Birth Story - Daniel James

Not quite textbook, but in a wonderful way.

Rachel's pregnancy with Daniel began a little different, as she was already past the first trimester by the time she tested and went to visit her doctor.  The rest of the pregnancy was fairly quick and unremarkable, in the lead up to her Jan 9th due date.

Several weeks ago, her doctor recommended she schedule an induction for either Jan 7th or Jan 14th.  Not wanting to prolong the time, she penciled in the 7th.  The following week, a different doc encouraged her to move up the date to the 2nd since it was a second pregnancy.  She agreed, because it also worked out better for my work schedule to have the baby during break.

Much, much, much later, she informed me that the induction was scheduled for 3:30am on the 2nd.  Eck.  We rang in New Year's Day by putting ourselves to bed shortly after Andrew, well before midnight.  We woke on the 1st and celebrated our last day of the pregnancy by watching Northwestern break its 60+ year bowl win drought.  Go Cats!

The alarm rang on the 2nd at 2:45am.  I ate a donut and some Korean beef (thanks Sarah!) while Rachel warmed up leftover eggs and spinach.  We packed up the last few items and hopped in a cab.  We flew down the empty highway and arrived at the hospital in record time.

We got right upstairs and the nurse hooked Rachel up to an IV.  Apparently, Rachel has great veins and strong blood flow, as she shocked the unprepared nurse with a small fountain of blood when pricked.  The apologetic nurse then had to spend the bulk of the next 10 minutes sponging Rachel clean.

The only concern at this point was how long it would take.  Rachel's personal goal was to give birth by 10:30am.  The doctors and nurses were more conservative, offering vague predictions of "afternoon." 

More seriously, Rachel was concerned with when to get an epidural.  She had one with Andrew and so planned on getting it at some point.  The contractions were manageable, pain-wise, but the stress of deciding when was getting to her.  Around 6:30am she requested it of her nurse, who asked Rachel to rate the pain.  She said the pain was fine - a 1 or a 2.  Wrong answer.  The nurse heard that and quickly talked her into waiting longer.

A new nurse came on, and the contractions quickened.  The pain also got worse, but Rachel walked around more and found it helped a lot.  Finally, the pain sharpened and Rachel asked again around 7:30am.  The request was sent and the anesthesiologist came in at 8:00.  At this point, the pain got to her and her body went into mild shock - Rachel got light-headed, lost energy, and became weak as her blood pressure dropped.  The docs gave her some epinephrine, laid her down, and excused me from the room to start the epidural.  I went to the waiting room with instructions to come back in 30 minutes.  I read recaps of the Northwestern football game and looked out the window at the serene view of the lake.

Meanwhile, the doctors were inserting a needle into Rachel's spine as she was having frequent, intense contractions.

25 minutes later, at 8:45am, an anesthesiologist came back in and meekly told me to come back to the room - "it should happen soon."  I found my screaming, delirious wife laying there asking for help as she had the urge to push.  Moments after I came in, her doctor rushed in as the anesthesiologists were still wrapping up their work.  She found Rachel ready to go, gave a few instructions, and the baby literally popped out on the first concerted push.

We found out later, that the doctor was talking on the phone with the nurse from the other side of the hospital, and overheard an exasperated Rachel shouting in the background.  She dropped everything and sprinted through the hallways to get there in time.  The nurse told us that if there is a baby #3, we need to rent a hotel room across the street so that we can get to the hospital time.  My wife works quick!

Rachel was no longer so animated, once the baby was out.  She was also satisfied that she beat her goal by a considerable margin!

Daniel getting weighed - 8 pounds, 3 ounces.  Bigger than Andrew, even though the pregnancy was 2 weeks shorter.

 All that kicking in his mom's belly built up some nice leg muscles.

After getting all cleaned up and checked on, we transferred up to our recovery room around 11:30am.  We had the rest of the afternoon to eat and take naps.  Daniel was very quiet and very sleepy. 

Proud daddy!

The Picherts dropped by later that night.  They were Daniel's first visitors, and scored major bonus points for bringing meatball sliders.  Yum. 

That night went by easily, as Daniel slept a lot.  We felt pretty good in the morning, and we looked forward to having my mom and Andrew visit later in the day.

Andrew lit up when he arrived in the room and saw his brother.  Too bad his irresponsible parents ruined the moment!

He recovered and had some tender moments with his baby brother.

  

Andrew likes his brother, but he is still a toddler....the attention span is limited!

We have been told (correctly) that baby Daniel looks a lot like his big brother.  It doesn't help that we dressed him in the same clothes, used the same baby blanket, and took some of the same type of pictures as we did with Andrew.

 He felt the need to have a more expressive face when we gave him this hat. 

There are those eyes!

Experience is key.  That is what I have learned from all this.  There is so much less stress about all the little things - about the hospital routine, about the behavior of a newborn, about taking care of a little one, etc.  With less stress, we got more sleep and felt much better about the whole process.  We certainly feel God's blessing for the ease of this week, and are grateful for the help we received along the way - and especially for my mom, who stayed with Andrew for those days we were at the hospital.

Welcome to the world, Daniel!

-alan