Ezekiel Richard ~ born Monday, January 14th at 1:57am ~ weight 8lbs 3oz ~ length 21.5in
Our precious baby boy is here! He is absolutely perfect and is blending into our family just wonderfully. I know most of you are here for the pictures, so I'll start there and then share Zeke's birth story :)
Zeke's first moments - being weighed, right after birth, and having his newborn exam
Family of 5! Tay is super excited about baby brother, she was just upset that Noah got to hold Zeke :)
Sweet baby boy
One happy big sister...who happened to wake up at 3:30am to greet her new brother :)
Big bro!
Meeting cousins and grandmommy for the first time.
First adjustment
Zeke's Birth Story
This pregnancy was a rough one. Between being super tired,
sick, and the back aches, I was ready for our baby boy to come.
The last few weeks of Zeke’s pregnancy, I had more Braxton
Hicks than I did with any other baby. There were 2 nights I thought I
may be going into labor only to be let down when the contractions became more
spread out and less painful. One of these nights I even called our midwife at 3am thinking that labor had begun. I asked her to
wait another hour before she came to our house. Within 15 minutes of getting off the phone with her,
my contractions had almost stopped coming completely.
The day Zeke came, I had been having Braxton Hicks on and off. They were sporadic and just enough to be noticeable.
I went to bed around 9:15
with the contractions still coming. A little before 11:00, I decided to start timing them. They were coming
every 6 to 7 minutes and were becoming more painful. At that point I got in our
bath tub for about 20 minutes. The contractions were coming every 5
minutes and I needed to breathe through them. Once I got out of the tub, around
11:40, I knew I was in labor. The
contractions were hard and came about every 3 minutes. A little after midnight we called the midwife and asked her to
come over. She immediately said “I’m on my way”. Forty minutes later she was at
our house and I was at 8 centimeters.
During this time, Mark was working on filling up the
birthing pool. But we had one problem…our hot water heater went out. The tub was
only half way full and there was no hot water left. So everyone (midwife, her assistant, our doula, and Mark) began boiling
water. I went ahead and got in the tub, but it was chilly and uncomfortable. As
the boiling pots of water got dumped in, it was more and more bearable.
I got in the birthing pool around 1:00am
and I was in some serious pain! I remember our doula speaking encouraging words
and bible versus and coaching me through the breathing. Mark was holding my
hands and speaking encouraging words over me. As painful as the contractions
were, having them there helped me get through them.
Around 1:45am, I
began to feel the urge to push. I waited as long as I could and began to push
about 5 minutes later. At the first push, my bag of waters broke. It took
several more pushes for him to come and it was definitely the hardest part of
my labor.
Zeke was born at 1:57am
on Monday morning. He came out with the cord wrapped twice around his neck and
twice around his body. It took one agonizing minute for our midwife to unwrap
it and for him to begin to cry. It may have been the longest minute of my life.
But exactly one minute after he was born, we heard that beautiful sound that
all parents love to hear, our baby’s first scream. It was a wonderful noise.
My mom arrived at our house around 2:20am. When she got here she asked
Mark "How far along is she?" . Mark said "0". Then it clicked for my
mom. She had missed my delivery...
again.
Both of our children slept through the entire labor and
delivery. And let me go ahead and say it was NOT because I was quiet. However, Tay
did wake up at 3:30am. She came into
our room and was a bit overwhelmed by all the people. She came into bed with me
and Zeke and after about 2 minutes grasped what was going on. When she realized
her baby brother was here, her face lit up and she immediately wanted to hold
him. In all of her excitement, she did not go back to bed that night. She is
one magnificent big sister :)
When Noah woke up the next morning he decided that breakfast was
a bit more important than meeting his little brother. But once he made his way
into our bedroom and saw Zeke, he was ready to hold him and give him lots of
sweet kisses.
I have been asked if I would do a water birth again. My
answer is probably not. I was hoping that the water would provide relaxation
and help with the contractions. But after having one in the water and one out,
I have to say that I don’t think there was a difference.
And if you ask me
if I would have another natural birth, my answer would be heck no! Hum…I guess
I said the same thing after Noah and I obviously did not stick to that. Mark’s
grandma said that “labor is the worst pain and the easiest to forget”. I am
going to have to agree with that. Labor pains are AWFUL, but the reward is so
sweet it is easy to forget.
