He's HERE!!! Our little Theo arrived at 12:08pm on Saturday, April 5th, weighing in at an impressive 8 lbs 3 oz and measuring 19 inches long. He's a little blondie at the moment, though who knows whether that will last. I was a blond as a kid too, and now my natural hair color is a medium brown. His eyes are blue, but look like they might change to brown eventually. Chris claims he has my nose and mouth, as well as my coloring, but we're not sure whose eyes he has.

So, here is an abridged story of the birth. If you desire more details, we don't mind telling the story. But for a public forum, an abridged form seemed a wise choice, lest people not want to read about some of the semi-gory details.

My water broke just as we went to bed, around midnight on Friday morning. We waited a couple hours and then headed to the hospital, thinking our son would be born sometime that day (4/4/08). But, that was not to be! I was admitted to the hospital because broken water is an automatic admittance, but my contractions suddenly stopped after about 6 hours of a nice, regular pattern. Seven hours later, they still hadn't restarted. We weren't allowed to leave the hospital (or at least, it was NOT recommended) because of my broken water, so the choices were to stay put and wait, given that labor would likely resume in the next few days, or to try a synthetic hormone (Pitocin) to get things restarted. Given that I hadn't slept well at all in the past week AND we had been up all night while I labored, we finally opted to try Pitocin, and so the midwife had it started 19 hours after my water broke. The idea of sitting in the hospital for 2 to 3 more days, just waiting to see whether anything would restart on its own, was not a pleasant one. I knew by the time things finally restarted, I would only be more exhausted than I already was, and that didn't seem the best way to prepare for the challenge of labor.

So, Pitocin did as promised--my contractions soon restarted, and things were moving. Hooray--our son would probably be born within a matter of hours! Or so we thought. LONG story short, although Pitocin brought on ruthlessly painful contractions, it eventually became apparent that our son had decided it was much more fun to stay IN the womb than to come out. Fast-forward another 17 hours (14 hours of laboring/contractions and 3 full hours of pushing), and the midwife and nurses became concerned about Pigwidgeon's heart rate (hadn't picked a name at that point, so he was still Widge to us!), which was dropping with contractions but not picking back up. (Normally fetal heart rate drops with contractions but picks up after the contraction ends. After 36 hours of labor, Widge's heart rate was not behaving as it should.) We were told that we could try pushing a bit longer, but that we needed to start considering alternative emergency delivery methods. We did...but opted to keep trying to push just a bit longer, since a natural delivery was preferable to alternatives. I pushed with all my might, and about 10 minutes later, our son came into the world with a strong, healthy heartbeat!! Most beautiful moment of my life, bar none! There was a price to pay in that said pushing roughed me up (to say the least), and thus my recovery is going to be a little tough. But not nearly as tough as a C-section recovery would've been, so I'm happy about that. And the pain/recovery is, as cliched as it sounds, a small price to pay for our son, who is truly a magical, wonderful creature.

So, the name: Theo is a nickname we both like, and Theodore happens to be the name of Chris's paternal grandfather (though he went by Ted). Henry was the anesthesiologist who administered my epidural. Now, this sounds odd, I know. Especially because, as many of you know, I had vowed NOT to have an epidural. Well, I'll tell you what. Pitocin is brutal, and Theo was occipital posterior (aka sunny-side up) in the birth canal, which results in VERY painful "back labor." (This means you feel tremendous pain in your spine, tailbone, etc. as the baby moves down. Already exhausted by a long labor and very little sleep for over a week, I knew I couldn't get through a regular birth without some help, after experiencing the wicked Pitocin contractions and back labor. So I gave in and had the epidural. And rather hazily said to Henry, the anesthesiologist, "I think I love you almost as much as my husband. I'm naming our kid after you!" I was joking, of course, but after Theo was born, Chris said, "You know, I actually really LIKE the name Henry with Theodore as a first name." And so, Theodore Henry he is. Inspired by my "drug dealer" at Kaiser South Sacramento.