Little Brick Houses for You and Me: Milo Timothy

It's NDSU Homecoming today! I haven't missed this event since 2001 and this year I'm not there. The reason? We had a baby! I knew this would be the case since I was scheduled to be induced on the morning of October 8th. I was induced with the other two kids and have never gone into labor on my own so I was fully prepared to have a baby sometime during the day on October 8th. We had my mom arranged to come the night before, we had planned to spend the 7th cleaning and doing last minute preparations and I even had a MOPS meeting that morning that I had already prepared my pot luck breakfast dish for.

Well, on the evening of the 6th I wasn't feeling the greatest but who is when they are 40 weeks pregnant? I had still gone to the Y and swam laps that morning and I cooked supper that night and spent some time talking to the neighbors out in the cul de sac. I told Justin to take Ben to get a haircut since his school pictures are next week and then he took each of our vehicles to the car wash. By 9:00 I was exhausted and feeling crappy and frustrated about how much we still had to do before the 8th. I had spent the whole weekend cleaning and putting away toys and crap around the house and the house was already completely trashed. I might as well have spent the weekend throwing cereal crumbs all over the house and dumping out every toy and game in the house. We hastily put the kids to bed because I was DONE with the whining and destruction. Looking back, I regret this behavior but I didn't know what would be happening soon.

After noticing some really strong pressure on my lower back did I think about it and realize that what I was feeling might be the start of labor. I stopped cleaning and sat down on the couch with the pamphlet from the hospital about what to do if you think you are in labor and started timing the cramping I was feeling. This was in the 9:00 hour and I suddenly knew although Justin wasn't convinced. I insisted on calling our next door neighbors just in case we had to leave the house in the middle of the night to see if they could take care of Ben and Tessa and they said they would listed for the phone. After about an our we decided to head to the hospital and they over and carried my sleeping babies over to their house. I still feel bad that I never said goodbye to them that night because they were sleeping and that I had put them to bed with a negative attitude. Of course, the next morning they remembered nothing about it but I always will.

We were in our hospital room by 11:30 and found out that I was indeed in labor and already 7 cm dilated. I was surprised how far along it had progressed already and everything moved very fast from there and at 1:18 a.m. our baby was born! We waited to find out if it was a boy or a girl this time and it is a boy!

Here is the first picture (excluding the slimy scale photos with part of the cord still attached...I will spare you those) of Milo Timothy, who weighed 7 lbs. and 10 oz. He was 21 inches long. I'm still in awe that he is here and of what happened that night.

The next morning, Tessa got to be the first to meet her brother since Ben was at preschool. They had a field trip to the pumpkin patch and they were taking a school bus, which is something he has been talking about for the last year so we didn't want him to miss it.

She was pretty cute and wanted to "pet baby!" which means she wanted to aggressively paw at him and bat at the little ball on his hat.

Ben had his chance that afternoon and he was excited. He kept saying "he's so cuuuuute!" and wanted to hold him and have Milo lay by him.

We headed home on the 8th. I could have had another night in the hospital because he was born after midnight the night we checked in but I was doing fine and, more importantly, Milo was too, so they sent us on our way that evening. At first I kind of wanted to have the extra night of ordering room service (for hospital food it was pretty good and I had cheesecake for desert at every meal!) and having help with the baby at night but the bed was like a torture device, with a hard mattress and a metal bar across the middle right where my tailbone sat. Ow. So I was glad to get out of there.