New Arrivals

In the last 2 months we have moved 4 states, began grad school and had a beautiful baby boy.  We are the new arrivals in the state of Pennsylvania, which I had to learn to spell once we moved here.  We are new to the community, which has been a welcoming group of 80 year olds from church, new to grad school with David studying 9 hours a day, and new to the realm of parenting, which has been the greatest of joys.

Matthias right after getting cleaned up.  Our little chunk! 10 lbs 2 oz. 

Out little bundle of joy showed up Tuesday September 20th, 2011 at 6:53 in the evening.  Our day of labor was the hardest and most emotional day of my life.  We started out the day on a steady drip of Pitocin after being 11 days late, 50% effaced and dilated to zero.  Much to surprise and joy we dilated to 3+ in an hour and a half.  We were so excited to have this baby! They then broke my water, which to my surprise didn't hurt at all considering they use the term 'break'. 
So they turned up the Pit and left us to labor.  Our doula showed up and helped us along as the contractions picked up at a surprising rate thanks to the Pit.  Six hours later, the doctor came back to find out that we were no further along.  We weren't even fully effaced and the baby was still posterior.  Apparently that means he wasn't even pushing against my cervix, which doesn't do anything to help it efface. So the doctor gave us the option of laboring with an internal monitor on the baby's head or a C-section.  An hour later with no more progress we decided to opt for the C-section, after he told us that even laboring for 20 hours more, with his head pushing down in the right spot I wasn't going to efface any more, and we would end up in surgery anyway.  So we headed to surgery and 34 minutes later he was out! 

On the gurney heading back to our room from surgery.

We are so thankful to have him out but the day left me with so many unfulfilled questions.  Will labor be harder than I can handle? Can I really push out a 10 lb. child? Will recovery be easier or harder when we do this naturally? 

We are so excited to have little Matthias Joseph with us, that it doesn't matter how he got here.  We are doing wonderfully and adjusting to life as the 3 of us.