Nathan is now a little over 24 hours old, and he’s doing wonderfully.  He’s nursing like a champ, and doing all that other lovely newborn baby stuff.  Both of his grandmas have been able to meet him, and Emma and Gregory are back in the apartment as well.  Emma is enthralled with her new brother, and loves to hold him and watch him.  Gregory is not too sure about the whole baby thing, and would prefer to just ignore Nathan’s presence for the time being.  He’s warming up to him bit by bit though, and I do catch him quietly watching Nathan.  He was quite fascinated by the whole diaper changing process in particular.  I’m doing well too, recovering nicely and enjoying sitting in bed, nursing Nathan, reading to the kids, and visiting.  Matt has been doing lots of laundry as well as keeping people fed, so that has been wonderful.  

The birth was not really as I expected, but it went quite well.  I had expected to go into labor at night, and to have things proceed pretty quickly.  Instead I started having contractions at about 9 a.m. and then didn’t have him until a little after 6:30 p.m.  The contractions were reasonably strong and regular, but they just stayed at 6-7 minutes apart all day long.  Matt came home at around 9:45 and Matt’s mom took the kids at about 10, and we let the midwives know what was going around then as well.  They came by and set up around 11:30 or so, then left to go walk around downtown and do some errands.  We had their pager number to give them a ring when things got more intense.  Matt and I spent a quiet day taking walks, resting, playing a game, and hanging out together in our very still apartment.  It was a rather strange day, all in all - we haven’t had a day like that in I don’t know how long.  I was perfectly comfortable, since the contractions, while strong and about a minute long, were leaving no impression on the resting time in between.  

At about 3:30 I called the midwives to let them know how things were going and to see if perhaps I should start taking the homeopathics again (they gave me them at Tuesday’s appointment, and I had taken some on Tuesday afternoon and evening, as well as in the morning when the contractions started) or if I should take some of the labor tincture they had also given me at my 41 week appointment.  They said that either would be fine, but that the labor tincture would probably be more useful at that point, so I started taking that every 30 minutes as they directed me.  It did help to speed things up, and after three doses the contractions were much stronger although not that much closer together.  I was resting upstairs during this time, and realized I had been totally drifting in labor land for almost an hour so I figured I should probably let Matt know what was going on.  It was good timing, because two-three contractions later my water broke (this is at about 5:10) and things definitely got moving along!  Matt called the midwives and they were here by about 5:30.  I started transition at about 5:50 or so, then was ready to push by about 6:20.  And then at 6:36, there was Nathan Michael!  I could tell right away that he was a big boy - he was much more *ahem* interesting to push out than the other two.  With them the hard part was the head, and then the rest just followed…  with this guy I had to work to get his linebacker shoulders and his sturdy little torso out as well.  I was definitely challenging at the time, but of course all was immediately forgotten afterwards in the joy of finally getting to meet him!

So all in all, not quite as mellow of an experience as Gregory’s birth, but still everything went extremely well and I’m really pleased with how the labor went.  And of course I’m ecstatic about meeting our new little guy and very happy not to be pregnant anymore…  for now at least.  ;-)