Apparently I don't know what I've been talking about. Last September, the doctors told us that our little man was due May 21, 2008. After all the nervousness and anticipation, what do you know? They were spot on. Marina went in to labor on her due date, and delivered at 4:45 am this morning, May 22, 2008. "Our little man" is in fact, Hendrix David Gustafson. He came in at 7 lbs 4 oz, and 19.5 inches tall. We was weighed, measured, poked, and prodded for the better part of the day and at the end of it all, it appears that we have a very special and precious baby boy on our hands. His hair is (i think) a bit long, though thin, and a lighter shade of brown. For now his eyes are a very deep blue, which could work wonders on the ladies down the road, but we'll see how that holds up over the next three months. This skin is very white and pink, surprising considering that he's half Puerto Rican. He's got long legs, arms, fingers, and toes. And if this means anything to you, it does appear that he has the Schwarting Toe! He so alert, and had eyes open like right from the very beginning. Crazy little man.
The Prologue
We've had quite an exciting week thus far, which seems to have concluded in a sensational finish. Marina had been having braxton-hicks contractions all week, and as of last Friday there was no dilation, and he hadn't dropped. Yesterday, I picked Marina up from work at 3:10 (what a trooper), and we went out for a nice long walk once we got home. Her contractions continued, and were sometimes more intense. But we knew that we had something in the works as "the show" began at 6:30. Not long after that her contractions got a lot more frequent. We tried timing them a few times and even called the doctor to see about coming, no chance. He suggested that it'd be sometime between the next day to 48 hours. Great! Well, not so much. At 9:20, Marina started contractions at 2 minutes apart, and held steady for about 75 minutes before we called again. Now, we'd never been through this before and knew nothing about nothing, so we weren't even sure if we should call again. Well good thing we did. After we got off the phone with the doctors, we headed to the hospital at 11:30 where we found out not long after that Marina was 6 cm dilated, with a bulging back and at a +1 station. Apparently, thats very far along. We were rushed upstairs, Marina's labor was validated, and we (in our minds) we no longer crazy. "There may be a baby in there yet!" The doctor finally came in about 1 am, and she was just as far along, no movement, still at 6 cm, but feeling fine after the epidural took hold. The plan was for another measurement at 3 am to see how far she was along. So, we kicked the grandparents out at around 2 am so that we could get some sleep as birth was seemingly several hours away (thinking 8 am). Again, not so much. At 3 am, she was fully dilated, quite shocking to both of us because we did see anything happening. I mean after she got her epidural, everything got very calm. So, we were quite confused when the nurse told us that we could have a baby within the hour. Yeah, that made no sense at the time. Well, she was close, as I said, he was born at 4:45, not bad. About 90 of pushing, and it sure didn't seem easy in the long run. Marina's first impression was a laughing "wow, this isn't what I expected at all". Well her smiles never seemed to fade, she ended up working real hard and was sweating pretty good by the end of it all. Lots of hard bearing down, a lot more than I would have liked to have done. I'll have to put my birthing perspective in another one, apparently all the nurses in the room were laughing at me. But, I'm way too tired to add that section in, and this is a fairly decent synopsis of how the labor story unfolded.
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