A Few Firsts

Over the last few days, Declan had a few firsts that I thought I would share! 

His first bath at home:

He did really well!  Didn't cry... just made some funky faces and squeaked a little bit. 

His first doctor's appointment:

They weighed him, and he's gained 2 ounces since we left the hospital.  They said that was excellent!  So now our little guy weighs in at a whopping 5 pounds 15 ounces.  They checked his heartbeat, his lungs, his skin color, his eyeballs, and Dr Olson said "he's a perfect baby!"  He didn't cry at all at his appointment, and the doctor was very impressed.  But he did pee on the nurse.  :)   

Declan Patrick Murphy is here!

Declan Patrick Murphy was born Friday, April 1st at 9:00 pm.  Here is his story (from my point of view, of course)

I had Friday off of work because we were shut down for a huge company wide core computer conversion.  Shawn had taken the day off as well so that we could spend the day hanging out with each other.  I had a hair appointment at 9:30 in the morning - all week long I kept telling everyone I knew that I was going to have this baby on Friday afternoon because it would be perfect timing.  I'd have my roots covered up from my hair appointment, and I wouldn't have go to work on Monday to miss the system conversion drama.  Perfect, right?

Well I got up and went to my hair appointment.  When I got there at 9:30, I felt kind of a weird gushing feeling like I may have just peed my pants a little.  Not a lot, just a little.  So I went to the bathroom to check the situation out, and I was pretty sure my water had broke but there wasn't a lot of liquid and I felt fine, so I decided to not tell anyone and just stay to get my hair done.  No sense in worrying people, right?? 

The entire time I was getting my hair cut and colored I was feeling gushes of liquid so I started getting a little more nervous.  As soon as the foils were our of my hair I told my hairdresser that I should probably call my doctor because I think my water broke.  She immediately was like, "Uh, what??!?"  So I'm on the phone with the doctor while she's trying to frantically finish cutting my hair.  My doc tells me that it's probably a good idea if I come in to get checked out. 

I arrived at the doctor's office around 12:30 and Shawn met me there.  They said my water had indeed broken, and had me go over to the hospital to get admitted.  We arrived in our hospital room around 1:30 and got my first (yes first) epidural around an hour after that. 

We waited and waited for contractions to come and get stronger, but I still felt pretty good.  I finally started feeling some really painful ones around 5:30 and quickly realized that the epidural wasn't quite taking as much pain away as I felt like it should have been.  I was crying in pain with each contraction and could totally feel my legs - something that I had kept telling the nurses, but I think they thought I was making it up.  The epidural man came back at like 6:30 to redo it.  That was the worst ever because I hate anything needle related, anything spine related, and anything medical related in general.  So having to get TWO epidurals was pretty much my worst case scenario.  I survived it, and they started giving me strong doses of Pitocin to speed up the contractions.

Around 8:30 I called my nurse telling her that I was feeling A LOT of pressure and I thought the baby was trying to come out.  My nurse had checked me about 15 minutes earlier and I was only dilated 4 centimeters, so I think she thought I was making this up as well.  She checked me, and I was at 10 centimeters!  It was time to push!!  Shawn started jumping up and down with excitement, and I almost started to cry out of fear, but there was no turning back now!  I pushed for about 20 minutes, and the had little Declan in my arms.  It was love at first sight, he is so amazing. 

Here are some photos we took at the hospital.

This is Shawn and I waiting around bored after the first epidural

 My first look at my tiny little son

 Declan getting measured and sized up

 Declan's first bath

 Stat sheet.  He was 5 pounds, 13 ounces and 20 inches long.  A long skinny thing!

 His outfit to wear home

 Tiny little preemie diapers a friend brought us in the hospital.  Even the newborn diapers were huge on him!

 Car ride home!

Murphy Family Photo

 His first nap at home!!

Declan is so funny... he doesn't cry - he just squeaks!  We haven't really heard him cry yet, he's such a good baby.  When he's upset or uncomfortable or anything he just does this weird grunting squeaking thing - even right after he was born!  It's so cute, we tried to catch it on video to share with everyone - hopefully I can post the video soon.