Sunday, February 10, 2008

Birth Story


I'm finally getting a chance to post again. These past few days have been incredible, and it's amazing how much you learn! Here are a few details about Noah's birth:
- We got to the hospital at 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 6 for Tyra to be induced. At that point she was 40 weeks and 5 days along.
- After about 10-11 hours on the pitocin drip, Tyra still hadn't dilated, so her doctor's recommendation was to turn off the drip for the night, which allowed her to be able to eat and get a full night's sleep.
- They started the drip again at 5 am on Thursday morning, and by 7 am, she had dilated 1 cm. and the doctor broke her water. From there, things really started to pick up!
- Every few hours, they checked her...4 cm dilated, then 8 cm, then by 2:00 p.m. or so, she was 10 cm dilated and ready to start pushing. The time was finally here.
- Our delivery nurse was great and Tyra did an incredible job. For 1 hour, she pushed through each contraction, and by 3:11 p.m., our son made his first cry!

Several nurses throughout our stay commented that on Wednesday, no one thought that she'd be able to give birth without a c-section, just because she hadn't progressed much at all after a full day's worth of pitocin. When Noah was born, he scored an 8 and 9 on his APGAR and came out healthy (and almost as big!) as a horse. The doctor commented once before he was born, "Noah's got a big head," but both Tyra and I and the doctor and nurses were amazed when it was announced that Noah came out weighing 9 lbs, 9 ozs! Tyra's official weight gain overall was 32 lbs, so we were all surprised that Noah was such a big boy.
He is so strong and loves to move his legs and arms. In the hospital, he was such a great baby, only uttering soft coos and wimpers, but only really crying when he was beign changed or getting cold.
Anyway, that's the Cliff's Notes version of Noah's arrival. So much has happened since then, that I feel like it happened a long time ago.


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