Baby Gordon

I can't believe it's been four months since Baby Gordon was born...  We're just barely getting adjusted to having a baby around the house again.  Charlie and Ellie love their little brother and are always giving him kisses.  They seem to have taken this home invasion in stride and haven't shown any signs of resentment that this little bundle has completely taken over our lives.

I've been meaning to sit down and write about the day he was born, something I make an effort to do so I can remember that special day.  I should back up a bit and say that I started feeling pre-labor signs a couple weeks before the due date and was just uncomfortable physically.  It was just difficult to really get much done with all that extra weight and pressure in my belly.  I was tired a lot of the time but didn't sleep very well at night, getting up at least once or twice and then not falling back to sleep easily.  Needless to say, not much got done around the house and what got done took a long time.  I tried to stay with our daily routine as much as possible so we still got together with friends and do the things we like to do such as story time at the library or going to the park.  I was still swimming a few days a week - although the day before the birth, I just didn't feel like it was a good idea so I didn't go.

Friday night, September 21st, I went to bed early because Dan suggested that it would be good to get some rest since the baby could decide to come any minute.  He couldn't have been more right - at about 12:30 AM, I woke up feeling intense contractions.  I got up and used the bathroom.  I tried to relax and timed the contractions.  After a while, the contractions weren't going away and seemed to get stronger so I told Dan we better get ready to go.  I called the after hours line for the on-call ob and she called back a few minutes later.  After I told her about the intensity and frequency of the contractions she told me to meet her at the hospital.  Now I wish I wrote about this earlier because I'm trying to remember the details.  My water broke while at home; I was in our sunroom addition where I was gathering my stuff for the hospital bag.  I remember grabbing a towel that was on one of the chairs.  Dan called a couple of people.  The main person we had lined up to watch the kids didn't answer so we called another friend.  She couldn't come but said she could send over her 18-year old son.  We hurried into the garage and his car.  He was very calm but I was in a lot of pain so I kept telling him to hurry.  We parked the car in the parking garage and walked to the elevators to go to the first level registration area, but signs posted directed us to go to the ER entrance which required us to walk outside some distance.  When we finally got into the ER reception area, the attendant helped us to the registration area.  I opted to sit in the wheel chair on the way because walking was too uncomfortable.

I thought the registration process took too long because I had already pre-registered the week before.  After about 5 minutes, we were directed to go upstairs where a nurse greeted us and helped us into a labor and delivery room.

Everything progressed rather quickly.  They asked about whether I wanted an epidural which I said I did and told them the anesthesiologist I wanted.  They refused to call him because he was not on-call.  I was upset about that but there wasn't anything I could do about it.  In any case, it ended up not mattering because there was no time for an epidural.  We'd gotten to the hospital around 1:30 AM and the baby was born at 2:24.  The ob arrived just barely before the birth.

The first few minutes after birth.

As you can see, everyone's happy he's finally here!

Our sweet little family.

Oh, here's something funny...  Since we'd bought a minivan a few weeks before Gordon was born, we decided to sell my car.  It was actually kind of sad for me because it was the car I bought after graduating from college.  I'm just glad I sold it to a friend, a girl I used to babysit!  And, of all days, she came all the way from Utah to pick it up on this day.  It was fun to see her and her sister and to have them meet Baby Gordon!!