WELCOME, NICHOLAS!
We are thrilled to announce that Nicholas Calvin Shelton Ray was born at 1:18 AM EST on February 26, 2005. He weighed in at 9 lbs 6 oz and was 21 inches long. Both Nicholas and Susan are happy and healthy and resting comfortably at INOVA Alexandria Hospital!The interesting part is that he wasn't born at the hospital, at least not exactly. Susan will try to write a longer birth story later, but I'll summarize here. After getting home from her repeat acupuncture treatment at around 10pm Friday, Susan's water broke at 11:30pm. From that point Susan's labor got going an progressed VERY rapidly. She started having contractions about 5 minutes apart, and they quickly went to 4 minutes, then to two minutes. Apparently, Aunt Karen and our neighbors are all very sound sleepers since we couldn't get any of them on the phone during this process. We had our doula head towards our house. About that time, we decided that things were happening too fast and we had to get to the hospital even though we had no childcare for Lux. So, all three of us jumped in the Jeep and headed to the hospital, telling our doula, Paula, and Karen who we finally managed to wake, to meet us there.
On the drive, Susan was very uncomfortable and had to sit facing backwards kneeling in the front seat with her head going back into the rear seat where Lux looked at her, confused, from her car seat. About halfway to the hospital, Susan was already pushing, despite my commands to hold off. At that point I started really going fast, going through some red lights. A few blocks from the hospital Susan said "he's coming", at which point I called 911 to tell them we were on our way and they needed to have someone out front to help us. I turned into the Emergency Room entrance almost on two wheels honking my horn frantically. Naturally, no one came out front and they didn't seem particularly interested in us. I ran inside and yelled that I needed help. An orderly came out and I showed him Susan, stuck in the front seat, moaning for help. We pulled down her pants and saw the babies face already emerging. This really got his attention and he started yelling for gloves and scissors and towels and stuff. Finally, an ER doctor came out and put on some gloves and grabbed the baby, whose head was all the way out, but wasn't breathing because his body was still stuck inside Susan. I held Susan and encouraged her to push him out and soon a strong contraction came and she pushed Nicholas right out onto the car seat, outside, in 25 degree weather! After a brief moment and a little slap, Nick started to cry, and Lux laughed at him. About that point a gurney showed up with some more people and they quickly wrapped Nick in warm towels. As they were loading Susan on to the gurney, our doula showed up. She jumped in to help right away and escorted Susan and Nick upstairs while I ran to move the car and get Lux out of her car seat. We all raced in and found Susan and Nick in a delivery room with Nick getting weighed and tested and Susan getting a very minor first degree tear stitched up. Karen showed up then, and got busy helping with Lux and calling family to let them know.
Now, Nicholas has had a bath and has breastfed like a champ several times and is sleeping in our room. We'll let everyone know more later...
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