Noah Everett Has Arrived!

On April 10, 2012, our newest little bundle of joy arrived: Noah Everett.

We arrived at the hospital at 5:30AM (sooo early!) for the scheduled induction. To our surprise, things went quickly and I had been admitted, examined (2cm dilated and having contractions), and had Pitocin in my veins by about 6:15AM. As with Kai's delivery, I was already in the early stages of labor so we were able to skip the first stage of the induction, saving us several hours. We are SO lucky!

We had a great nurse named Elizabeth, who was wonderfully cheerful, thoughtful and helpful. Our doctor was Doctor Melnick, of whom we are not fans.We got the impression that neither Elizabeth nor our anesthesiologist liked him much, either.

By about 8AM I was 3cm dilated and just chilling. We figured the baby might not be born until late afternoon and I worried that labor could even progress into the night. But, around 9:30AM the doctor broke my water. That is when things started to happen very quickly. The contractions started to intensify. I got my epidural and the pain subsided again. By 10AM I was at about 5cm and just a bit later (I started to lose track of time by this point), the contractions started to become very painful... then extremely painful. I thought the epidural just wasn't working well and told the nurse I was fine. Justin said, "Um.. are you sure?" and I admitted that the contractions had become very painful. The nurse examined me and I was already fully dilated! This couldn't have been later than 10:30, so I had gone from 5cm to 10cm in just half an hour. No wonder it was painful!

Nurse Elizabeth called for Dr. Melnick, who had me start pushing... then left the room randomly (like I said, we're not fans). He came back a few minutes later, but really wasn't much help. The baby's nurse arrived and was coincidentally also named Elizabeth.

Noah Everett was born at 10:54AM. He weighed 9 pounds and 9 ounces and was 22 inches long. He was (and is) perfect in every way. He looks a lot like Jack did when he was born.

Everything went very smoothly for the rest of our stay at the hospital. I was soon transferred upstairs to the maternity ward, but I didn't stay long! Noah and I went home the next afternoon to introduce Noah to his brothers and start the next phase of our lives.

Mom Outnumbered, Indeed.