Month: May 2007

Pictures are up! www.thetindallfamily.com

A friend just shared this quote with me. Normally I think such quotes and sayings are sweet, but a little too sugary for my tastes. However, now that I have a child of my own, I see that these aren’t romantic exaggerations made to help us feel all warm and squishy inside, but exact representations of the experience of new parenthood.

"I loved him intimately, sight unseen. Yet when he lay on my chest for the first time, part of me felt as if someone had given me a Martian baby to raise, or a Martian puppy. And I had no owner’s manual, no energy, no clue as to what I was supposed to do.

The other part of me felt as though I were holding my own soul.

Now, all these years later, this pretty much says it."

–Ann Lamott

Labels: baby

Chris is writing this, as Janene is so tired she can’t function, and Benjamin is sleeping on her at the moment….OH – We have a baby boy!

Benjamin Michael Tindall was born at 4:51 am on Sunday, May 20th.
He weighed in at 9lbs 5oz, and was 20" long.

Janene went into labor at 3am on Saturday morning. We were admitted to the hospital around 3pm. Janene’s total labor was 23 hours – plus 3 hours of solid pushing every 2-3 minutes. At the end of this ordeal the Drs decided that this guy just wasn’t going to come out without a c-section. So off to the OR it was, and a C-Section was performed. Really amazingly quick.

Since then, we’ve been at the hospital; Janene developed a fever (it hit 102.8 at one point) that got her onto antibiotics. Benjamin has a touch of jaundice, but is doing fine otherwise.

Today (22nd) was a very tough day – he was in a lot of pain, as all of his systems are still coming online (wow – I’m a nerd…). He’s had some stomach cramps that kept him from being comfortable most of the day.

Anyway, we’ll be posting photos on www.thetindallfamily.com as soon as we can – I was going to do that tonight, but the hospital limits what I can do through their wireless connection, and I can’t get in to any of my admin stuff. So tomorrow night it will hopefully be.

Speaking of tomorrow, we’ll probably be headed home tomorrow at some point. Please don’t just drop in on us, at least until we give the ok for that – we would LOVE to see everyone, but we need to pre-approve it via phone to make sure timing is ok. So call Chris’ cell and we’ll set a time to hang out! 🙂

On a side note, since Janene has had a C-Section, we will not be that mobile for a while, as she needs to heal. Chris will be sticking pretty much right at home for at least 2 weeks, as Janene can’t do much (she can do some, but overdoing it would be…BAD.)

Keep your eyes on www.thetindallfamily.com, and we’ll keep you updated! 🙂

Chris, Janene, Benjamin

Well, three days overdue, and still no baby. We had an ultrasound yesterday to check to see that the amount of amniotic fluid is still OK (and it is), as well as a non-stress test. They hook you up to a monitor that checks the baby’s heart beat, and he has to move a couple times in about 20-30 minutes, and they check to make sure the heart beat rises and falls as it should – that test came out beautifully as well. So, he’s doing just fine, and those tests are "good" for about three days.

I myself have been doing pretty OK, up until recently. I still have not felt much in the way of contractions, but on top of the swelling problem I’ve been having, unfortunately my hip has now made it impossible for me to do much to try to help things along. For those of you that don’t know, last week I woke up one morning with severe hip pain. Sitting is fine for the most part, but any pressure I put on my left hip is very painful – bad enough that I can barely dress myself, let alone walk. Its just a result of everything loosening up and moving around in my pelvis, on top of already having a hip problem, so there isn’t much to do about it except take some tylenol and give birth. 🙂 We did purchase a yoga ball that I should be able to do some squatting and bouncing on, as that has been said to help things along a bit, so that’s nice. Chris has been stellar support, and has pretty much been doing literally everything, down to washing my feet in the shower for me. 🙂

Otherwise, I still haven’t progressed much at all, so if I don’t go into labor by Thursday morning (when we have another non-stress test), they’ll check me in to the hospital sometime on thursday or friday night, depending on bed availability. At that point they’ll administer hormones several times throughout the night to start dialation. The doctor says that has often been enough to bring on labor naturally (that would be nice). But if that doesn’t work, then they’ll induce with Petocin (which brings on faster, longer, and harder contractions, so at that point I’ll probably look in to getting a light epidural). This has a somewhat higher risk of stress to the baby, so they’ll watch him very closely. The doctor also mentioned that I am at a slightly higher risk for C-section due to several factors, among them including the fact that I’m overdue, I haven’t progressed at all, and the baby is getting pretty big.

So, that’s a complete update. Obviously there are some possibilities in there that I’m really not too keen on, but we knew going into this that anything could happen and you just can’t predict it. (Although, so far this is following my sister’s labors to a T – she had the Petocin, and STILL didn’t progress, hence her 30 and 18 hour labors). It is kind of stressful, but I think most of it is just normal emotional ups and downs from hormones and the big Unknown. Besides, if it is just now starting to get truly challenging and difficult to deal with day to day, at 9 months pregnant, then I’m not too bad off!

We’ll keep updating as we can – thank you for being patient with me as I disappear for months on end (blog-wise). I hope to blog a bit more regularly soon – I know, I keep saying that, but I really enjoy it and mean to build more of a habit, as soon as we have a bit more routine to our lives again. 🙂