James Orion Williams was born on October 1st, 2012 in Kanab Utah at 1:58am. He is named for my oldest brother James who passed away this year, and also shares the same name as his “Grampy”.
The little tyke weighs in at 8lbs 3oz and 20” long.
Now for the details! Karen had been having contracts all day, but we were smart and decided to wait to go to the hospital until the last minute. We called Karen’s visiting teacher at 12am, so she could come stay and sleep over with the kids, and drove off to the hospital.
We checked in at 12:30am with our yoga ball, ready to get the show on the road. Karen’s an old pro by now and she didn’t really need much help, even though the nurses were quick to poke her with needles and hook her up to all kinds of machines. Much to Karen’s annoyance, she was only dilated to 3-4cm when we first arrived, but things progressed pretty quickly. As with Marion in Vienna, Karen wanted to have this child naturally with no pain killers, which meant she was in constant pain and pretty exhausted by the time the “real work” was ready to begin.
The doctor was called out of bed at home, and he just barely walked in the room right as Karen started pushing. I think the actual pushing lasted about 3-4 heavy pushes. At one point the Doctor told Karen to “calm yourself woman” or something like that. Well, not really, but he did tell her she can have the baby two ways… she can fight herself and take all night or she can give it a few good focused pushes without crying out and be done. Karen opted for the latter, much to the Doctor’s delight I’m sure, as he left and presumably went back home to sleep a few minutes after the delivery!
So our little James was born about 1.5 hours after arriving at the hospital. A new record for us. I told Karen she’s got this down so well we might as well have a few more.
The Doctor wanted to mess with the baby, but Karen was adamant and insisted he hand over the goods right away.
Karen was happy to hold her baby, but the nurses seemed to want to clean the little guy up right away.
Squinchy face!.
Finally, Karen was left alone for a few minutes, but you could tell the whole crew was just waiting to get on with it. The Doctor wanted to cut the cord, the nurses wanted to start poking at the baby. But here they get a moment of peace together.
This picture was taken after the nurse confiscated the baby for 10 minutes while the doctor did the afterbirth stuff. We liked the approach better in Vienna where they let the baby stay with Karen a lot longer. But still, no real complaints!
Karen did awesome. She did some crazy ninja yoga earlier in the day, and was rocking the yoga ball in the hospital. Pretty impressive!
I’m amazed at how good Karen looks just minutes after giving birth! Too bad the little guy has all that goopy eye medicine stuff or it would have made a better photo. He was opening his eyes a lot right after birth until they put that stuff in them!
Karen remarked that he sucks really really hard… She seemed to notice that with the first two kids where she had an epidural they had a harder time learning to nurse. The last two kids she did naturally and they nursed right away.
Finally Daddy gets to hold the little guy!
What is it about babies that cause us to make strange faces….
We had his name all picked out, but we just don’t like everyone interrogating us about names, so this is how they wrote it down.
After a day and a half at the hospital it was time to go home! We don’t have pics of the kids holding the baby at the hospital because all of our other kids were sick when he was born! But Marion and Oliver came to pick up Mom and “Baby James” from the hospital. They had a great time riding in the wheelchair, and were so excited to finally meet their baby brother.
