Benjamin arrives!

Our baby Benjamin Carl was born on Monday morning, January 31, 2011 at 4:13 am. He was 8 pounds 3 ounces, 21 inches long, and incredibly beautiful. Feel free to skip to the pictures, or read the birth story if you're interested.

Sunday night around 10 I decided it was time to clean the bathrooms. Which was enough to make me very suspicious that something was up. So I enlisted Nephi and we cleaned the bathrooms and went to bed. At 1am I woke up to a serious contraction - the first serious contraction I'd felt the whole pregnancy. Four minutes later, another one, then three minutes, and I woke Nephi up and said it was time to get going. In no time at all they were one to three minutes apart, and I was a weee bit nervous about getting to the hospital in time. We called our friend Ronda to come stay with the kids until Nephi's parents got here and headed off to the hospital in Glenwood Springs, about 20 minutes away. The only adventure on the way was a huge elk herd in our neighborhood we successfully avoided; traffic and stoplights are very cooperative that time of night. We arrived to my relief with no baby yet around 2:20. The nice nurses almost hid their scepticism that I was well on my way to having a baby when I told them I had been in labor for 80 minutes, but they finally checked me and discovered I was at an 8 and indeed correct. Contractions slowed down a lot once I got settled, which was nice since they were getting harder all the time. One of my concerns about having the baby at the hospital was getting poked and prodded and told what to do and how to do it. Happily it wasn't like that at all; my midwife Teresa was wonderful. There was about and hour and a half of things going slowly, and she just let them go slowly. The lights were dim, no one really spoke, and they just let me close my eyes and do what I needed to do. Eventually a bit of drama ensued when my water broke quite enthusiastically. The pushing was fast and furious, and there Benjamin was. Beautiful.

 

That afternoon Nephi brought the boys, his parents, and sister ellen to come meet the little guy. The boys were so incredibly sweet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We came home Tuesday around lunch time and things have been going really well. Benjamin is a great eater. He's also a great sleeper as long as it's 1. daytime or 2. nighttime and he's in our arms. So we're a bit tired. But Nephi is able to be home almost this whole week; we're able to trade off napping during the day and we're doing all right. Newborns are so precious and fleeting, and I think we're doing pretty well at savoring the time.