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.

3 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 cups sugar
6 Tbsp. cocoa
1/2 tsp. salt
2/3 cup salad oil
2 Tbsp. vinegar
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups cold water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In large bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, sugar cocoa and salt. Make 3 "wells" in the dry ingredients. In one, put salad oil. In another, put the vinegar. In the last, put the vanilla. Pour 2 cups of cold water over whole thing and mix. Bake at 350 for 25–30 minutes (or until toothpick in center comes out clean). A word of warning: This took much longer to bake in our oven, which, granted, tends to be funky. But my Mom, who has made this cake for years, tells me this is often the case. In her words, "You walk a fine line between getting the edges overcooked and the center undercooked, so watch it closely to see when it's done."

We are back from Florida, and I have to say, we had a fabulous time! This was sort of what our honeymoon should have been—fun, relaxing, great weather, and very little stress (well, once we got to Orlando, that is). So it was a really nice way to spend some quality time together before our lives become chaos upon the arrival of little Pigwidgeon!

As is characteristic for our vacations, this one began with a few notes of utter stress. Little Miss Luna chose the week preceding our trip to get sick once again. I took her into the vet Thursday morning, only to find that she apparently has an unidentifiable non-dense mass in her tummy—which likely translates to “ball of fuzz from a stuffed toy she systematically destroyed and ate.” The vet’s recommendation was to watch her closely for a few days to see if she’d pass the object on her own. So, my Mom took pity on us and agreed to do the pug-sitting honors so we could still go on our trip. (Luna was set to stay at a kennel, but we couldn’t leave her there being sick! And she apparently was fine for the first six days of our trip, but has in the past three days started getting sick all over again. So, a pricey vet visit is likely in the cards in the very near future, although I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic about the fact that she “passed” a mysterious walnut-sized ball of what appears to be cloth this morning, and hasn’t been sick in the past 24 hours. I’m hoping these are good signs that she’s on the road to recovery at last.)

After lining up a week at Grandma’s house for the sick pug and her faithful sidekick, Bits, we went ahead with our travel plans. And on the day we left, the Storm of the Decade hit, with Sacramento getting hit with its worst rain/winds in about 10 years. Oh, the irony! This was to be our sort of second honeymoon, given that our first one was marred by, among other things, a TON of rain. And there we were, stuck at the Sacramento airport while the region got pounded by a torrential storm. I kid you not—ceiling tiles in the airport were falling on people’s heads when we were there, due to the heavy rains! Our incoming flight had to divert to Fresno for more fuel, in anticipation of many hours of circling Sac, waiting for an okay time to land. We ended up leaving almost three hours late…but we got out, got on a new flight in Dallas (missed our connection, of course), and arrived in Orlando no worse for the wear in the long run.

And, not to taunt all you folks who suffered through lousy weather for the past week or so…but Florida was beautiful! Sunny and warm—in fact, rather hot some days. The weather was wonderful, and I will say that the first week in January is THE time to go to Disney World—there really weren’t any crowds, and we didn’t wait longer than about 10 minutes for any ride. (Granted, we couldn’t go on any of the big ones because pregnant women aren’t allowed…but still, none of the popular smaller rides were crowded either. It was heavenly!)

We spent four days at Disney World—one each at the Magic Kingdom (Florida’s equivalent to Disneyland), Disney’s Animal Kingdom (a neat zoo-like animal refuge place), Epcot, and Disney/MGM Studios. Surprisingly, Disney/MGM was our favorite…probably because it was the smallest and the least crowded of the four parks. But they had some neat interactive exhibits, too, and some cool stunt shows and things.

But we needed some non-theme-park time too, so we spent one day at Kennedy Space Center and one day in St. Augustine. Those were two of the highlights of the whole trip for both of us. St. Augustine is charming and well-preserved…I had a real desire to see the oldest permanent settlement in the U.S., so we made a day of it. Very cute, neat little town. And Kennedy Space Center was really interesting. I went because Chris wanted to go (I’m not really all that knowledgeable about the space program), but it ended up being probably my favorite day of the trip. We took a special tour that allows you to go out to the launch pad…at least, as close as allowed, which is 1 ½ miles away. The shuttle is up on the pad for a February launch, so it was neat to see that even though all you can see are the rockets and the fuel tank. (The shuttle itself is shrouded by something at the moment—some sort of protective covering, I think.)

Because it IS one of our vacations, and thus chaos is likely to ensue, we of course ran into some excitement at Kennedy Space Center. That place is huge, and you are transported around by bus. So, we stopped for lunch at the Saturn V building, which is basically a museum on the property that has some exhibits, a theater, a café, and a few other things. We decided to eat lunch, look at the exhibits, and then catch the bus back to the main visitors’ complex. A fine idea, yes? Well, yes indeed...IF the Saturn V building doesn’t suddenly have a fire! Don’t get me wrong—this wasn’t a huge fire. But, it was enough that KSC had to evacuate the building, sending 200 people out into the hot sun to wait for buses back to the visitors’ complex. But then the fire department refused to allow buses through, so we were all left standing in the hot sun for well over an hour, with no access to the bathrooms in the building. Normally not a big deal, but for a pregnant woman who visited virtually EVERY public bathroom in the state of Florida, this was not the greatest thing ever. Needless to say, by the time we caught a bus back to the visitors’ complex, I was practically gargling pee and rather hot and exhausted from standing in the sun. But, a trip to the bathroom fixed the main part of the problem, so all was well!

On Saturday morning we drove to Tampa and spent the day at Busch Gardens, where I ogled the wonderful-looking roller coasters that I couldn’t go on! But the park is part amusement park and part zoo, so we were able to enjoy the zoo part, even though the coasters were off limits. We probably wouldn’t have even gone to Tampa, save for the fact that we had to fly out of there. My Mom had given us enough American Airlines miles for two round-trip tickets to Florida, but of course there were all sorts of blackouts and good stuff if we wanted to use the miles, so we had to get creative. Thus flying into Orlando and back out of Tampa, and at slightly unusual flight times for us. But it worked—and I’m kind of glad we actually got to see Tampa, since we wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.

Sunday was our last day, and we went to the MOSI (Museum of Science and Industry), which is a sort of hands-on interactive science museum in Tampa. It was uncrowded and quite pleasant—a nice way to end our trip. Well, I suppose REALLY the trip ended with a delayed flight from Tampa to Dallas-Ft. Worth, and then another delayed flight from DFW to Sacramento. And then standing at the luggage carousel for half an hour in Sacramento, given that our bags were just about the last two to come off the plane. By the time we got home and into bed, I had been awake for about 23 hours and was rather sleepy! But it was worth it to have one last travel hurrah before the baby comes....

Speaking of the baby, little Pigwidgeon tolerated the trip very well. Most of it was very uneventful in terms of pregnancy, save for two minor issues. First, Widge's favorite new activity seems to be to wake mama up at 5:00 or 5:30 every morning for a round of soccer with her internal organs. As soon as mama gives up on sleeping and gets up for the day, he ends his soccer practice and goes back to sleep for several more hours. And second, my bladder is his new favorite trampoline. Seriously, I’m quite sure that I now produce at least 50% of the world’s urine supply. I’m lucky to make it an hour between bathroom stops. (Yes, I even had to resort to a Port-a-Potty at one point—those of you who know me well know that this was quite a sacrifice for me, as I’m very picky about public bathrooms! But when you've gotta go, you've gotta go. My bladder waits for no one these days!)

On that lovely note, I shall end this post. See the new photo gallery for some of the most exciting shots from our trip. (Okay, so none of them are really terribly exciting, but I have to make them sound fun, right?!) Hope you all are well!