Drew Thomas Skene

I think deep down I knew this baby was going to come early like his sister. So I wasn’t surprised when I woke up on Friday morning, September 17th, at exactly 12:00 am to discover that my water had broke. My water broke with Isla, but I was already in labor when it did and really didn’t notice it at all. In fact, I was sort of concerned that I might not notice it again if it were to happen with baby #2. Yeah, no worries there – I definitely noticed it this time. So I woke up Ryan and told him to call his Mom so she could get over to our house asap.

As a side story – Ryan and I were somewhat concerned about not having anyone to watch Isla on Thursday night/Friday morning if I were to go into labor since our roomie, Krista, was driving back to U of O that night. Lucky for us, Connie had a high school reunion in town this weekend and decided to come down a day early to help us out if we needed. We are so glad and blessed that Connie decided to do this! She saved us.

After a quick shower and making sure that everything was in order for Isla, I gave my sweet sleeping baby girl a kiss goodbye (I got all teary-eyed and everything as she had no clue as to how her life was about to change), and we got to the hospital at about a quarter to one and checked into labor and delivery. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I wasn’t having any contractions at this point so we had to have a doctor do an examination in order to make sure that my water did in fact break. Luckily the doctor took one look “down there” and declared “oh yeah her water broke”. At this point they let me walk around the hospital for an hour (in a hot hospital gown) to try and get labor started. I knew it was a lost cause, but Ryan and I walked around anyways and sent text messages to family, friends and co-workers to let them know we were going to have a baby.

At about 3:00 am they started me on pitocin and Ryan and I tried to get some rest. Not sure how I could get rest with contractions starting, but I tried anyway. At about 6:00 am I was ready for my epidural, but the nurse explained that the anesthesiologists work 24 hour shifts and there was a shift change at 7:00 am. So I could get my epidural with the doc at the end of the shift or wait an hour and get a doc with “fresh eyes”. I sucked it up and chose the latter. This last hour made me decide that an epidural is the best thing in the entire world – I love them!

After the epidural took effect (around 8:00 am) it was determined that I was at 6 cm and 80% effaced. Again Ryan and I tried to rest, but it didn’t really work as I was too anxious. At about 9:45 I paged the nurse because I had a big urge to push (something I never experienced with Isla) and we found that I was at 10 cm and ready to go. We waited about 20 minutes for the doctor and I pushed for 15 very short minutes and our baby boy was born! He came out just perfect and weighed 6 lbs 11 oz and was 19.5 inches long (the weight was the exact same as Isla – apparently I like to have babies on the third Friday in September and they have to weigh 6lbs 11 oz).

Here are pictures from Drew’s Birthday:

Little did I know that the birth was going to be the easy part of our stay at the hospital. After Drew was born we found that he had a low blood sugar level (he had a level of 34 and it needed to be above a 50). We decided to let him breast feed for a little and see if we could get it back up, but it didn’t work. So for the next 24 hours they had to prick my baby’s tiny feet with needles to test his blood sugar every 2 hours and they also shoved formula down him (so much that he was spitting up everywhere) in order to get his blood sugar back up. The whole experience was awful and I lost it a couple of times. Thank goodness his blood sugar started to go up early Saturday morning and we were discharged on Saturday evening. I was worried about giving him formula and that it might interfere with breast feeding, but so far I have not had to supplement his feedings with formula since we got home from the hospital. So far Drew has been a great baby and we feel so blessed to have our sweet healthy baby boy in our lives.

On our way home:

My new reality . . . and I love it!