early arrival

Our second son, Patrick Michael, made a surprise arrival yesterday, November 29th at 11:06 a.m. He was 7 pounds and 1 ounce, and 19 inches long. He is slightly pre-term, as I was just a few days shy of 37 weeks when I delivered. Patrick has some minor complications due to this - mainly sleepiness.

I was scheduled for a C section on December 12th at 38.5 weeks, and although our apartment and our lives in general were more than ready to welcome Patrick, I was not mentally prepared for it quite yet. With Daniel, I had been sitting around for weeks waiting for labor signs. Not so much with Patrick - I was convinced he would wait until his schedule date.

I had been having early labor signs for about a week, and found that I was having trouble sleeping in the wee hours of Saturday morning due to some back pain. It didn't take long to realize that there was a pattern to the pain, and that we needed to time it. The contractions were around 6 minutes apart and pretty intense from the beginning. I got up to take a warm bath at around 4 a.m. to see if I could get them to stop. That didn't work.

We called the doctor at around 5 a.m. She said to give it a half hour or so and then to go on into the hospital to get checked. No since in waiting around in pain for progress since I was having a schedule c, right? Of course, the contractions slowed to 7-8 minutes as soon as I got off the phone with her, and I assumed everything would stop.

Once we got up for the day, they started becoming more intense and closer to 5-6 minutes apart. Very VERY luckily for us, Mike's parents were in town for the weekend, and they took care of Daniel while Mike and I threw some things in the suitcase and headed up to the hospital. I was fairly certain I would be coming home in a couple of hours. I wanted them to STOP the pain, but I'm not really sure how I expected them to do that without delivering the baby :)

At the hospital, I got to triage at approximately 9:30 a.m., where the nurses seemed to think I was ok too. Imagine our surprise when the nurse checked me and found that I was dilated to 6-7 and that my water was about to break. After that, things moved very quickly. They did a very fast admissions process, the anesthesiologist and on-call OBGYN came in to explain things to me, and we were off to the OR.

The C section this time around was much easier and in general more pleasant than my first one. I was able to enjoy Patrick's birth and felt good through the entire procedure, although I did get very sleepy halfway through. It was very peaceful and I definitely felt more present this time than I did with Daniel was born.

From there, on to recovery and then postpartum. I have been quite comfortable throughout with minimal pain. I was very excited to introduce Patrick and Daniel to each other, but Patrick basically slept through it and Daniel really wasn't interested :) Daniel is doing very well at home with Nanny and Grandpa in our absence - I miss him a lot though! We've never been away from him that long.

36 hours later, Patrick is doing great. He eats great, sleeps a lot, and doesn't do much crying (yet). We are excited about taking him home, probably on Monday. Thanks to everyone for all of your phone calls, emails, and messages! We love hearing from everyone.