Parenthood!

So, here are a few more pictures of Britton...OK maybe more than a few but I think he's just so dang cute. Slightly biased.

I know newborns can't really smile but check out this pic I snapped of him. It looks pretty close!

OK. This is just way cute.

Just another cute pic. Oh, and I'm so hoping that he gets blue eyes...we'll see.

Just getting ready to leave the hospital.

His first car ride! And we get to take him home. It's kind of weird leaving the hospital. At least my thoughts went something along the lines of "You mean we actually get to take him home?!?" That's when it really started to hit me that I am a father and have a baby boy. Crazy.

Mom and the little one all tuckered out!

So on the last day of our stay at the hospital we found out that his bilirubin levels were kind of high which indicates jaundice. We had to get him tested again the next day and unfortunately his levels jumped even higher. So lucky him, he gets to spend every moment that he isn't getting fed on the cursed thing. He isn't much of a fan and I can't blame him. Last night we got no sleep whatsoever. I think he maybe totaled 20 minutes at most for the whole night. The rest was spent fussing. Today we put an ace bandage across his eyes and have been playing music. It seems to be helping. Hopefully he'll be done with it soon. He normally sleeps so well at night.

And just one more in the straight jacket UV thing.

So, as we adjust to being parents we realize how time consuming it is and how much of an adjustment it really is. The lack of sleep is the hardest to get used to. Well, stay tuned for more cute pictures to come.

Baby Britton!

It's hard to believe that the day finally came and we now have a baby boy! His name is Britton Michael Cleve Goring and he weighed a whopping 8 pounds 10 ounces at birth and was 22 inches tall. I have no idea where that height came from.

Oh, I should also mention that he was over a week late. Nicole's doctor decided that we better induce her so we went in Monday night, driving through a blizzard to the hospital. When we arrived at 8:30 pm we got situated and they started Nicole on a drug to thin her cervix since she was not effaced at all and only 1 cm dilated. Through the night they continued to administer the drug and we didn't get a whole lot of sleep. Come 6:30 am they started to induce her using pitocin (an artificial hormone similar to oxytocin). She started to have mild contractions and that went on till about noon. She had only dilated to about 3 cm by then. Around noon the doctor decided to break her water sack to help along the labor. That's when contractions got really intense. It got to the point that her contractions were stacked pretty much right on top of each other with no rest time in between. She also started having back labor pains that caused all her muscles to seize up so she couldn't relax them. That's when we decided to get an epidural. Unfortunately the anesthesiologist was in with a patient having a C-section and didn't get to Nicole for over an hour. That was probably the hardest time.

By the time she got the epidural, she had progressed to about 7 cm and 80% effaced. Oh, it was around 3 pm that she got the epidural. Now, in general most people progress quickly after reaching 7 cm dilated. Well, the next 2.5 cm took till 11 pm. All the time we were trying different positions and turning Nicole on to her side. We came to find out that Britton was facing posterior, which simply means when he came out his face was facing up and not down. This makes delivery more difficult because his head runs into the pubic bone and has trouble coming down. The other issue was that the last 0.5 cm of Nicole's cervix would not thin at all. Most likely due to the baby's position. So finally around 11 pm we decide to try and push past that part of cervix. Luckily after a while of pushing, he did make it past the cervix but still had the pubic bone to get by. But at least we now knew we would get by without a C-section.

So at 11 pm Nicole started the pushing and pushing and more pushing. Nicole pushed for about 3 hours and his head was visible but just wouldn't make it past the pubic bone. Finally, the doctor decides to use the vacuum cup to help pull him out. Finally, after 4 hours of pushing, the baby came out and man was he big! No wonder he wasn't coming out.

Well, he had finally come after being in the hospital for like 30 hours. Nicole was a trooper! Here are some pictures!