planned. I was due November 2 (moved up from November 7), and given my age (38), history (baby #1 was induced at almost two weeks late), and how uncomfortable I was getting, we decided to induce on the first available day our doctor had the week I was due - which happened to be Halloween. We thought Halloween would be a fun birthday since it's one of our favorite holidays.
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| Me at almost 40 weeks pregnant. I'm smiling but I was more than ready to be done!!! |
That morning, I ate a good breakfast and then the Studly Hubby and I headed to the hospital (Lawrence Memorial) for a 7:30 am induction. I guess they typically have 2-3 babies per day there, so it was all pretty routine for them even though it certainly wasn't for us. They started the pitocin drip on me at about 8:30. My contractions progressively got worse and worse. When they became truly uncomfortable, at around 1 pm, I had an epidural. Very quickly after that, the contractions got much worse and I was ready to push by about 3 pm (sometimes the epidural can speed things along, which seems to be what happened to me).
Before I started pushing, we noticed that the baby's heart rate was dropping sometimes during the contractions. It kept coming back up afterwards, but the doctor warned me that if it doesn't come back up we might need to get him out quickly. I started pushing at about 4:00 pm. My doctor had to leave by around 5:00 to take her kids out trick or treating, so we were all hoping I would be done by then. I gave it three good hard pushes and we could see enough of the baby's head to tell he had a LOT of dark dark hair (just like his big sister!!) but he wasn't coming all the way out. On the second and third push his heart rate dropped and didn't immediately come back. We knew we had to get him out quickly, so the doctor decided to pull him out with a vacuum. She suctioned it to the baby's head on the fourth push and hauled him right out. He came out pretty easily and it didn't hurt thanks to the epidural but it was quite traumatic for me and I needed a lot of stitches afterwards. It didn't help that he was HUGE - 9 lb 7 oz. They had no idea he was going to be that big - we had even done an ultrasound the week before we he born to check this as his uncle Alex was 10 lb 12 oz at birth and I was worried he might be big too.
He had a healthy cry right away and was put on my chest so we could see each other. He was sooo cute! And completely looked like his big sister.
He was a bit angry at first but then settled down and seemed pretty happy to meet the nurses and get a little sponge bath. He was a good eater and a good sleeper from the very first night - he slept hard for about 3 hrs at a time at night and let us parents get a good night's rest. He passed his hearing test with flying colors and got a little pumpkin hat, and got to meet his big sister the next day.
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| Landon and Layla met for the very first time the day after he was born. |
We were so excited for our two kids to meet each other! She was ECSTATIC but also a little bit nervous about coming to the hospital and seeing how we were doing. She waited until after school was out and her Grandma brought her over. She was practically bouncing off the walls when we let her in the room. She had loved him with all her heart from the minute she knew he was in my belly.
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| Baby #1 meets baby #2 |
The Studly Hubby's Studly mommy also got to meet him and she absolutely adored him.
Nobody could believe how big he was, or how dark his hair was. I couldn't believe how much my butt hurt, and how much the Studly Hubby remembered about babies. We stayed in the hospital for two days, and had an easy transition home largely because Grandma stayed on for about a week to help with all the little things that needed help. We both took about two weeks off of work, and spent a lot of time hanging out with our new addition and totally falling in love with him.
