It's a boy!

Well, it happened. We thought he'd never come, but Louis IV was born on Monday, July 7th 2008, on his due date ironically enough. He was born (naturally, with medication thank God) at 4:08 pm, 10 pounds 11 ounces, 21 inches. I'll talk about him more after describing the events preceding his birth.

It started on Sunday night, well Monday morning. We went to bed around midnight, planning on sleeping in since we had to go to the doctor as Monday was Linnea's due date. Linnea was up constantly with some more pain than usual, but nothing as regular as contractions. We should have thought something was up; for a change I was waking up when she would get up. I usually sleep through her midnight bathroom breaks. She started feeling strange and called the Labor & Delivery nurses at the hospital. They said it was probably nothing, but she could come and get checked out if we wanted. As soon as she hung up the phone she started getting strong pains about every 4 minutes. Contractions 3-5 minutes apart is the usual go to the hospital time, so I guess we were lucky she wasn't feeling strong contractions before then. Most people feel them for quite a while (5-12 hours) before going to the hospital. We got to the hospital at 5:00 a.m. on Monday. She was at 3 cm. Later in the morning her doctor showed up (just back from vacation, fortunately. We gave her another day away from the office), and Linnea was almost at 4 cm. The doctor decided to get things moving along and gave Linnea something to strengthen the contractions. By noon she was set up with the epidural and ready to go. We got a scare when it stopped working for about an hour, but it started working again just in time. Linnea was fully dilated around 2:30 p.m. and with only an hour of rock star pushing, we had our son.

I can't even describe the moment my son came into this world. I was overcome with unexplainable emotion and started crying. Not sobbing, but they were definitely rolling down the cheek. I couldn't even say a thing, maybe a squeak, but no words. It was all I could do to even smile at Linnea. The moment was easily in the top two of my life. I can't choose between my wedding and my son's birth, because they're totally different. In a way they were both an affirmation of overwhelming love for somebody, but the indescribable nature of watching your child come into this world sets it apart somehow. I still can't believe he's ours when I hold him, but big things tend to take a while to sink in for me. I'm sure bringing him home tomorrow will help. I really can't wait.

Back to the little guy. If you don't know babies, he is absolutely HUGE. Babies are about 8 pounds on average. He looks like he's 1-2 months old already! Every time I walked by the nurses station yesterday I heard some mention about the "big boy" or heard his weight being mentioned. One nurse told us that he had the biggest hands she's ever seen on a newborn. I guess we're going to be throwing away all the newborn diapers (up to 10 lb) we already opened... We had a couple of slight scares, but he is absolutely fine. Right after he was born they needed to take him to the nursery to monitor him. The reason was unclear at first (I think the nurses don't realize the terms they use are way over everyone's head), but since he was so big he had trouble adjusting his blood oxygen levels. Unfortunately that means we couldn't hold him until about 8pm. By that time my anxiety had definitely built up, but it was a huge release to hold him for the first time.

Everyone was here when we got to bring him to our room for the first time (Grandmas Krista and Laura, Grandpa Lou - Louis Jr., and Uncles Dylan and Christian). We passed him around and took pictures of him with everyone (email me if you want the link). We fed him and convinced the Grandmas to change his diaper. We chose to have him sleep in the nursery so we could take advantage of our last two solid nights of sleep. This morning we got the second scare. The pediatrician who checked out all the babies in the morning came in at 8:30 a.m. to inform us that the murmur she heard last night (normal for newborns I guess) hadn't gone away by the morning (not normal). My heart sank as I stared blankly at the doctor trying to not look too much in shock. Linnea and I were pretty bummed, and we couldn't get him from the nursery yet again. The doctor came back at 10:00 a.m. to let us know the eckocardiogram (sp?) showed no holes in his heart (which would cause a murmur), so we were sufficiently elated and went to get him! Everyone came back today and we all hung out with the little guy. Unfortunately, my family had to go back home, but will be back in a few weeks. Grandma Krista was pretty sad to say goodbye to her grandson. I'm sure Grandpa Lou and Uncle Christian were too, but they didn't express it as much. Grandma Laura will be staying for a week to help take care of everything, and Uncle Dylan is in charge of Bailey.

Anyway, my battery is about to die, and I don't feel like reaching for the cord. From now on, baby updates and links to all his pictures will be on his own blog site. We're paranoid, so it'll be private and you'll have to get invited to see it, so email me if I don't send you an invite tomorrow.


- Dad (Louis III)