Baby Holden Is Finally Here!

Holden Robert Manning arrived on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 8:18 PM.
He weighed a whopping 8 pounds 15 ounces (most of it in his head, taking after both of his parents.) He was 21 and a half inches long.

We went to my 41 week appointment on Wednesday morning. The doctor checked me, and my blood pressure was sort of high. He asked me if I wanted to have a baby that day. Uhh, of COURSE I did! He told me to go home and get my stuff and go to the hospital.
We arrived at the hospital at about 11 AM. We got all checked in and into our room and they started me on the Pitocin at about 11:15. I started having contractions pretty much right away, and soon after that they started to HURT (who would have thought??) They broke my water at about 2:30. It was a resident that broke my water, and she kept saying "look at all this fluid, you are going to have a HUGE baby!" The nurse kept looking at her like what are you doing telling this poor girl she is going to have a huge baby?
Anyways, soon after that I got my epidural. It was great, I could still feel enough to tell when I was having contractions, but it took the edge off.
So, at this point, I am not making much progress, I was still at about 4 centimeters. We start to notice that every time I had a contraction the baby's heartrate went way down. That was when they put me on oxygen. The nurses said it was fine, probably just a kink in the umbilical cord, but it was starting to make me nervous. I think it was making them nervous as well, because they kept asking me if my doctor had said what time he was going to come see me.
Then, my contractions started getting further apart instead of closer together. This is not the way it is supposed to work! By now it was about 6:30 PM, and I was still only to 5 centimeters dilated. The nurses pretty much hadn't left my room in about an hour, so I knew that they were getting more and more concerned about the dropping heart rate.
At about 7:30 they called my doctor, and he said he was on his way, and that we were going to do a C Section. He didn't know how much longer I would be in labor, and he didn't want the baby to have to go through more ups and downs in the heart rate. They got me all prepped and ready, and got Reo into his sugery garb so that he could be in there. My doctor got here at 8 and they whisked me into the operating room. By 8:18 baby was here! I was super scared, but Reo handled it like a champ and calmed me down...Also, whatever they stuck in my IV when they saw I was shaking like a leaf couldn't have hurt either :). They took the baby away right away, and told me that the cord had been wrapped around his neck which is why his heart rate kept going so far down but he came out crying just like he was supposed to, so that was good. I didn't get to see him until he and I were all cleaned up and put back together.
Anyways, even with the unexpected C Section, things are going well. We are still in the hospital, so of course we think we have the best behaved baby on the planet, since there is a team of nurses and a little baby hotel we can send him to whenever we want! We will see if it is still all so easy when we get home!