Vital statistics:
The birth story:
Alex was actually born on his due date, believe it or not. According to Wikipedia (who is a highly reputable source, of course), less than 5% of babies are born on their due date! Labor this time was actually very different from last time. Last time I was induced with pitocin after being 9 days late, after 9 hours of labor I was only 2cm dilated, and then it took a total of 14+hours for him to be born (full story here). Anyway, this time I went to a check up appointment at 10am Thursday and I asked the doctor to check and see if I was dilated at all. I'd been having contractions on and off for what seemed like the last few weeks, but I hadn't had the doctor check me because it's just not a fun thing. He checked and I was 3cm! I also then had him strip my membranes (sounds gross, but this sometimes triggers full labor) before I left. I don't know if that's what did it, or if labor would have started anyway, but the rest of the day I really didn't feel well. That night I started having stronger contractions, probably around 7pm, but they weren't evenly spaced at all. Eventually I showered and we went to bed. I fell asleep around midnight, then woke up at 1:30am with more painful contractions, though they still weren't evenly spaced. Still they were much more painful than what I had experienced previously, so we called the Dr and he told us to head to the hospital. By the time we got Tyler up and dropped off at my parents, it took us an hour to reach the hospital. At that point the contractions were much stronger and only 2minutes apart. I checked in and we went upstairs. Everything went pretty fast after that. I got a bag of IV fluids, got an epidural, then after like 10 more minutes was ready to push. I tried pushing a few times, then they realized the baby was posterior, meaning he was face up rather than face down (as he's supposed to be). The doctor couldn't manually turn him, so they had me lay on my stomach for 1/2 an hour. Apparently this makes the baby uncomfortable and often they turn on their own. Luckily, it worked! I wasn't looking forward to the implications of the posterior position (much harder to push, more likely to need forceps or vacuum, more likely to tear, etc). After that I just pushed for 20 minutes or so and Alex was born!
He looks a lot like Tyler did, except he has much more and much darker hair, as you can see pretty well in the picture below. He also has very short legs, which has lead Ed to give him his first nickname, "munchkin".
Tyler came to meet him Saturday. He wasn't very interested at first, though he quickly warmed up to him after we brought him home. He loves saying hi to the baby, "helping" change his diaper, and hugging him.
(this picture shows Tyler's "say cheese" face:) )
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