He's Here

We welcome William Emerson Staley into the family. He was born at 1:16 a.m. on August 13th, weighing in at 9 lb, 10 oz and 20 inches long.

In spite of Tracy's 40 week appointment on Monday making it look like William was going to take his sweet time, Tracy's water broke at about 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the actual due date. Since her contractions weren't too strong or close together, we decided to labor at home for a while, and didn't head into the hospital until around 9 a.m. Things seemed to be progressing pretty well, but around 6 p.m. Tracy's temperature was above normal and the baby had an elevated heart rate. Since it had been so long since her water had broken, the doctor decided it would be best to move from Family Beginnings (the natural childbirth center at Miami Valley Hospital) to Labor and Delivery, so the baby's heart rate could be monitored more closely. Unfortunately, this meant Tracy couldn't get in the water, which was something she was looking forward to to help deal with the pain.

Luckily, our wonderful nurse Judy from Family Beginnings was able to accompany us over so we didn't have to switch nurses during the change over to Labor and Delivery. After some fluids and antibiotics , Tracy was moving along pretty well. However, after getting all the way to 9 cm naturally, her body decided to back-track, going back to 6-7 cm. At that point (around 10 p.m.)the nurse and doctor ordered pitocin, so Tracy decided an epidural was in order. The good news is that all of that time allowed the baby to descend slowly, so by the time he was ready to come out, Tracy only had to push for less than 5 minutes before he was out in the world.

Though William's hair is a bit darker, he does bare a strong resemblance to his older brother. Unfortunately, his birth story is a bit too much like his older brother's as well, though labor with William only clocked in at about 22 hours, compared to Elliott's 28 hours.

As of Friday, we're all home and baby and mom are doing wonderful. Elliott is also doing well as a big brother.

Book shower

My friend Yvonne graciously hosted a small shower at me last week. Since I have most of everything I need for a baby, she suggested the guests bring children's books as gifts. What a treat. All of the books were so thoughtful; I have read a few to Elliott already and am looking forward to being able to read them to both boys over the next few years. You can see pictures of some of the books at my friend Becky's blog (I am too lazy to go find a camera right now; in fact, I'm too lazy to do much of anything.)

And that brings me to a pregnancy update. I will be 39 weeks on Wednesday. I wasn't dilated at my last appointment, but there's other evidence that things are moving along toward delivery. I am much more impatient this time around than with Elliott. With him, I had prepared myself to to wait it out, even two weeks over my due date would have been acceptable to me because I had mentally prepped myself to be late. But now, I am more than ready to get this show started. I doubt that I will be induced or try any other measures like membrane stripping before my due date; however, if I go over, I'm just not sure what I'll do. I really am tired of being pregnant. It has come over me suddenly to be incredibly put out by carrying this child any longer. He needs to just come on down and out.