Hello Mister Handsome ~ Graeme Jeffrey

Welcome to the world Mr. Graeme Jeffrey Martin!

Graeme was born December 9th at 7:36 pm and a whole 8lbs, 19.2 inches long. He is absolutely perfect, if I do say so myself! The first two pictures were taken 10 days after being born.
Of course you need to see the naked picture too! He is so darn cute!

This following picture was taken three days after he was born, while we were still at the hospital.

To tell you a little about the labor and delivery, it was long. Contractions started about 230pm on Thursday. We went to the hospital around 9pm after talking to the L&D nurse. I was estimating my contractions to be about 4-5 minutes apart, but not really progressing. We called my parents around 10 pm to let them know I was being admitted, just to give them a heads up. The nurse hooked me up to find out the contractions were actually closer than I was able to tell, closer to 3-4 and were stronger than I was I really thinking they were. Unfortunately they maintained there throughout the night. My OB doctor came in around 830 in the morning, saying I was at 5 cm dilated and decided it was time to break my waters bag. I had an epidural put in around 930am at which point I was at 6 cm. After that, things felt great! Unfortunately I didn't progress any further than 6 cm for four hours, at which point they started Pitocin, which they had to continually increased it until I was at 10cm. And that wasn't until 630 pm. We pushed for an hour, and at 7:36 pm, Graeme decided to make an appearance, coming out with his right hand on his head pushing his way through.

It was such an odd feeling of euphoria, excitement, exhaustion, you name it and I was feeling it. Despite the different feelings, the nurse and MD both asked us what we were going to name him. I didn't even realize it at the time when they asked, it just seemed like things were going so fast, we had forgotten to give them a name! I asked Joe what name he liked the most, and at first he thought Gavin. After looking at Graeme, I knew he was Graeme, which Joe agreed.

After chosing a name, Cathy the nurse asked where the camera was. We had totally forgotten to take out the camera! We were so caught up in the moment, the last thing we were worried about or thinking about was a camera. Joe reached down to the bag and was able to take a few pictures of Graeme on my chest and the foot prints.

While all of this was going on, the doctor and the resident were still working on me. Becuase of the way Graeme decided to come out, I ended up tearing fairly badly. But what was worse was that I had Pitocin for so long, my uterus wasn't relaxing like it should have causing problems. They continued to work on me for another hour and a half, at which point I was told had things not stopped bleeding, she was going to take me to surgery to fix it there. Thank goodness we didn't have to go that route! It wasn't until a little after 9pm that Joe was able to take Graeme out of the room to FINALLY show the grandparents.

Despite the problems with bleeding, everything else was great! Graeme was healthy and perfect! We ended up staying an extra day due to the infection and the problems I had during delivery. We went home Monday afternoon which was VERY emotional for me. I'm sure most of it had to do with hormones, but it was just scary and exciting as we were about to start our newest adventure with a perfect little man!!

The pictures taken by LeAnn turned out beautifully! If you want to see the others, please check out lbegnashphotography.blogspot.com in the December 2011 tab. LeAnn did a wonderful job!

Welcome Graeme Jeffrey Martin!