jeh

an inappropriate amount of time has passed since jonah was born. 4wks and a day to be exact. i should probably post about the day he was born, seeing as how i'm already beginning to forget a few of the details. (i just had to ask mor if my epidural was administered before or after jones broke my water. neither of us remember, but i'm thinking it was after...?) here we go...

on sunday night, i got a call from the hospital regarding my induction. the nurse told me i was tentatively scheduled for the next day, but there was no set time since jones had 3 scheduled c-sections. hmm okay i guess. if i was going to be induced on monday, i would get a call sometime after 6a. i made sure to turn up my ringer to decibel level 4000 so as to not miss the call. at 6:04a monday morning, my phone rang (so loudly it could have woke up the neighbors, i swear). we got up, dressed, said a prayer with my mom and were out the door. we got to the hospital and made our way up to labor and deliver, where we were put into room 9 right off the nurses station. it was freezing in the room, so i changed into my stylish gown and left on my sweats. (the first thing the nurse said to me was something about how i would have to take off my sweats before i had the baby. thanks, nurse obvious.) i got into bed and the nurse fitted me with the monitors before she began asking me the standard questions : my name, birthday, did i have plans for the after-birth...wait, what? did i want to eat my placenta? she clarified. my regular nurse, michelle, had come into the room by this point and said "the only reason anyone does that is so they can blog about it." instantly, mor and i knew we were going to get along famously with michelle. (ps we did. in between discussing how i was feeling, we talked about the game and how none of us wanted alabama to win even if we thought there was no way nortre dame could beat them. she was pretty much the greatest nurse ever.) at some point, i started to feel sick to my stomach. mor rang for michelle, who made it to my room just as i began throwing up. after helping me out, michelle suggested i start thinking about getting my epidural.* (apparently your body can react to pain that it isn't necessarily registering as pain, and my body reacted by causing me to throw up. ick. the pitocin had something to do with it as well.) around noon or so, michelle checked me and said we should be having a baby sometime in the next 2hrs. wha?! crazy.** i think mor went and got some lunch while i rested and relaxed. michelle checked me again just before 2p and said those 5 magic words : you're ready to start pushing. the next 30min was a whirlwind. that's how long it took from the time jones came into the room until he left. no joke. at 2:08p (according to my phone records), mor sent a text to everyone that i was about to start pushing, and jonah was born at 2:16p.*** 8min, 5 pushes and our little nameless baby was born. he wasn't crying at first, which was a bit alarming. michelle put him on my chest and began wiping him off and rubbing his back to get the baby stimulated and hopefully start crying. he did eventually, start crying, and the other nurse took him to finish cleaning him and to weigh and measure him. i couldn't believe my eyes when i looked at the scale and saw that he weighed 8lbs 5oz. 15oz more than finners. practically a giant! he was 20in long and had hair to make all the girl babies (and their mommies) jealous. besides his nose being more prominent and his face more oval-shaped, he looked pretty much how i remember newborn finners. mor went with the other nurse and the baby to the nursery, while michelle helped me get ready to move down to mother and baby.**** mor left a little while later to get my mom and finners and bring them to meet the baby. finn wouldn't stop saying how much he'd missed me, which was the sweetest thing in the world. he wasn't too concerned with the baby and didn't want to hold or smooch him. he climbed into the bed with me instead and played games on the tablet. (i much prefer finn being unconcerned with the baby than having any sort of animosity towards him. he's since come around and makes sure to smooch jonah every night before bed. i've also caught him telling jonah about all the big boy things he'll teach him once he isn't a baby anymore. melts my heart, that boy, THOSE boys.) my mom was perfectly content to snuggle the baby. mor ended up taking finners home to stay with him so my mom could stay with me and the baby and so finn would have at least one of us home to put him to bed. brit came later that night, and it was really nice to have her at the hospital, almost like having may or erica there. kelly came the next day and danen, the next night. we couldn't really afford to have lots of people come visit with it being the height of flu season and all. but, i am thrilled that a few of our friends were able to pop in for a minute. we finally decided on a name while the baby was being prepped for his circumcision; strange timing, i know. mor texted me from the nursery that he was tired of the nurses just calling him "baby boy" and asking if he had a name yet; he was going to start referring to him as jonas.***** i rolled that around for a minute before i texted him back, "how about jonah instead?" perfect. our adorable little man finally had a name. we let finn choose the middle name, which is why it's elliot. (he was positive that's what the baby's first name was going to be. in fact, when we first told him the baby's name was jonah, he said something along the lines of "no, it isn't. it's elliot." and once we brought him home, finn refused to refer to the baby as jonah; it was jonah elliot or the new baby. he's just now coming around to calling him just jonah.)
as for myself : so far, so good. i am completely amazed at how quickly i recovered from this delivery. (besides the quick bout of throwing up, my labor could hardly be called such. there was nothing laborious about it. because i'm awesome like that. i can even be lazy in preparing to birth a child!) breastfeeding is still not my favorite thing in the world, but i know it's what is best for jonah, esp during all the flu and other yucky stuff floating around out there. we've been pretty much home-bound since coming home, which is fine by finn. (he's such a home-body and only willingly leaves the house if it's to go to target or walmart or toys-r-us. no lie. trying to take him anywhere else is a battle.) we've been out once with jonah, for his 2wk appt. (he was up 10oz from birth weight, 21oz from when we left the hospital and he had grown 2.5in. the nurse couldn't believe he'd gained so much weight and length in 2wks. here's hoping he continues this growing trend!) i take almost every opportunity i can to get out of the house, even though i can't really be gone for more than an hour and a half. unless i pump beforehand of course. out of the handful of times i've left the house, only one has been all by myself. i'm trying to ease mor into fathering two children, otherwise he might not want any more! i think i've been better about keeping the house picked up and feel like i use my limited free time more efficiently. the hardest part about having two kids is helping finn understand that jonah needs me for absolutely everything, so if it comes down to it, i have to tend to jonah first and him second. the hardest time i've had so far was the first night all by myself. my mom and e had gone home that day and mor had to work that morning and go back for the night. just as i was about to go to bed with jonah, finn woke up screaming and crying. as i was in his room comforting him, jonah started crying from our room. i felt like i had to choose between my children, which is a horrible, helpless feeling. finn woke up two more times that night, and jonah still didn't have the hang of nursing in bed. it was a terribly long, restless night for all of us. since then, we've been doing pretty well. we changed up how we put finn to bed (no more laying down after reading, prayers and songs; straight to sleep by himself) and jonah is starting to sleep for longer stretches at night. we're still getting the kinks worked out, but we're getting the hang of this having two kids thing.

*this is where the details get hazy. michelle had to find the "roaming" anesthesiologist because the floor anesthesiologist was on duty with all the c-sections. i think in the time it took for her to find him, dr jones came in and broke my water...? but then again...i know michelle was in the room with us when dr jones broke my water. confusion. i just remember being completely disgusted about sitting in the fluid and how frustrating it is that you can do noth.ing. about it. it didn't hurt, but the shepherd's hook thing was a bit freaky, as was the popping sound from jones breaking my water. whatever the order, once my epidural was in place, i was feeling great (besides the wet sheets). and the anesthesiologist was pretty cool and talked football with us too. i'm lucky that the epidural has fully taken with each of my deliveries. no horror stories about that from me, thank goodness!
**mor sent this text to family and friends at 12:18p : at a 5 and contracting every 2:30 should have a baby here in an hour or two. michelle told me i needed to have the baby around 2p because that's when she told dr jones i would be ready and she really would hate to be made to look a liar.i told her i'd do my best. hahaha!
***after 2 pushes, jones asked me if i'd had an episiotomy with finn. i told him i hadn't (i'd been told it was "more natural" to tear; thanks for that, haskett), and he asked if i'd mind an episiotomy this time. sure, i said. anything has to be better than the aftermath of tearing.
****on the way to m&b, michelle thanked me for being such an easy, laid-back, no-drama patient. she said she had been needing a patient like me. i told you she was the best.
*****one of the few names we had on our short list. lofton and smith were other front-runners, but he just didn't look like either of those to me. maybe our next boy will. (i've put in a request upstairs for only boys to fill our home, and we've got our fingers crossed that prayer will be answered.) there was another name i thought fit him (quaid), but mor wasn't too sure about it. jonah it was. done and done.

and now for why you really stopped by here, the pictures...

found this little surprise when i went through my bag at the hospital

i make that hospital gown look goooood!

the bassinet all ready for a baby

you can see he wasn't the healthy pink at first until he started breathing well and crying

our "big" baby

chilling in the nursery

just before bath time

first bath!

stats

first family pic (thanks, blogger, for being so helpful and automatically rotating this)

going home outfit; he grew out of this after a week

our snug little bear (please ignore how exhausted i look; percocet'll do that do a gal)

here we go!