Henry Hatch Martin was born November 19, 2012 at 7:42PM. He weighed in at 8lbs 2oz and was 20.5 inches long.
All of Sunday night I had contractions every four minutes for about 20 seconds each, but they weren't terribly painful: nothing to rush to the hospital for. I was so pooped from the contractions that I would awaken half way for the contraction and then fall right back asleep for another four minutes. It was quite the night. Monday morning they kept coming with out letting up. I finally decided that we were just going to go to the hospital to have them break my water and have the baby.
We drove to Timpanogos Hospital an hour away from Grantsville hoping that they wouldn't turn us away saying come back later. Timp Hospital is apparently small but pretty busy. They did not have any delivery rooms open for patients that weren't in full active labor. They put me in an evaluation room to see if I would qualify for active labor (dilating 1 cm per hour). After the hour of waiting the nurse told me that I had dilated and that they would some how make room for me to have the baby. YEA! They moved me to a delivery room. I had told them that if they would just break my water that the baby would come on out. For some reason we waited FOREVER for them to break my water. I never felt like the nurse gave me a very good reason why. It seemed like they were always waiting on something else. So we waited around ALL day.
I kept having my contractions every four minutes. They were getting quite long and a bit more painful, but I could handle the pain. I knew that I would want an epidural for the actual delivery, but I also knew that I wanted to feel as much of what was going on with my body as possible for as long as possible.
Finally around 6 o'clock ish my water was broken and contractions turned from bearable to the most wrenching pain ever. I got an epidural which was incredibly painful to get at this point in labor since everything the anestesiologist did induced more contractions which were harder. Things went pretty quickly from there. Henry's head was about ready to pop out and so they rushed to get set up and to get the doctor in. After pushing for three contractions, out popped Henry at 7:42PM! I had much more energy with this labor to be able to fully sit up during delivery and got to watch pretty much the entire birth. It was a pretty amazing experience.
My recovery was phenomenal. My epidural wore off quickly and I had very little residual pain. I completely contribute my great recovery to all of the labor intensive yard work I did this summer. I was able to walk pretty well by the time I got to the recovery room and was up and about the next morning.
Henry's recovery from delivery was great too. We are working with him on his sucking ability though. He is a very sleepy eating baby and his sucking ability is not very good at all. With a few days practice I am sure he will be getting better.
Charlie loves his little baby brother. I have tried to show Charlie other babies but he never cared about them, but some how he knew that this baby was different. He was pretty excited and proud.
He loves looking at Henry and pointing to his nose or eyes.
Charlie climbed into my hospital bed with me and wanted to hold Henry. He gave him kisses and laughed and squealed about having a brother.
Charlie is adjusting fairly well to having Henry around. The novelty has kind of worn off, but he still loves him just as much.
