On Tuesday (the 15th) I had this sweet baby.
I started having some mild contractions in the afternoon, and was just waiting to see what they would do. By around 6:00 I texted Brett that I was having contractions, because by then I was quite sure they were leading somewhere. He came home and we quickly ate and then he went to Jethro’s parent-teacher conference and I called our neighbor Kathi who came over to watch the kids. The conference ran a bit late, and when Brett came home we said prayers with the kids and put them all to bed (they did not know that we were heading to the hospital).
(Me and Ethne with our bellies. Ethne’s probably would have looked a bit more realistic with a pillow rather than a doll, but oh well.)
When we got to the hospital I was at a 4 and I asked for an epidural. I was all for a pain-free game this time. They came and gave me one. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work. It made my left leg go completely dead, but I still felt contractions. They were still painful, but more mild, so I figured it was all right. Later the midwife checked me again, and I was still at about a 4, so she asked me if I wanted her to break my water, and I said to go for it. After that, Baby started moving down super fast and the contractions got really really super painful and I started cursing the anesthesiologist. Not really, but it was pretty lame to have the expectation of a pain-free time and then not have it. Obviously. I told Brett I wished my sister Megan could give me an epidural, cause she’s super-skilled and amazing, and Brett said, “Well, when you go to Utah this summer, just have her give you one.” Ha ha- sounds like a party. Anyway, in just a little while, he was born, and I think the epidural did help at least a little because it wasn’t quite as torturous as usual when he came out. And I saw him and thought he was the cutest baby in the world!
I got to hold him and I just loved him to pieces immediately. And then my doctor opened the door and came in, as the midwife was cleaning everything up. :) He was born at 11:51 pm.
Wyatt wasn’t breathing super well, so after a while, maybe half an hour, they took him to the NICU where they could monitor him and give him some oxygen.
When Brett came back after a while, they helped me into a wheelchair to go to the other room. It is really really weird to have a completely numb leg. I guess I figured I could just sort of hop a bit on it, like when you have a sore ankle or something, but then I just schlooop- down. Good thing I was hanging on to Brett and he was holding me up.
So. In the following days, they kept Wyatt in the NICU for monitoring and whatnot. I was feeling really good, actually. But poor Brett had quite the stressful week. The next day, Wednesday, stayed home from work with the kids, and tried to work on his speech for that night. Remember a while ago I said that Brett had really good news from work and that I had to wait until next month to tell about it? Well, he had entered a competition for a beginning business. He worked really hard writing it in German and memorizing it, and he ended up winning first prize, which was 30,000 francs for his project. So that Wednesday was the awards banquet. He said he hadn’t really gone over his speech much at all, so right before he gave it he got pretty nervous, but when he introduced himself he said his name and that he was from Utah and that the night before his sixth child was born, and he had a picture of Wyatt on the power point, and he said that everyone started applauding. :) Anyway, he was famous for a while and the university newspaper called and wanted to interview him, and he and the project got a blurb in the paper.
And then the next day, and Friday and Saturday he had an Entrepreneurial class all day long, which he couldn’t miss. Ordinarily he could have taken work off fairly easily, but not the class of course, so he had to scramble to get babysitters and so on. In the end the class was cancelled on Saturday, which was very nice. He came and got me from the hospital that morning, and then he went on the train and picked up our new van that we had bought the Saturday before, but was getting the AC fixed.
So now I am pumping at home, and going to the hospital when I can to feed Wyatt. He has done pretty well, but some days he didn’t eat as well as others, but I think (hope) he is on the upswing.
The following are lousy phone pictures, but it’s the only picture I have so far of all SIX kids.
He is absolutely adorable and wonderful and I can’t wait to bring him home. Oh and the name Wyatt Blake is the name I wanted for a long time that Brett said he wouldn’t let me have. The kids and I had called him Baby Wyatt for a long time, and I thought Brett might come around, but then he said definitely no, so I did try to start thinking of more names, and I had another option- Oakes- but Brett didn’t like that either. So a day or so after Wyatt was born, and we still hadn’t told the hospital an official name for him, Brett came to visit with all the kids, and he was feeling stressed because he doesn’t like being at the hospital with all the kids, and he’s like, “So what are we going to name this kid?” and I said, “Well, you know what I want.” And he said, “What about Jonathan?” which I don’t think he even really likes or cares about, but he just wanted to throw something out. I was like- Dude, you don’t even care about that name at all. So he just said, “Fine, name him whatever you want. As long as it’s not Oakes.” So I said, “Okay, then it’s Wyatt Blake.” And I said, “Well, unless you want to choose the middle name, since I chose the first name.” And he said, “Bär" which is bear in German, and I said, “no.” So then he was just like, whatever. :) So I promptly took my passport down to the room and signed the document to name him and she mailed it in.
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Okay, I’m back again to update. We’ve had an awful awful week because everyone got sick. The flu went through just about all of us—Brett and Jethro have yet to get better. We’ve had pretty much all symptoms—headaches, runny noses, coughing, sore throats, achiness, chills and fevers, just general yuckiness and wishing I could fast forward time. But luckily, I guess, Wyatt was/is still in the hospital, so he’s not in the midst of it all.
He had some jaundice and had to go under the lights for a day, and then he wasn’t drinking as much as they wanted him to, so they gave him a feeding tube. It was quite sad to see him actually, as he had lost some weight, and the chubby chipmunk cheeks he had when he was born were completely gone.
The feeding tube was only in for a little while, and now he’s doing well, and the last I heard from the nurse today was that if he keeps looking good then he might come home this weekend.
And that is the story.
