Andrew and Brenda

I was taking some photos of Katie today, trying to get her to smile with one of her little toys. All of a sudden, she started giggling! This may not sound extraordinary, but this is her first giggle ever! Once I realized what was going on, I put the camera down, leapt for my iPhone and was able to get about a minutes worth of heart-melting goodness!

I’m kind of in a hurry to get back to the hospital, so this will be the short, short version. I got up Wednesday morning at 3:30am and got Brenda up at 4:00. When we headed out the door, an unbelievable thunderstorm was going on dumping sheets of rain. Had to go about 40mph the entire way to the hospital. Luckily there isn’t much traffic at 4:30, even in Atlanta.

We checked in shortly after 5:00 and didn’t have to wait too long to get into our room. Their birthing rooms are super nice. Big, with hardwood floors and actual furniture. They really go out of their way to make it a comfortable place. They promptly got Brenda hooked up to the monitors and they started the IV with Pitocin about 7:30. Small contractions seemed to start right away.

Nothing much exciting for the next four hours. We were both exhausted so we were taking naps between nurse visits. Reruns of Mythbusters episodes where on in the background all day.

About 11:30 our doctor came in and broke Brenda’s water. Shortly after, Brenda had reached as much pain as she was going to tolerate and they put the epidural in. Not long after, she was about 2cm dilated. Seemed like we still had a long ways to go, but only 2-3 hours later, the surprised nurse told us we were ready to go and she was calling our doctor.

Hard labor started around 5:30pm, about twelve-and-a-half hours after we checked in. I can’t tell you how incredibly well I thought Brenda did through the whole process. Yes, she had the epidural, but the entire day was pretty taxing. I’m very proud of her.

Kathedra (“Katie”) Eileen Jones was born at 6:42pm, October 7th, 2009. She’s 7lbs, 10oz, and 20 inches long. And she’s already sporting a full head of hair! Neither of us has been able to spend much time with her. We’ve held her for a grand total of maybe five minutes before they took her to the nursery. That’s a major bummer, but the previous post explains why. The main thing is we’ll be thrilled to finally get her home and all to ourselves for a while.

Thanks to everyone that followed the play-by-play. I know it’s difficult for the many friends and family that are so far away during a time like this. It’s hard on us, too, but we’ve always been 100% confident in our decision to move to Atlanta and consider this our home. And we can’t wait to raise our new daughter here. Just remember, Atlanta is a pretty short plane ride and we have plenty of space for guests

More Twitter and blog updates as we have ‘em.

Love y’all,

Andrew, Brenda and Katie

I’m home for a bit to shower, change clothes and look in on the cats (like they care). So I wanted to post a more detailed update of the last day and a half.

I should lead off by saying that if you saw the photos of Katie in the Special Care Nursery this morning, DO NOT let it freak you out. Soon after she was born, they noticed she had a breathing pattern they referred to as “grunting”. They took her up to the transitional nursery where they do all the usual post-birth stuff. After a while I got an update from a doctor who told me Katie had something called a “Pneumothorax“, which is air that has collected outside the lungs, making it harder for them to expand fully (the article explains this better than I can). The likely cause, for Katie, is the first deep breathes she took immediately after birth.

The doctor was pretty clear about the fact that this is not serious and not totally uncommon in newborns. There’s a chance that if it doesn’t get any worse, Katie will just work it out herself. And if not, they can easily remove the excess air with a needle. That said, they admitted her last night to the Special Care Nursery so they could continue to monitor and give her supplemental oxygen. So in the photos, I’m sure it looks a lot worse than it really is. She’s got an oxygen tube, a feeding tube and an IV for antibiotics. Everything else is just a monitor.

They took a couple more chest x-rays last night, but we’ve not yet spoken to a doctor today. When we visited about 10:30 this morning, she was visibly breathing better and sleeping very well. They’ll keep her at least 2 days, but as many as 6. That sucks, but it’s more important to make sure she has a clean bill of health. I’ll keep posting updates as we get them. Just trust me when I say….don’t panic

I’ll continue the recap in the next post….