Our New, Expanded Family

I realize this is a little late, but from what I hear talking to other people, that's pretty normal. Yes, we had our beautiful baby boy, but after sending out maybe two emails, Andrew calling a bunch of people, and a few pictures on Facebook, I felt totally overwhelmed and the blog posting had to wait. So, here we are, two and a half weeks later, and Isaac's alseep. I therefore pull out my computer and begin to write

I went into labor early Sunday morning, but with contractions coming about 10-15 minutes apart, there was no reason to go to the hospital. I didn't think I could make it to primary, so I had Andrew come pick me up before Sacrament meeting, which I spent in the mothers room. My reasoning was that in the mothers room, I wouldn't be disturbing anyone with occasional moans during someone's talk. I thought it might be a bit distracting in the chapel.

After church, contractions slowed down, so we decided to go to Alpine for dinner as we had planned. Since you're supposed to have contractions five minutes apart for an hour before going to the hospital, and Alpine's only 40 minutes from the hospital, I figured we'd be fine. And sure enough, we were. After Alpine, we went to my grandparents and stayed there for a few hours. By this time, it's about nine o'clock at night and contractions are still about 15 mintues apart. We went home, and they started getting a little closer together, but still about 10 mintues apart. This was the one and only time I broke down, thinking that this was false labor and I would have to go through all of this again. However, around 11, the contractions were coming 5 minutes apart, and lasting for close to 2 minutes, so we went to the hospital. We got there, they put me in a room, told me that yes, I was going to have a baby, and if I wanted an epidural. At this point, I'd been having painful contractions for almost 20 hours, so of course I said yes, I wanted one. They hooked up the IV (probably the worst part of the whole procedure) and the anesthesiologist came soon after.

To condense several hours into a single sentence, the first epidural didn't work, and a few hours later they gave me a second one that worked marvelously. I was very happy at that point. My water never did break, so at 6:30 in the morning my doctor came in and broke my water and told me to start pushing. Isaac Monson Richardson was born at 8:37 in the morning at 7 lbs 11 oz and 19 inches long with a bit (ok, a lot) of tearing for me. I guess he was worth it.

I'm now sititng in our living room, while Isaac rocks on his daddy's lap, wide eyed and calm. That might be the best adjective to describe this child. He yawned through his circumsision, stared at the doctor while she poked and prodded him, and just looks up at us while we clean goop out of his eyes. And other than two or three growth spurt nights, he sleeps between 5 and 7 hours at a time at night. I don't think we could ask for a more perfect child. He's beautiful and well behaved. If only I knew where that came from.