Brian and I are proud to announce our new addition to the family!
Walter Charles John
Wally was born Sunday Jan 2nd at 10:56pm at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park. He weighed 8lbs, 2oz and was 21" long. Wally couldn't wait to join the world, he was 11 days early (yay!). He is a beautiful baby with a nice round head, lots of hair (and Brian's hairline!), long legs, fingers and toes. He has an angel kiss on his left eye from birth, but no other birth marks!  |
| First picture on mom's tummy! |
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| Just a few minutes old with eye open- and with tags :) |
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| First family photo - Em, Brian and Wally! |
Birth Story
Wally came into the world in a fairly typical "first baby" kind of way, which I couldn't be happier for! Pregnancy was overall very stable and by Christmas I was definately big and ready to get the show on the road (even though I was still a good 3 weeks out on Christmas Day). Lucky for me, so was Wally. The next week, Brian and I spent a quiet New Years Eve (Friday night) at home. We spent Saturday morning doing lots of little "final preparations" before Brian's expected return to work the following week.... installed carseat, finished packing bags, hanging pictures in the baby room, etc. I think that was Wally's cue, because at 3:45 in the morning on Sunday my water broke! Poor Brian, who had stayed up until 2:00am playing video games (trying to get in that final round before baby). |
| Our Delivery Room at Methodist |
Contractions didn't really get going right away. In fact, when we arrived at the hospital at 5:30am and got my initial assessment, I couldn't really even feel the contractions that were coming up on the monitor. After a morning full of walking laps around the maternity floor and a few starts that pittered out, the doctor finally recommended pitocin to help get things going. Around 1:30pm, I finally "went into labor." Early labor was fairly steady, although slow. My dad got there at about 10:00am, and was with us the whole time through labor and delivery (for those of you who don't know - he's a Family Practice doc and delivered many babies in his early days! Best circumsision doc in Elk River for years :)
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| Em and Dad. Way too happy to be in labor! |
By 4:00pm I was only 4cm dialated (and I had arrived 2cm). At 8:00pm, after 2 tries, an epidural was started. Timing couldn't have been better because by this point I was really starting to labor hard without much of a break in between contractions. I have to say that this was the best part of my day. Those epidurals are amazing! I think this really helped me realax, because by 10:00pm I was fully dialated and ready to start pushing. At 10:56, at the end of a final round of pushes, Wally's head popped out (literally....the doctor was turned away and everyone in the room jumped when it happened.) He came out screaming and we were all crying. It was so amazing. The other really cool element of this delivery was that my OB doc on call that day, Dr. Thomas, so she delivered Wally! At Methodist, this is fairly atypical so I was really excited when we got that news!
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| Here's the one "mid-labor" pic I'm adding. One of many comfort techniques used - walking in laps around the hospital! |
Those first few minutes/hours after Wally was born were life changing. Wally was on my chest most of the time, and the nurses were just awesome at making sure those initial procedures were quick and easy. I feel so blessed to have such a healthy, beautiful baby boy! I think he is just perfect.
