Baby Story

So happy to say that Finn Tyler Bayly has arrived, and is doing well!

He was born June 2nd, at 10:42 a.m., weighed 6 lbs 12 ozs, and was 20 inches long. That makes him our smallest baby, by nearly a pound. I'll be curious to see if he follows his sisters and ends up topping the growth charts, or if he'll always be on the smaller side. Either way, he's about as cute as can be :).

It's funny that despite the fact that I've now experienced labor four times, this one was completely different than the rest. They always are. This one started with some very painful but irregular contractions early Friday morning, that then continued being painful and irregular throughout the day. The time in between kept widening and narrowing like a roller coaster all day long, and I kept thinking something had to be wrong for them to hurt as bad as they were without actually stimulating "true" labor. By the end of the day, I couldn't really even talk through them, something I've never experienced when I wasn't in actual labor. Teag and I didn't go to bed until very late Friday night, waiting to see if the contractions would start to take on any kind of a pattern. Finally we went to bed around 2 a.m., where Teag was able to sneak in a few hours before things started getting serious.

At quarter to four I woke him up; my contractions had been coming every seven minutes for about an hour, and then started getting progressively closer. Given how bad the pain was, I was worried that if we didn't hurry we might be having an unscheduled home birth, so I called my mom, we dropped off the girls, and were on our way to the hospital. We arrived about 4:30 a.m. and one of the first things I asked them was how long it would take for the anesthetist to come. I'm sure they thought I was just another one of those women, but at that point I didn't care. Once they had me hooked up to the machines, and could see how close and how hard the contractions were, their sense of urgency seemed to kick in, and I didn't have to wait long.

This is a picture of me after my epidural took hold, which thankfully took very little time, and worked like a charm. I was not smiling before this, let me tell you. I've now had four epidurals, and sadly, they only work for me about half the time. I was dilated to almost five by my arrival, and my labor continued fairly normally for the next few hours. Funnily enough, I had told Teag that he would be born June 2nd, and I ended up being spot on there. I also said I thought he would be born at 9:30, and he very well should have been. It turned out my regular OB/GYN was gone, though he hadn't mentioned anything about that to me, so that was a surprise. Truthfully, I was a little disappointed too, as he'd delivered all our other children, and I was familiar with him and his methods.

Anyway, I was dilated to an 8 by 8:30, but they were holding off breaking my water because the on-call guy got called into an emergency C-section, and was most likely not going to be available to deliver me for a few hours. Finn had been doing just fine all along, but as time continued to pass, his heart was showing a lot of decelerations, and it had the hospital staff slightly concerned. I kept telling Teag, "it's because he wants to be born, and they're making him wait!" So, rather than cause the baby any undue stress, we were given as Teag put it, the 3rd string guy. Turns out he was really quite good though, very encouraging and very competent. He came in and told me we were going to do a couple of "test" pushes. I pushed twice, and he was like "Whoa, stop pushing." Like I said, he was ready to be born! The doctor quickly gowned up, called for the extra nurses to come in, and Finn was born three pushes later. Turns out he was born face up, which explains why the contractions hurt so much.

It felt fantastic to finally have our little guy here with us. I think Teag and I were both surprised at just how tiny he seems compared to our other kids, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't love his itti-bittiness. I just hope he doesn't end up being a short boy with a bunch of tall sisters :). Speaking of his sisters, they were some of his favorite visitors.

All three are completely enamored of him, and Rory seriously seems to get a kick out of pretty much everything he does. They're great little mothers. While we were in the hospital we got a lot of visitors, and it was nice to see so much family stopping by to meet our new little one.

Teag and I decided to leave Sunday night, rather than wait til the following day to check out. In the past, it's seemed as though they thought we were weird for staying an extra night, but this time around everyone acted all weird when we said we wanted to leave a little early. The hospital was very obviously short-staffed though, and because of that, we'll have to take Finn back for some of his tests and things that they hadn't managed to take care of while we were there. Obnoxious. Before we left though, we had to take a picture of him in his going home outfit.

He wasn't very happy about it :). Having him home has been a little surreal, especially with how crazy things are with the basement still in progress. Things I wouldn't normally forget about are falling to the wayside. We're trying to figure out our new normal, and work into some kind of routine. One of those, is bath time.

He's so tiny, it feels like you're wrestling a slippery little eel or something, but luckily he fits nicely into the bathroom sink, so he can't wiggle too far. Mostly we're just trying to enjoy him the best we can, even when he looks like a very serious old man.

I'm so happy he's a part of our family. Honestly, our family feels complete now, in a way it certainly hadn't before. We're so glad he's here with us!