Henry Charles

I am so happy to share that Henry Charles has joined our family. The induction worked (maybe a little too well) and he was born early on Tuesday morning.

We started the induction with Cytotec to get everything ready for the "actual" induction scheduled for Tuesday morning. Turns out the Cytotec worked overtime and my contractions started almost right away. They were fairly mild about every 5 minutes starting around midnight. At 4:15 the contractions started in earnest. I felt my water break during a double contraction at 4:25 and he was born at 5:15am. I went from 5cm to complete in less than 40 minutes which left no time for an epidural or any other pain medications. Thankfully we were able to hold off the birth long enough for my midwife to arrive as Henry was crowning. Unfortunately the quick progression did not give Grammie enough time to make it to the hospital in time to attend the birth.

Each of Henry's older siblings is delighted with him.

Cooper can't stop saying "I like Henry".

Grace wants to hold him as long as he doesn't start crying.

Emma Jo is again loving being the oldest and having the freedom to hold Henry without having to sit carefully in a chair. She is treating him like a living doll and having fun dressing him up and talking and singing to him.

I had always wondered if I should have tried to have the other kids without an epidural. I always felt a little cheated that I had pitocin with each of them which seemed to rule out the possibility of an epidural-free experience. Now I know that epidurals are a good thing. I can say though that I felt fantastic within a few hours of Henry's birth which definitely wasn't the case with any of the other babies. I'm not sure if it is attributable to no epidural to recover from or if it is due to the extremely quick labor.

We came home from the hospital on Thursday and since then Henry has become very comfortable on our bed. He will gladly sleep for 2-4 hours at a time in this spot.