Introducing Lucas Anthony Austin!

I am going to try to get back to updating the blog, since we are now 3 months behind again. It has been a pretty busy 3 months, mostly due to the newest addition to our family, Lucas Anthony Austin!

On July 20th, my labor started about 2:30pm while I was at the mall with Sue and Gaoder, while they were looking for dresses for Grandpa Austin's funeral (another blog post on that will be coming). The contractions started off pretty spaced apart and not too uncomfortable, but they quickly started coming regularly and got more intense. After getting Sue and Gaoder's dresses, we all headed home and I rested for a little bit before calling the hospital and ultimately heading in.

We got to the hospital at about 5:00pm. The nurses got us checked in and hooked me up to the monitors to check how my labor was progressing. I was in active labor, so they had me change into a hospital gown and get comfortable (or at least as comfortable as I could...).

The view outside the window of the labor and delivery room.

Before the contractions got too intense.

Once we were at the hospital, Chad was keeping everyone updated, but it wasn't easy because things were progressing quickly! When I was examined at about 5:30, I was about 3-4 cm dilated and in some pain. Within about an hour, it had gotten more intense and I was in a lot of pain. The labor and delivery nurse that was with us saw that things were moving pretty quickly and started getting the room ready for the baby. By 6:45, I was having contractions about every 2 minutes and they were lasting about a minute each. So I wasn't really getting much rest in between contractions.

This is the readout from the monitors. The printout is tracking my contractions and Lucas's heart rate.

And this is a graph of all of the women that were hooked up on the floor. The nurses could see how everyone was progressing from any room on the floor.

The nurse examined me again at about 6:50 and I was at 8 centimeters dilated and moving really fast. Then I started to get nauseous (which happened with both of the other kids too when I was getting close to delivery. So I was having dry heaves and very intense contractions at the same time. Then, during all of that, my water broke. The nurse looked at it and said something like, there is some blood in there, very casually. After a brief pause when we were waiting for her to say something else, I asked her if that was bad. The nurse said no, it was just because I was progressing so fast. At this point, the nurse called the doctor to come into the room because she thought I was getting close to delivering.

The doctor (who was my OB, and just happened to be on call at the hospital that day) came in and the nurse told her that 10 minutes ago I was 8 centimeters and 90% effaced and moving quickly. At that point, the doctor said that I needed an IV. The nurse tried to say that I didn't need one, but the doctor was pretty adamant that I needed one. So another nurse went to get an IV. While we were waiting, the doctor left the room again. Then I started feeling the need to push. So the nurse hit the call button again and yells "Get the doctor in here, she's having the baby!" While we were waiting for the doctor to come back in, the nurse told me to push if I felt the urge. When my doctor came back in, she was really confused that I was feeling the need to push and said something like, "Why didn't you tell me that she was so close?" and the nurse responded that she had. Then the nurse just said it was a misunderstanding and calms everyone down. It was about this time that the other nurse comes back with the IV, which is now completely unnecessary. I started to push and then got yelled at by the nurse because I was yelling instead of putting that energy into pushing. After a few pushes, the doctor discovered that Lucas was "sunny-side up", which means that instead of Lucas's face pointing towards my spine, it was pointing towards my belly. At one point, after Lucas's head was out, the doctor and nurses told me to stop pushing. Chad told me later that there was a loop of umbilical cord around his neck. After they un-looped it, I pushed a few more times, and at 7:08pm, Lucas was born.

Lucas is only about 15 minutes old in this photo. 

After about 15 minutes on my chest, they took Lucas to check him out, weigh him, and measure him. He was 9 pounds, 9 ounces and 21.5 inches long.

From birth, Lucas's hands have been bigger than Raina's, even though she is 3 months older! Here's a good shot of his hands right after birth.

Later, Lucas got some eye drops and his first vaccines. And then we moved from the delivery room to the Mother-Baby Unit about two hours after Lucas was born.

After we got to the Mother-Baby Unit, Chad left to go get some food, as he hadn't eaten anything since lunchtime and he was starving. The nurses were good about getting me food to eat after I had Lucas, but Chad had to go out to get his own.