the story of little Henry's arrival

things have changed quite a bit from our last post . . . as you know, our precious gift arrived on Sunday, January 13th. to recap . . .

last saturday (the 12th) my contractions started to increase; they were not patterned though. somewhere around 4am Sunday morning they picked up and were more regular. I also had sort of a weird pain in the top of my abdomen that would not go away. needless to say, I moved to the couch and turned on the TV as I was not really resting. We don't really watch a lot of television (other than sports), but we do both enjoy the Food Network. Gary got up around 8am and came into the living room and joined me in watching Bobby Flay prepare one of his delicious meals on Food TV. Just as Bobby was ending and Michael Chiarello was beginning, my water broke. It was the wildest feeling! The contractions strengthened in intensity and we called the hospital, gave them a heads up we would be coming, and started getting things ready. Since we figured he was still breech, we knew that a C-section was inevitable and that since my water broke, they would want to do the c-section as soon as they could. We did a few things around the house, made sure the dogs were settled and fed, and took a few pictures. We got to the hospital around 10:45am that morning and guess who was working on the labor and delivery floor? My friend Paige from Junior League. She was awesome and it was so nice to have a friendly and familiar face to be taking care of us.

They confirmed my water had indeed broke, that he was still breech and that I was dilated 3 centimeters. Around 12pm they came in and said they would be taking me back to the operating room at 1pm. Henry was delivered via c-section at 1:26pm weighing in at 7 pounds, 6 ounces and was 20.5 inches in length. Gary did great in the operating room and as nervous as anesthesia makes me, everything went well with regards to spinal and the surgery. I was able to see Henry for about a minute and then he and Gary were whisked away to the nursery while they finished the surgery and I was in recovery.

We were discharged from EAMC yesterday and arrived home safely. Henry arrived about three and half weeks early, but we were ready and feel great about the sequence of events. He has captured our hearts already!

Pictures coming soon . . . and, one thing to point out . . . some of you got back on the blog and voted on his arrival date "to win" so to speak. When we left for the hospital, the earliest "guess" was the Jan. 16th range. There was one vote for that range, and that vote was mine and was placed about 3 weeks ago. Weird eh?