Thanksgiving baby!

The rumors are true! Kristi had our baby! But rather than give you the final stats, I'm gonna walk you through our experience, so we don't have to explain the story over and over again! Here goes:

As you all know, Kristi's due date was Nov. 22 (Thanksgiving day) and our doctor wanted to do an ultrasound on the 21st to see how the baby was doing. Everything looked great, but when they baby was hooked up to the fetal monitor the doctor didn't see the the baby's heartbeat go up and down enough like he wanted to see. So he sent my 2 cm-dialated wife home with orders to eat and then go walk around for a couple of hours, then to go to the hospital where they would again check the dialation and monitor the baby's heartbeat. After a nice meal and a lot of walking we arrived at Winnie Plamer Hospital and signed in at Triage at 1pm. She had some exams and was monitored for a while on the fetal monitor.

After about 30 minutes on the fetal monitor Kristi and I were talking, wondering whether they were going to induce her or not, when three nurses burst into our room, grabbed an oxygen mask and slapped it on her face as a fourth and fifth nurse rushed in asking the other nurses "What's wrong? What's wrong?" My poor flustered wife was looking around trying to ask what was going on while the first three nurses (all trying to talk at once) explained that the baby's heartbeat had suddenly dipped. They assured us that the baby was fine, but that this indicated that Kristi's labor would potentially be higher risk, and that there was a possibility of having to take our baby C-section. Our doctors decided to induce Kristi since the baby was ready and Kristi was having regular contractions (though they weren't very strong.) So a little worried but still feeling good, they wheeled Kristi up to the labor and delivery room. They checked her once again with the monitor and the baby did well enough and the doctor said we were going to go ahead and try a regular vaginal birth. Here's a little video of us waiting for Kristi's inducement to really kick in. (They induced her at 7 p.m.)




After this, we waited for Kristi to dialate. After about 8 hours of labor, Kristi had only dialated to etween 5 and 6 centimeters. We were worried too, because with the harder contrations the baby's heartrate would slow down. Exhausted, Kristi decided that it was time to get an epideral, not because of the pain, but because she wanted to have enough energy to push at the end; and the prospect of another 5-8 hours without rest wasn't great. After the epideral, Kristi rested more, but after about another hour and a half with no more progress, the doctors told us that they had decided that we needed to have a C-section becuase the baby was rejecting labor. So at about 4:30 a.m. Kristi went in and got set up for her operation. And at 4:53 a.m. our little baby boy, Luke Parley Hill was born.


Happy Birthday baby Luke: Blond hair, blue eyes, six pounds and 3 ounces, 20.5 inches long. Born Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 22) at 4:53 a.m. Tall and skinny with HUGE feet!

Isn't he cute! (Kristi holds Luke for the first time!)
















Kristi is doing really well, and she's recovering much faster than most women do from this type of surgery







All worn out.








More photos to come...