Welcome to the World, Zain!

He's here!  The little guy finally arrived at 9:34 pm on Labour Day.  Yes, we laboured all through Labour Day.  Zain weighed in at 7 lbs, 12 oz and a length of 52 cm (20.5 in).

We had originally considered getting out of town for a bit on the holiday weekend, maybe camping for a night or so - enjoying what would probably our last child-free weekend.  Saturday evening, though, Shifi had some contractions that seemed a little too "real" so we decided maybe staying in town would be a good idea.

We did head out to Albion Hills on Sunday for a beautiful 5K hike in the woods.  That marked our third weekend hike in a row (Shif is one tough pregnant chick), and all that hill-climbing must have done the trick.  At about 7 pm, the contractions started again, and this time they didn't go away. Appropriately enough, Stu (Zain's donor) and Paul were over for dinner.  Every five minutes or so, Stu, Paul, and I would continue our conversation while Shif zoned out in the middle of a contraction.  :-)  It was only slightly weird.

Contractions continued all night and by 4:30 am, our midwife declared her officially in active labour and decided to stay with us to monitor things.  One of the advantages of having a midwife is that you can do most of your labouring at home.  Shif was able to be a bit more relaxed, and she spent several hours in the bathtub. She was really amazing through the entire labour process.  She was very calm and focused and handled it amazingly well. 

By morning, though, things still weren't really progressing much and she was only 5 cm dilated, so we headed to the hospital to have her membranes ruptured.  We spent the rest of the day at St Joe's hospital trying to get the little guy out.  Breaking the water still didn't cause any major changes as far as dilation, but what was more concerning was that after they broke the water, Zain's heart rate start dropping every time Shif had a contraction.  They finally "augmented" with pitocin to try to get things moving, but after a couple hours of that, the cervix still wasn't dilating more and the baby's head was still too high.  So, we finally made the decision that, because of the still-dropping heart rate, the safest thing to do was to go to a c-section.  

Shif was whisked to the operating room and the c-section was underway within half an hour.  I got to be in the room with Shif.  Shif suffered from the fact that she has done many deliveries and has assisted in c-sections; she kind of knows too much for her own comfort.  She later said that listening to the surgeons ask for various instruments made her visualize what was going on inside her belly behind the drape and made her feel quite nauseous about the whole thing.

The surgery went fine, but Zain made one final statement about his reluctance to leave his cushy home of 41 weeks - he wasn't breathing when he came out.  Thus followed the longest and worst 60 seconds of both our lives.  We watched as the pediatrician and nurse tried to resuscitate a completely limp, gray baby.  Shif couldn't see much, but she could hear what they were saying and knew exactly what was going on.  I've seen enough episodes of ER to know that what they were doing indicated things were not going well.  But, after that long and terrible minute, he breathed!  He turned pink and he cried!  Within another minute, he was bundled up and in my arms - perfectly healthy, amazingly tiny, and just beautiful.  

In the recovery room

We spent the next two days at the hospital with Shif recovering from the surgery, and mom and kid figuring out breastfeeding.  We were a little worried because for the first 36 hours, he had no interest in feeding.  They surmise that he had a strong gag reflex because of the instruments put down his throat during the resuscitation.  But in the middle of day 2, it somehow all suddenly clicked and he turned into a champion breastfeeder!  He is also a champ at burping, by the way - quick and easy, sometimes while he's still on his way up to the shoulder!  

The first few days after Zain's arrival were spent in intermittent sleep and visiting.  (I've posted some pictures from his first couple days on our flickr account - if you don't have the address, ask us.)  Lots of family stopped by the hospital - including my mom, who drove 9 hours from Ohio and surprised us in the middle of the night!  The last few days have been spent settling in at home.  Zain seems to like his new place.  We've started to figure out what we need where, which diapers work best, and what his various little cries and whimpers mean.  We also successfully reprogrammed our little robot to sleep longer at night rather than during the day.  That was a happy day.  We're actually pretty lucky that he's generally pretty laid-back.  We can do most anything to him and he doesn't complain.  :-)  He's started becoming a little more fussy in the last two days, so we're trying to decode the clues and figure out what's going on.

Zain and Binda, our dog, have met and are co-existing nicely.  In general, Binda doesn't really pay much attention to him.  She'll occasionally do a drive-by sniffing and she did sneak in a lick or two the first day. She does sometimes get upset when he's crying a lot - we think it's her Lassie reflex.  But it seems there are no jealousy issues, which is something we were worried about. 

We've also made our first few excursions out of the house.  We've done a couple spins around the neighbourhood, and yesterday we hit the trails at High Park for a nice fall walk.  Zain apparently loves his carrier, because he's usually out cold as soon as we put him in it. So he seems to have enjoyed all these walks merely as a sleeping opportunity.  But we'll continue our process of converting him into an outdoorsy kid! 

At High Park

And, in other firsts, Zain got his first piece of mail!  :-)