Baby John Thomas!

Here he is...John was born on February 1st at 3:04 in the afternoon. For those of you who don't know, we had sort of a crazy start. I was scheduled to be induced on the 1st so we all got up that Monday morning and, surprise, my water broke right off the bat. Since we were already on our way to the hospital that morning, we just proceeded as scheduled. (For me, at least, having my water break was pretty low key so there was no rushing-around-craziness like in the movies.) Anyway, so by the time we got to the hospital I was a little bit in labor already. They went ahead with the induction medicine anyway and things happened fast - at least much faster than they did with Katherine. So John came after two pushes - which, as it turned out, was great for me but not so great for John. As a result of his "precipitous" delivery, he had a hard time breathing (i.e. lots of fast breathing because, they suspected, he still had fluid in his lungs because he wasn't squeezed during labor for very long) and ended up going up to the NICU and staying there for a week. The doctors were concerned about him having difficulty eating because he was working so hard on breathing. So he had an IV for nutrition for a few days but otherwise wasn't treated while there - just very closely monitored and tested for lots of other things (all of which were ruled out) that could have caused this same type of breathing problem. While it was definitely not the beginning anyone hopes for, Scott and I were very appreciative that ours was the full-term, almost 8 pound giant of the NICU that we got to bring home after a week instead of several months like so many of his preemie neighbors.

Here are some NICU photos...

Our hospital had private NICU rooms which was so nice for us - Scott and I could spend the day with John and not feel like we were out in the middle of all the craziness. You can see in all the wires that led to all John's monitors...it was so nice when he was finally untethered!

John started off with an IV in his hand, which was a total pain since he kept jabbing himself in the face...

...so he graduated to an IV in his head. This was the point that Scott and I joked a lot about John having "gatorade pumped into his brain".

Then John briefly had a tube in his nose as he transitioned off IV nutrition and on to milk. This was only in briefly since, once he got going, this kid turned out to be a pretty good little eater all on his own.

I like the look on his face in this picture...he looks as if he knows that his being sprung from the NICU is all dependent upon how well he eats so he's going to work really hard at it no matter how weird it is after the ease of having gatorade pumped in his brain while he slept and slept!

We appreciate the good care John got at the hospital but we're all very glad to be home now!