Wade Mark DeFries

On Friday, March 9th, at 9:34 PM, Jaime gave birth to Wade Mark DeFries at the Kaiser hospital in Walnut Creek. Given our experience with Preston 2 years and 3 months ago (read about it here) I was a little nervous about this delivery, although I tried really hard not to show it. I am happy to report that this labor and delivery went very smoothly for everyone and we are very excited to have Wade home with us. I'll start with the good stuff...pictures! Scroll to the end for a more detailed account of our last few days.

On Friday morning I went into work because Jaime said that she was feeling pretty normal. However, she called me at about 8:30 am and told me that although she wasn't feeling intense contractions, I should come home because she had some unusual bleeding and when she called the advice nurse she suggested we head to the hospital...just to be safe. After I got home we packed up some supplies and made our way to the hospital. The intake doctor checked her out and told us that the bleeding was nothing to worry about and that Jaime wasn't far enough along to admit us BUT Jaime was far enough along that she didn't want us to go the 25 minutes home. Thank goodness Grandma Jacobson got into town the day before so we didn't have to worry about Preston. She suggested that we eat a good lunch in Walnut Creek and go for a walk, then come by in a few hours to get reassessed. So, after lunch and an hour long stroll we stopped back by the hospital, even though Jaime still wasn't feeling intense contractions. The intake doctor said that even though she wasn't feeling painful contractions she was far enough along to be admitted.

We were taken to our delivery room where we settled in for what I thought would be a long night, especially since Jaime's contractions still weren't bothering her. About 45 minutes after we were admitted, at about 5:30 pm, the contractions started to gain some intensity so Jaime got an epidural. From there the plan was for the nurse to check in about every two hours to make sure things were moving along. At 7:30 pm Jaime's progress looked good, but she still had a little way to go. So when the nurse came in at 9:15 pm the nurse said that if the progress had continued Jaime would probably start pushing in the next hour or so. Then the nurse put on her gloves to begin her inspection. However, when she pulled the sheets back she just started laughing and took a couple steps back. There was no need for her to check because she could see Wade's head. She told Jaime not to move or push in any way while she called the midwife and the other nurses. They were getting the bed ready and Jaime needed to scoot down about 6 inches to get to the edge of the bed. Just the exertion of that made Wade's head push out a little more. They got everything all set and 2 or 3 pushes later Wade was born! They immediately put him on Jaime's chest where they got to snuggle and nurse for about 1.5 hours before they took Wade to do all of the measurements.

They transferred us to the recovery room at around midnight and the next day Grandma and Preston got to come to meet our newest addition. We are so grateful that the labor and delivery went so smoothly. We hope Jaime's recovery is just as smooth, and so far it is. So far she feels pretty great. We brought Wade home on Sunday afternoon and have spent the last day and a half enjoying being together as a family and getting to know our new little guy.