Dextin Alan Barrett

I am a little slow posting this, but I finally found some time. After a long nine months Dextin Alan Barrett finally arrived on the morning of Friday, September 10. I was lucky enough to have him come nine days before his due date, which meant nine less days of having to work. I wasn't able to take any time off before he came so I trudged along all the way until the day before he was born. I did my fair share of complaining though...just ask Justin. I believe all that lifting and squatting is what made Dextin decide to come a little early, he figured I needed a break :) My pregnancy was overall fairly good, which is why I was able to continue working, thankfully. I will give a quick version of the birth. Justin and I were watching tv Thursday evening when my water broke. I assumed that is what it was since I had had no previous bladder leaks or anything. I was completely taken off guard though because I had had tons of braxton hicks contractions throughout most of the pregnancy and then even had false labor about two weeks before. The false labor lasted an entire night, but of course ended as soon as I decided to go to the hospital to get checked out. I was expecting a whole days or nights worth of real contractions, but at least I knew I could go to the hospital and they wouldn't send me home. So we gathered all of our things and drove the five minutes to the hospital. My water broke around eight or so and we got to our labor and delivery room around nine. I still wasn't having any contractions so they started me on petosin. My OB was the doctor that was there for the night, so that was nice. He told us that it would probably be Friday afternoon before I gave birth, since this was my first baby and they tend to take quite a while. So Justin pulled out the sofa bed and we settled for the night. The contractions finally kicked in and my doctor said I could get an epidural whenever I was ready. They weren't too bad so I decided to wait a while. Of course as soon as I decided I wanted it the anesthesiologist was in surgery. When he was about to get to us a lady came into the hospital that was on her fourth child and they figured she would need one right away, so we waited a little longer. Finally I was able to get one at about 1:30 am and boy was that nice. They told me to try and get some sleep, but I really wasn't able to because the babys heartrate kept dropping with every contraction, so the nurse would come in and move me around to try and get it back up. This of course made me nervous, which contributed to my lack of sleep. Around 5 am I began to feel the pressure. My nurse was very optimistic and kept saying she wanted to see this baby before her shift was over at 6:30. About 5:45 Justin had to run downstairs to give my mom our house keys so that she could let our poor puppy outside. The nurse came in soon after he left to check me and to everyones surprise I was fully dilated. She quickly got me all ready to start pushing. By 6 am I was ready, but Justin wasn't back yet. I began to worry, but then he walked in and found me all ready to go. He was really surprised. I began pushing. I definitely did not enjoy that part. The doctor came in to see how we were doing, but as soon as he took a look at me he immediately got ready to catch the baby. At 6:16 am Dextin was born. Only 16 minutes of pushing. I had stunned everyone...I am just that good I guess. Hopefully they all end up being that easy, because as not fun as it was I definitely feel I got it pretty easy. From the time my water broke until the time he was born was about 10 hours. Dextin weighed 6 pounds 10 ounces and was 19 inches long. The nurses pretty much left us alone most of Friday, though that probably wasn't the best thing because we found out the next day that his blood sugar was extremely low. It wasn't his fault though, he was trying to eat, I just wasn't making enough for him, which being a first time mom I really had no idea. The poor thing was pretty much starving and got to a point that he would hardly wake up. They had to put him on an IV which brought him back up, but as soon as they took him off (which took a whole day to ween him off of it) the numbers went right back down in the 30's. They wouldn't let us go home unless it was at least 50. They were going to put him back on the IV, which I really didn't want since we had to already stay one extra day. One of the nurses then suggested to supplement with formula until my actual milk came in. I liked that idea better because then we could at least go home. After a few feedings with the formula they found that his blood sugar stayed high enough to let us go home. We only had to use the formula for another day or so and he is doing great now. We did have a few days that we had to go back into the hospital because he had jaundice, but those numbers eventually started going down. At 2 1/2 weeks little Dextin is doing great. He was 6 pounds 4 ounces when we first got home and at his 2 week appointment yesterday he is now 7 pounds 12 ounces. I cant believe how much he has grown already. Though the newborn sized clothes still are a little big on him, but he doesnt fall out of them anymore. He is a great baby and usually only cries when he is hungry. He does love to be held though, so so far I haven't gotten too many things done. He is just the sweetest baby and me and Justin just adore him.