jonathan robert peck

i'm sitting in a quiet hospital room with jonathan by my side and figure that now is as good a time as any to document his birth. i'm pretty sure that life is going to get a whole lot crazier as soon as i go home. not just because we've upped the count to three children, but because our lives are a little hectic right now. at the end of last week, our landlady informed us that she wants to move back into her house and gave us our thirty days notice. so, instead of moving to washington state at the beginning of july, as we had planned, we are now moving on may 1st. add in a newborn and randy graduating with his masters and life is about to get exciting.

i'm going to write jonathan's birth story, so if that's not really your thing, feel free to skip right to the pictures below. otherwise, read on.

as you may recall, my previous labors have been pretty quick and i have been consistently dilated to 4cm and 80-90% effaced by 36 weeks with both of my previous pregnancies. jonathan was no exception, so i have been walking around feeling like a time bomb for the past few weeks. i don't have contractions leading up to labor, i just go into heavy labor all of a sudden.

randy woke up early this morning to do some last minute preparation for his second and final masters oral exam that was scheduled for 9:00am. fortunately, his first, and much more difficult exam was a couple weeks ago, so he already had that out of the way. i woke up at 6:00am on my own and a few minutes later, had a contraction. i told randy, "you're not going to believe this, but i'm pretty sure that i just had a contraction." he jumped in the shower while i got some last minute stuff together and then i hopped in the shower quickly while he got the girls up and loaded in the car. by the time i was done with my shower i was sure that this was the real deal and called my parents to meet us at the hospital to take the girls. then i called the midwife on call to tell her that i was coming and that i go fast.

fortunately, traffic was quiet at 6:30am in the morning and we made good time getting to the hospital. we got there at 6:45am and i ran up to labor and delivery while randy waited for my parents, who were only a few minutes behind us. they briefly put me in a triage room while i gowned up and they checked me. i was dilated to 7.5cm, so they immediately moved me to a labor room. randy got upstairs just as i arrived in the room.

at this point, the contractions were painful and frequent.  i wanted my epidural and i wanted it ten minutes ago. unfortunately, the anesthesiologist was in the OR for a c-section and it didn't look like he was going to make it any time soon. the midwife came in and worked on breathing and relieving some of the pressure with me, which helped. but i would have preferred an epidural. or ether. or a sudden blow to the head.

while we were getting settled into the room, randy called to let his teacher know that i was in labor and he probably wouldn't make it to his oral exam, although given my history, he may be able to make it. thankfully, his teacher said, "don't you dare."

around 7:35am i was feeling ready to push, so the midwife checked me and i was at 9.5cm. she broke my water and as soon as she did, i was complete and my pain levels went through the roof. after maybe four minutes of pushing, jonathan was out. it was 7:48am (it turns out randy could have gone to his orals) and he was 8 lbs. 7 oz. at that point, they didn't tell us how long he was, but we later found out he was 20 inches long. they gave him right back to me and he ate right away. the labor and delivery unit was extremely busy this morning (we were the 8th birthday of the day), so we got the next few hours to get to know jonathan and rest a little.

so, jonathan holds the new family record for the fastest labor and delivery at one hour and forty-five minutes from first contraction to exit. i have to say, natural childbirth is not for me, but if i have to go through that much pain, at least it was brief.

on to the pictures:

a forced smile during labor

weigh in

getting to know dad

getting checked out in the nursery

a genuine and relieved smile

jonathan and his great-grandmother, joanne linford

look at that hair!

jonathan and his great-grandfather, ray linford

jonathan and his grandmother, diane linford

my parents brought the girls to visit, but they haven't been feeling great, so we didn't take lots of new family pictures. they'll have to wait before they get to get too close to him. neither of the girls were too sure about the whole thing. hopefully this mixed with the move won't cause too much trauma.

jonathan and his grandfather, ray linford