Season of Sojourning: Xander Joins the Family

Here he is.

After a long hot summer surviving on La Croix dressed up with fresh mint and frozen fruit, after those final weeks when grunts and sighs accompanied Eddie's invitation to play with him on the floor, after a limited wardrobe to go with my limited energy, and after hours upon hours of dreaming, planning, praying, and more dreaming...

He burst into our life!

Lil Alexander Man

Did I mention 21 hours of labor? Hey, that's half the time it took last time around! So I'll take it! I was forcing myself to choke down six dates everyday the weeks before he was born since they say it'll shorten early labor and help keep your water from breaking early on. Still I found myself with little baby contractions in the middle of the night, and after only a few hours of laying there in the dark trying to snooze, I heard/felt a *pop* followed by a little trickle. And everything proceeded to follow that familiar pattern--just like with Eddie, but in about half the time.

Actually, laying in bed my contractions were the strongest and most consistent. Once I was up and moving, they came and went without hardly noticing. Every once in awhile there would be a really good one. Grammy was in town and came to stay with Eddie that morning while Jonathan and I stuck to our plan of a breakfast date. We did go to the Dish, that much closer to the hospital, just in case things would suddenly take a quick turn. They didn't. We took our time, went for a walk, did some window shopping. When we finally did get checked in to the hospital things were progressing steadily, just slowly. After several hours, right about 12 hours after my water had broken (with Eddie they let me go 24) I was put on pitocin to help speed things along (they actually remembered to turn it on this time!). And after several hours of that I felt like I'd accomplished my goal: make it as long as I can without an epidural. Once that kicked in at about 7:30 pm we settled in to wait for our precious little boy's arrival. We talked about his name. We still weren't 100% set, but since Eddie was ("His name is A'xander." He'd announce if you asked him about baby brother.), well, what do you do?

Dr. Yun was not on call that weekend, but since the on-call doctor wasn't feeling well, she actually got to deliver him anyway! Just like with Eddie (noticing the theme?), after only a few pushes the staff cautioned that this part would be quick and they took their time. Almost everyone on the floor was in our room when he was born, perks of a small hospital with no other maternity patients, I guess. Lexi, our nurse, was a dear! She claimed we named him after her. She was a good sport with all my weird reactions to labor, heart rate speeding up with contractions being the strangest one.

Unlike giving birth to Eddie, this time I was on my back not my side so I could actually see as he made is debut. Wow, there really is nothing like babies being born. So miraculous, so amazing, but also so commonplace and ordinary at the same time. It's so strange to think that everyone has been born, but it's such a powerfully unique moment in time.

And then he was on my chest! Squirmy and red and chubby! Eight pounds, one ounce! They'd said he was measuring big! What a little honey!

And then, just when I thought my heart was full to bursting, the next morning Grammy brought Eddie to see his new baby brother! We'd done a lot of talking about what it would be like. On the way to the hospital he told Grammy he was nervous.