Baby Zachary

Sorry I didn't post about the birth of our son earlier, but for those who didn't receive the family emails, here you go...

Zachary Thomas Fox

Born 2/26/2011 at 4:32am

6 lbs. 14 oz., 20 ¾ in long

Zachary is such a good baby. By 5 weeks old he was reguarly sleeping a 6-hour stretch at night followed by a 3-hr stretch. Occasionally he'll even go 7 or 8 hours. During the day he does like to be held a lot making it difficult to get anything done, but luckily the kids don't mind helping out. Isabelle has the "magic touch". He adores her already. He is 7 1/2 weeks old right now and he is starting to give small quick smiles. It is so rewarding.

Isabelle loves to read to all of her brothers and sisters.

Cousin Camden (Miranda's boy) and Zachary happened to have matching outfits. We thought they were adorable together.

For those who are curious, here is his birth story. Don’t read if you don’t like TMI.

I had been having regular contractions (average every 20 min) for a couple of weeks. At 7 days till his due date I was dilated to a 3. Finally, at 1:24am on Saturday morning (3 days till his due date) I woke up with a particularly strong contraction. I started timing them and they were ~4 minutes apart. After an hour I woke Jonathan up and called the neighbor to come stay with our other kids. Jonathan asked if he could take a quick shower. I said sure. Then he decided to shave afterward. He shaved his entire beard that he had grown out since Christmas. By this point in time, my contractions were harder and I was getting very impatient to get going to the hospital. Jonathan then wanted to make an omelet, figuring I still had hours until the baby would come and we would all be hungry by that point in time. I nixed him. Good thing I did. We arrived at the hospital at 3:30am. By the time they checked me in and checked to see if I was dilated, it was 4am and I was already at a 7. I told the nurse that I usually go really fast at the end and that I predicted he would be out by 4:30. As soon as the nurse realized how far along I was she started frantically calling the midwife and other nurses. And she finally took me over to a real room instead of the triage room. I can’t blame her too much for not taking me seriously before that since I was still smiling and joking around at that point in time. Once we made it to the room (10 minutes later), I stood at the foot of the bed as the contractions got closer and harder. I wasn’t smiling any more. After about 15 minutes I was feeling pressure. Then my water broke and suddenly the pressure was intense. After that contraction I barely made it to a sitting position on the side of the bed before the next contraction. That was when the midwife walked in. I went through a second contraction sitting there while they prepped the base of the bed. By this point the baby wanted out and I was beginning to think I would deliver off the side of the bed. They asked me to lay down, but I couldn’t lift my legs onto the bed so they had to maneuver me into position. As soon as I was laying down another contraction started and he was more than crowning. I didn’t bear down though because I was worried about tearing. I figured I would let the contraction stretch me out some first. By the next contraction I couldn’t hold back anymore so I pushed and his head came out. The midwife worked his shoulders a little so that the next contraction with just a small push had him out the rest of the way. Amazingly I didn’t tear and the midwife was so gentle and patient getting the placenta out that I did’t bled much either. It is amazing how much easier a recovery is when there are no stitches. In fact my only real pain was my bruised ribs from coughing with a cold for the 3 weeks before he was born. So overall, this was probably my easiest delivery despite going natural and both he and I were healthy and ready to rejoin our growing family.