The arrival of king Henry

It's a boy!

Henry Dewey Ainsworth V
Born February 1st, 2009 at 10:56 pm.
4 lbs. 15 oz and 17 inches long.

For those who are interested, here's a quick account of the arrival of our little Henry V.

Even though our due date was not until March 4th, our little baby seemed to have another plan in mind. After staying up the latest I had stayed up the entire pregnancy watching 'Zach and Miri Make a Porno' and 'Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist', I had gone to bed around 2 am after having strange Braxton Hicks contractions and baby kicking my ribcage non-stop all night. I tossed and turned until morning, waking up every couple of hours with baby reminding me he was there. I finally got up at around 8am and decided to take a shower and see if the hot water helped sooth my contractions. By the time I got out of the shower, my contractions changed from weird to mildly painful.

It was Sunday morning (Superbowl Sunday) so I called my doctor's Urgent Care office and made an appointment to come by and have them look me over. They were definitely giving me the 'This is your first baby isn't it?' And downplaying the fact that I was now having contractions every 3 minutes. The nurse actually asked me, "Well, did you WANT to come in and have us look at you?" I was like - you tell me, that's why I called! So I dragged Hahn out of bed to go with me to get checked out. They had me take a non-stress test and hooked me up to monitor my contractions, and even after 40 min of that the doctor came in telling me stories about how it was likely just false labor and how some women will experience it for weeks. Once he actually checked me, even he couldn't hide the surprise on his face that I was apparently already dilated to 3 cm!! From there the doctor wanted us to go straight to the hospital and try to stop the labor before it progressed any further.

Hahn and I were a little freaked out, the doctor told us that there would be a room waiting for us at the hospital and sure enough there was. They got me in a gown in bed and within minutes they were giving me a shot of adrenaline type medicine to relax my muscles and try and stop the contractions. The medicine made me super shakey which did not help my nerves. After the adrenaline wore off, they brought me a new medicine to try and we spent most of the afternoon, just relaxing and watching TV. Every couple hours they would bring me more medicine assuring us that we would probably be discharged within the hour. (Hahn and I were starting to have our doubts after the first couple times they said this.) We just kept saying, 'We're not going to have a baby today, right??' and we kept joking that we better not because Hahn's mom Ann was on vacation until the 16th and we promised her we would not have the baby until she got back. "You're mom is going to be so pissed if we have this baby today!" was our line of the day.

By early evening, the doctor on call stopped by and after another assesment they realized that I was still progressing and that nothing we were trying seemed to be stopping the labor and it was decided that we were going to be having a baby that day. Hahn and I could hardly believe it! We started calling people and a few came and stopped by. Sam and Ed packed a quick bag for us since I hadn't gotten around to doing it yet. (I had ALMOST done it the night before and was really mad at myself!) Darrow, Tera and Mason stopped by and brought Hahn some dinner since we had been there all day. At that point I had gotten an epidural and was feeling pretty good. (And boy was I glad I got one, as the strong contractions had been making me nauseous and the pain relief helped wonders!)

Around 9 ish our doctor arrived and ushered our visitors into the hallway so that she could examine me. After taking a look she decided that she may as keep things moving and break my water. And we went from about 8cm to 10+ in a matter of minutes! Before I knew it, the nurse was prepping the room and talking about getting ready to push. We were like, 'We're having this baby NOW??" It happened so quick that Hahn realized we still had people waiting out in the hallway and had to go let them know that it was time.

About 25 minutes of pushing later I got to hear the words I had been so excited to hear Hahn shout "It's a boy!"




Because he was about 5 weeks early they had to whisk him away to the incubator in the room as several nurses were standing by to care for him and look him over. Hahn got to go stand near him and watch as the doctor helped finish up with me. Those few minutes of not being able to hold him were the hardest. That evening they took him to the NICU and Hahn and I were taken to go visit him. For the first night he had a central IV through his umbilical cord stump and we were unable to hold him. He was also getting room air oxygen, and nutrients through his IV and his temperature was being controlled for him.







Henry's health progressed very rapidly after that night. By the next evening his central IV was out and we were able to hold him. Within the next couple days he no longer needed the incubator to control his temp and his oxygen was taken out. A few days later he was moved to the other side of the NICU for the non-critical patients. The last week and a half was just waiting for little Henry to gain the energy to eat on his own. For a while he had a gavauge tube that went into his nose down into his stomach and that was used to feed him when he didn't have the strength or energy to do it himself. Around the 12th (his 11th day in the NICU) he remarkably finished his first bottle on his own. By the next day he had finished a breastfeeding on his own and within a couple days we had weened him off the gavauge tube. In fact he declared himself done when he ripped it out for the upteenth and final time! ;) By the evening of the 15th they were talking about discharging us and by the morning of the 17th we were actually bringing him home!