The Hobsons Welcome Grace Katherine

Hello all! We just wanted to let you know we had our baby!

Grace Katherine Hobson was born May 14, 2009 (on her due date!) at 2:02am. She weighed 8 lbs 11 oz, was 20" long with a 14" head. I thought you might be interested to hear how it all went.

At my last regular checkup on May 11 I was 4 cm dilated and the doctor didn't think it'd be much longer before the baby came.

On the evening of May 13, I had been having mild and sporadic contractions as I had off and on for the past two weeks and didn't think much of it. At about 10 o'clock that night the contractions were about 15 minutes apart and I decided to go to bed, figuring if I was in labor they would wake me up and if not, they'd go away.

Two and half hours later at 12:30am on the 14th, I was awoken by strong contractions just a few minutes apart. I woke Michael up and he groggily began working through the contractions with me. After about 10 minutes of that I announced it was time to get up. Michael started scrambling around the house to get things together and I asked him to call our neighbor and ask her to come over to stay with the kids. I was trying to get myself ready and every couple of minutes I had to call Michael to me to help through another contraction.

Our neighbor arrived and we left to go to the hospital. We pulled into the Emergency entrance at St. Luke's Boise and informed the RN at the front desk we had left our car out there. She said not to worry, to just "get her settled and you can come back and move it." I thought "Uh-uh! There is no way he is coming back any time soon!" (Note: we did get security to park our car using the hospital's valet parking service.) We arrived at check-in at Labor and Delivery on the second floor and Michael informed the nurse it was "GO-TIME" and the contractions were only a few minutes apart. I hate it when he uses that phrase.

They put us in the triage room and I was freezing! I was shivering uncontrollably. Between contractions I was able to get moved into a gown and lay on the bed where I asked for blankets so I could try to warm up. The nurse checked me and told me I was at 7 cm. They put the monitor on me and Michael informed them we were aiming for a natural child birth. A short time later a different nurse came in to move me to a delivery room. This was about 1:15am. The nurses in L&D were so sweet to us. They told us we were doing a fantastic job through the contractions, that we made such a great team and they were very impressed with how much "control" I had. I don't know if "control" is the right word, but as long as Michael was talking me through the contractions they were manageable. This made us feel pretty good and we pressed on. While I was sitting in the wheelchair they offered to get the Hep-Lock in me while I was sitting there, warm and relatively comfortable. I agreed and they inserted the Hep-Lock. The nurse then asked if she could move me to the bed so they could get about a 15 minute strip on the baby and then not worry about the monitor anymore. I agreed.

After about 10 minutes of lying in bed and after 5-6 contractions, I hopped up on my hands and knees and bore down. There were two nurses in the room - one was trying to call the resident and the other trying to call the doctor on call. On the next contraction, my water broke and the nurse announced she'd "got the head!", and with the next push, the baby, at 2:02am, in her entirety, slipped out with just Michael, our nurse, myself and one other nurse who simply kept the baby from flopping onto the floor! I couldn't see what gender she was from my vantage point and had to ask Michael, and he informed me it was a girl! She was born just 45 minutes after we arrived at the hospital.

I wasn't able to immediately hold her as there had been meconium in the the sac which I noticed when my water broke. A team from NICU came down and suctioned out her mouth and nose trying to get all the mucous they could out of her. The resident had finally made it to the room and was pushing, rather forcefully, on my uterus trying to get the bleeding to slow by removing a few remaining clots. That was probably the hardest part of the birth.

Eventually Michael was able to bring her to me swaddled in a blanket. He unwrapped her, put her on her stomach on my chest and she immediately started to root. She latched on with very little encouragement and ate away for about 15 minutes. I tore slightly during the delivery and the OB stitched me up, of course after sticking me with a needle to apply local anesthetic.

The care staff ultimately helped in getting the bed and me cleaned up. Both I and the nurse were impressed I could get out of the bed all on my own and stand there while she changed the linens on my bed. By 5:00am we were moving up to the 8th floor to try to get some much-needed rest.

And that's the story of how Grace made her entry into the world! We are all doing very well, the kids are fawning and making a fuss over her, which is very adorable when they aren't beating on each other.