You Probably Know By Now: Baby Warne is Here!

Ok, so I know everyone in the world probably knows we had our baby, because if not, he would have made a world record of being in the womb for, oh, almost exactly 11 months now. And we know that would have killed me, so let's talk about when he arrived!

Emilee in front of the hospital the morning Austin arrived

He was actually 9 days early. All seemed well--too well--as a matter of fact. I was dilated to a 4 at 36 weeks, and at 38 weeks I was at a 5, bordering on 6 to where my doctor didn't even want to check me for fear he'd break the water on accident and I'd have the baby right there in the exam room! The baby's head was down and at +1, and the doctor said, "Why don't you just come down to the hospital Friday morning, and we'll break the water and you can have this baby? In fact, you'll probably only be in labor for an hour. Mine and his (Steve's) job will be done quick!"
"Yeah, we'll go out and have time to play a round of golf after!" Steve replied.

Ha Ha. "Their job is soooo easy" I remember thinking to myself. But I was pretty happy with that--the quicker we do this thing, the better! But I also thought, if I'm so far along, can't the baby just come on his own, and we'll just wait for contractions?

But we decided to go in Friday, March 19. Turns out this was good, because they broke my water (I was dilated to a 7 already when I entered the hospital (no "real" contractions, no pain!) and there was some meconium in it that could have been harmful to the baby. Also, in hindsight, it seems that being that far along and not in labor yet is pretty rare, and once they started coming, they probably would have gotten very painful very quickly. As it was, they broke the water at 9:00 am, I got an epidural at about 10:30 am, it was time to push at 12:00 pm, and baby Austin Richard Warne was born at 2:35 pm that afternoon!

The details: He was 7 pounds 6 ounces, 19.5 inches long, APGAR score of 9.5, and one healthy, alert little baby! Here's newborn Austin: Proud Mom & Dad with week-old Austin outside of our Florida home