We are delighted to announce the birth of our son. Tiernan Marc Bonnar was born at 6:25 p.m. on Friday, February 17th, at Surrey Memorial Hospital. At birth, he weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces, and was 19 inches long. He is a healthy, beautiful baby and was very quiet and content the first 24 hours.
Deb began labour at 2:15 a.m. on Friday, the 17th, a few minutes after her water broke. Contractions were about 8 minutes apart at that time. We fell asleep again at about 5 a.m., then woke up at 7. We were surprised to find that contractions were now around 3 minutes apart! We called the midwife and she and a student midwife came to see Deb. She said that although the contractions were close together, they weren't very intense. So, we waited around at home for a few hours, using the different techniques we learned to try to keep her comfortable.
By 12 noon, she was feeling very uncomfortable. The midwife came over again to check and said it would probably be a good time to go to the hospital. So we got in the car (which I had already packed earlier that morning) and headed off to Surrey. Deb was extremely uncomfortable in the car and I was very happy when we got there. We went straight up to a room and got settled in. By this time the contractions were quite bad. Deb didn't want Demerol if it could be helped. She tried the Nitrous Oxide, but didn't like the way it made her feel. So, we continued for a while without any intervention. By about 3:30 or 4 p.m., she was 7 cm dilated. The pain was now pretty intense, because Tiernan was very low and she was already feeling a strong need to push.
They started an IV, because she was getting dehydrated, but they had real trouble keeping the IV in place. By this time, Deb was really wanting an epidural, but by the time they finally got a bag of IV fluids in her, she was 9 cm dilated. We decided to keep going without an epidural. Thirty minutes later, she was fully dilated. At 5:15, she began pushing. At 6:25, Tiernan was out! He'd had his hand up, making it harder to get him out, but still it was a pretty fast pushing stage.
Tiernan was very healthy at birth. His head was quite elongated, but otherwise he looked perfect! He was wide awake and very alert for the first hour. Then he was very sleepy, almost dopey, for the next two days. It was actually difficult to wake him up to eat. He fell asleep
almost right away every time we tried to breast feed. He latched okay, but would suck 3 or 4 times and then fall asleep. Before too long, we started using a bottle, just to make sure he was actually eating. We struggled for the first few days to get him to breast feed, mostly using breast milk in a bottle. He's doing much better at it now.
We came home from hospital Sunday evening, the 19th. I stayed home from work with Deb the first week. And thank goodness I did. We were both quite exhausted all week long. I mean, you hear how tired you'll be, but you have no idea until you're actually experiencing it. We considered it a success if we had time to have a shower!
Despite the difficulties of labour and the tiring first week, it is a wonderful experience to be parents. He is so beautiful and we love to spend time with him, even just holding him in our arms. We waited a long time before having our first child. He makes it worth the wait.
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