Drew is born!

On Friday afternoon I received a call from Jana that she was experiencing contractions and that I should plan to come straight home from the lab. I immediately made my way home to find her in the midst of contractions spaced every seven minutes. Being well-versed in "What to Expect When You're Expecting" Jana and I knew that we didn't need to head to the hospital until the contractions were about 5 minutes apart and lasting for about 45-60 seconds or until her water broke. We settled into waiting for the contractions to increase in frequency and length and had supper and sat around.

The contractions were regularly spaced at about seven minutes apart, then they suddenly dropped to four minutes apart and then three. What happened to five minutes apart?! We quickly got our things together and with the car loaded headed to Sparrow Hospital. We timed our arrival perfectly for the shift change of the nurses, which results in a longer than usual time before we had much attention paid to us. Jana was hooked up to a monitor in triage and her contractions and Drew's heart rate were monitored.

After an hour or more of waiting, we finally saw a doctor. We had received lots of skepticism from the seasoned OB nurses because women in labor "don't have smiles on their faces" like Jana did and we were reminded a couple of times that you had to prove yourself ready to go on to labor before you could leave triage. Jana's contractions had started to slow down, so we were very discouraged by the time the doctor arrived because we figured we were going to be sent home. After confusing a med student who was trying to determine the dilation of Jana's cervix, the doctor stepped in, and to her astonishment found that Jana was dilated to 8 cm! Everyone in the OB Triage was surprised by this finding. They could not believe that Jana was so chipper even after dilating to 8 cm. Needless to say, they decided to rush Jana on to labor and delivery because Drew was coming!

Once in labor and delivery, Jana received an epidural to help with the pain of dilating the last few centimeters and to help slow the contractions a little to allow our doctor some time to come in. Our doctor was out on the town at "The Lion King," so he had to be paged and make his way to the hospital. He made it just in the nick of time, and with a half hour of pushing Andrew Mark Aupperlee came into the world at 11:36 p.m. on Friday, February 3!

Drew weighed 6 pounds, 13 ounces at birth and he is 20 inches long. He is so cute! (that is an objective opinion) After getting him cleaned off, the doctors finished up with Jana and I got to have some quality time with my son for the first time. I helped the nurse finish cleaning him and we put his footprints on the birth certificate and on my forearm!

Jana and I are both pretty tired, but we have been enjoying showing Drew off to family and friends. We are so excited that he and Jana are doing well! Thank you everyone for your support throughout Jana's pregnancy. Now we will need support as we brave being parents!

Jana's belly is growing

We thought we'd try to capture Jana's expanding waist for those who aren't around to see it. As you can see, we weren't so successful at truly showing how big she's getting in this first photo, so we had to try again to make her look more pregnant in the next one. It's just not fair that she's staying so thin! Does she look eight months pregnant?I had Jana pooch out her stomach for this one and we got a great eight-months-along shot. Look at the belly!
You'll notice that since the last picture even more stuff has made its way into Drew's room. How can someone so small need so much STUFF!

I am still in the process of trying out the blog options, so here is my first attempt at posting a picture. I think most of you have probably seen it already, but this is one of our early pictures of Drew's room. It's been a lot of fun getting it ready!