We had a baby!

Jonas Peter Leavitt

Jan. 21, 2011

7 lbs. 8 oz.

19.75 in. long

I should have posted this sooner, I know, but all of these hospital pictures are on Trent's computer, and I kept forgetting to do it while he's been home. But I figure documenting the birth of my child is a good Sunday activity. :)

I was able to get induced the day before my due date, which worked out great since my mom came on my due date (the 22nd) to help out for the week. I was glad to have the baby, and have here there when I got home from the hospital. She took good care of us, cooking, cleaning, shopping, taking care of William, etc.

We were going to go in at 1am on Friday the 21st, but around midnight the hospital called and said they had too many people come in, and didn't have room for me, and they'd call when some space opened up. I was fine with that, because it meant I could get some sleep before having the baby! So they called again at 6am and said we could come in at 7. So we got there at 7, got hooked up to pitosin, got an epidural, and time passed pretty quickly.

So, my sister's told me that epidurals only work on one side for her, so she doesn't get them anymore, and I always said "Too bad for you!" Mine worked like a charm when I had William, but I guess I jinxed myself, because this time my epidural didn't work on my right side for the majority of the labor, including during pushing. Gosh, I don't know how people do it without epidurals. I was such a wuss with the pain just on one side! And speaking of wusses, I seriously have to be the world's worst pusher. I was so tired from all of my ineffective pushing, that at the end I'm pretty sure Jonas was mostly pulled out rather than pushed out. He had a little bit of a cone head and bruise from the vacuum, but seemed to be a healthy boy otherwise. I was glad to have him at 2:33pm, rather than being there in labor for 12 hours or more like some people are.

Did I mention I was sick with a bad cold at the time? I couldn't breathe out of my nose at all the whole time I was pushing. Actually, they had an oxygen mask on me, and after each set of pushes I had to have Trent give me a tissue to blow my nose. And a glass of water, since I was breathing hard (because of the pain on my right side) and only through my mouth with that oxygen blowing and drying my throat out. I was so happy to be allowed to drink water this time, since with William I was only allowed ice chips. And the fact that I coughed just about every time I was supposed to be taking a deep breath before a push didn't help either... But anyway, it all worked out, and look at this sweet boy we have to show for it:

Several people have asked me how we picked his name. We always have a hard time deciding. We like names that are real names, not the made-up sounding ones, but also prefer ones that aren't super duper common (which, yes, is a little ironic since we picked the most popular boys' name of all time for William...). We had it narrowed down to Jonas and Seth when he was born. We kept looking at him, trying to figure out which one he looked like, but we both thought he looked like he could be either, so we finally just picked Jonas. We've already gotten comments about the Jonas Brothers and the Weezer song, but so far only from his uncles, and uncles are allowed that sort of teasing, right? We picked Peter for his middle name, after Trent's Peterson side of the family--his mom's maiden name. I like to have some part of the name be significant somehow, and since we just chose Jonas because we liked it, we wanted a little family connection in the middle name.
He's been such a good baby so far. I shouldn't jinx it and say this, but for the sake of documentation, he has been such a good little sleeper for the most part (not like his big brother, thank goodness!) only waking up a couple of times a night. And to be honest, he doesn't usually even cry when he's up in the night, just kind of squirming and whining. But when this boy cries, it is LOUD! He's got some lungs. When I took him to get circumcised on Friday, I was sitting in the room waiting for them to bring him back and I could hear him crying from down the hall. And I thought, hmm...maybe I should have warned them how loud he can be!

William loves him, and has been a very sweet big brother from the second we brought him home. He immediately wanted to give baby brother his toys and blankets, lots of kisses, and to hold him. And after two weeks that hasn't changed.

I've got more pictures to post later of this cute little Jonas, but they're on the other computer. I just realized we still haven't taken a single picture of the whole family yet! We better get on that before this boy grows up too fast! They weren't letting kids in to visit at the hospital because of RSV, so we didn't get that traditional hospital family picture. : (

We're so grateful for all the help and presents and meals we've gotten from our friends here! People are so kind to us all the time, and it really means a lot to us and is definitely appreciated.

Gotta go cuddle my baby, more pictures later!