Meet Gideon

On Sunday morning, May 19th at 5:33 am we welcomed our first son, Gideon Ray Hansen, into this world.  He was 7 pounds, 6 ounces, and 19-3/4 inches long.  He's perfectly healthy and we are so excited to have him in our family.

 Later in the day Tyson went and got Lily and Charlotte and brought them to the hospital to meet their baby brother.  Lily was very excited to finally get to hold him.

 Charlotte is just over the moon with him.  She is pretty sure that he always wants her to hold him and really doesn't like letting other people get to have a turn.

 The girls ended up cuddled in the hospital bed with him watching cartoons for about an hour and he just laid there with them and fell asleep.

This morning I managed to get a picture of our little guy with his eyes open.  He nurses and sleeps and so far doesn't spend much time awake.

We didn't stay in the hospital for long and started getting ready to go home fairly early this morning. 

 It was great to get back home.  I'm just not one to stay at the hospital any longer than I have to.  It was great to have the help last night that allowed me to get some sleep after getting no sleep the previous night, but all in all I rest better at home.

 We are all resting well now and adjusting to life with this new little man in the house.

*Okay, now here's the birth story.  If you don't care to know the details the summary is simple, my water broke just after midnight and he was born around 5:30 am.  For those that enjoy the details, read on.*

From the beginning of this pregnancy I never planned to go until my due date.  I was certain that Gideon would come early just as his sisters had.  Lily was born at 37w4d, but in her case labor was induced early due to preeclampsia and low AFI issues.  Charlotte came on her own at 39w2d when my water broke at home and labor began shortly thereafter.  Tyson and I had been talking about when this baby might come for a while because this May has turned out to be an insanely busy month for us.  Between birthdays, finals, school, dance recital, job training and more there were some days that it would be great to have the baby on and others that would just be awful.  I was grateful to have made it through finals and birthdays (Tyson's was on the 18th) without Gideon making his appearance, but this coming week is packed full so I was hoping, as much as I was ready to be done with being pregnant, that he would hold out another week.  I rather expected him to given that Charlotte came at 39 weeks.  Anyway, we went to bed after a busy day on the 18th and I was tired.  A few contractions here and there, but no real sign that labor was on the way any time soon.  Around 11:00 I dozed off and I woke up abruptly at 12:15 am feeling slightly wet.  I got up to go to the bathroom and felt a bit of a gush of water.  I honestly just stood there looking down and asked the universe "Seriously?"  After all, I was just 38w3d and not expecting anything yet.  Tyson was perplexed as I just walked into the bathroom.  He called to me and asked if everything was okay and I responded that my water had broken.  He jumped right up and started getting read to go to the hospital.  *Funny little detail here, with Charlotte my water also broke at 12:15 am on a Sunday morning.  How's that for odd?

Now at this point I wasn't in labor, I wasn't feeling contractions, but I knew that I didn't have a lot of time.  I labor fairly quickly and it would take about an hour to get us to the hospital since we had to get a few things ready and drop the girls off along the way.  Within 5 minutes though I felt my first contraction and within half an hour they were getting regular, about 7-8 minutes apart.  We dropped the girls off with my folks, drove to St. Luke's in Boise, and checked in.  I love middle of the night triage check-ins.  They are quick and painless and the staff isn't terribly busy.  I got checked in and to my labor room fairly quickly and the nurses, while helpful, were great about letting me labor how I wanted to and accommodating me.  I spent a while in the Jacuzzi tub which was great, so relaxing which of course makes the contractions easier to get through.  Now, my labors are odd.  First off, they are short and second, I really only have early labor.  Once it gets hard there isn't much time until the baby comes.  I was at 4 cm when we checked in and only 4-1/2 cm 2 hours later.  The nurse thought that I would be discouraged, but I wasn't I know that the first half is slow.  Just after 5 am the contractions started to get harder so I got out of the tub at Tyson's insistence and my mom had me call for the nurse to check again.  

At this point I was no longer getting a break between contractions.  She checked me, I was at 6 cm and that was discouraging because at this point I was in a lot of pain and decided that I did want an epidural after all.   They called the anesthesiologist in right away and he took one look at me and shook his head.  The nurse was insistent that I had time left and she helped Tyson get me seated on the side of the bed to get ready for an epidural.  That was when I decided that I didn't want it anymore.  The contractions hurt terribly, but sitting in that position during contractions was even worse and besides, I needed to push.  I told (rather cried out) that I needed to push, the nurse said "not now honey, you aren't there yet."  I cried out again that I wanted to push, again she said "don't push."  It wasn't until the third time when I probably screamed that I needed to push that the charge nurse told the nurse to check me again.  I rolled onto my back and sure enough I was complete.  The nurse turned her head as the resident on the floor walked in and right in that moment I gave a little push, not a big one, just enough to relieve the pressure, and Gideon came out and landed on the bed.  The resident raced across the room and grabbed him, my mom and Tyson looked down and sure enough, while no one was watching, he had made an appearance and was peeing on my foot.  He was perfectly healthy and I felt instantly better.  The doctor on call from my practice showed up about 5 minutes later and helped with the afterbirth and gave me one stitch for my tiny little tear.  The onset of hard labor to birth took about 20 minutes.

This is my first time going without an epidural and I while the pain was excruciating, don't get me wrong, the recovery process has been amazing.  I was up and about within 30 minutes of delivering Gideon, my pain has been minimal, and I feel worlds better than I ever have after my previous deliveries.  All in all, the staff at the hospital was great.  They were wonderful about letting me make the calls and listening to me.  My nurse was great about letting me labor how I wanted to and monitoring me at my convenience.  I had warned her that the second part of labor goes very quickly for me but I don't think that she believed me, or at least must have thought that I was exaggerating   I think that she might have learned a little lesson though and will listen a little more closely to what future patients might say.

Anyway, we are all doing great, Gideon is nursing like a champ and my milk has come in so he'll be packing on the pounds soon.