New Baby!

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If you know me, you also probably know that we had our second baby a month ago, on April 23rd! He’s named Alexander and we’re all doing great!

I had meant to do a whole big, detailed write-up of the event so that we could have it to look back on in the future. After all, I did that for our first boy, Will, on the very night he was born, after a 36 or 48-hour day or whatever. At that time, I was definitely running on adrenaline (and running on empty), but this time I’ve just been so busy with Will, who’s three now, that I never had a chance to do the write-up justice.

So for now, I’ll include a few pictures of Alex’s first month, and a few of the details that I can remember from the labor and delivery. Feel free to read it all if you want, or you can also just skip to all the pictures if you’d like.

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ALL THE DETAILS

Alex was due on May 11 and born on April 23, in week 37 of the pregnancy. Will was also born in week 37 so we knew there was a chance that Alex could come before, so we had talked with a doctor to schedule a C-section at the end of week 37, hoping that it would be soon enough.

But on the night of April 22, Angela’s nephew’s wife, Marita (who’s a doctor), gave her an injection to help the baby’s lungs develop. It had been prescribed by the gynecologist to prepare for the surgery, but it may have also kicked off the labor. Or it may have been a coincidence and maybe Alex was going to come that night anyhow.

Either way, around 11 pm or so Angela started having contractions. They got progressively more intense, so we called the doctor to see what we should do. It was the weekend, though, and he wasn’t answering. We found out later that he had been charging his phone in the other room of his house and simply hadn’t seen our increasingly frantic calls and messages until about 5 am the next day, but really, he probably couldn’t have done much for us anyhow, other than send us to the hospital to have the baby.

So after a few hours of monitoring the contractions and noticing that they were getting closer together and more intense, we called Angela’s niece Adriana to come to our house and stay with Will while we went to the hospital. She was also in the 37th week of her pregnancy so it was kinda scary for her (and almost a bit funny for us) to see her reaction to Angela having the contractions. (She had a lovely baby girl just a week or so later.)

The one underlying emotion I had during the birth of our second child was actually deja vu, strangely enough. Obviously, there was a ton of excitement and anxiousness mixed in, but I couldn’t help but noticing that many of the details of both boys’ births were surprisingly similar.

For example, both times Angela went into labor pretty late at night on a weekend, which was actually a really great thing since there was no traffic and no long lines of people at the hospital. Both started out in the birthing room, where I was allowed to stay with Angela, and both then went into a C-section when it became apparent that they wouldn’t be born naturally. And for both boys, while we were waiting for Angela to wake up or recover from the C-section, I got to wait with them and hold them while they were in the neonatal care room.

The biggest difference, though, was that nearly everything was better, quicker, and smoother than with the first birth.

This time around, the hospital had changed the regulations, so I was able to stay with Angela the whole time. With Will, I had to wait with the guard (yeah, it’s a Costa Rican public hospital) for about 10 hours. This time, I was with her for about 4 or 5 hours in the birthing room, and was able to stay with her until they took her to the operating room (where I wasn’t able to go, but that makes sense).

This time, they also didn’t try to make Angela keep pushing for hours before they finally decided to give her the C-section. They knew of her first pregnancy and how Will didn’t descend all the way, and they also detected that Alex’s heartbeat was slowing down, so they made the decision to take him out then.

Actually, that factor–that they basically made her go through labor and then an operation the first time–was the reason that we had been planning on going to a private clinic for a scheduled C-section just a few days after Alex was born. But we’re happy with the way that things worked out, since the hospital staff were really nice, everything worked out well, and we saved about 4 grand, to boot!

Since Alex has come home, things have also been going really well. He’s a pretty laid-back baby, as far as one can really tell with these things, and he mainly just sleeps, eats, and poops.

Will is also doing really well with him. The first week or so after Alex was born, Will was sick, so it was hard to tell if he was whiny because of that or because of jealousy. But now he’s very sweet with Alex, at least when he’s not indifferent to him and/or doing his own thing. But he’ll give Alex kisses on the cheek and talk to him, so we really can’t ask for a better situation.
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That’s most of the details, but I guess not ALL of the details.

Oh, and just a note about the pictures. If you’ve read this far, then you may have done it because of the pictures. I’ll still be uploading them to my account on flickr, but I’ll be marking any with the boys or Angela as private and only visible to friends and family. You may already be connected with me there, in which case you’ll be able to see them. But if you’re not and you’d like to see them, just let me know and we’ll get you set up (but you’ll have to log in to flickr–and/or Yahoo–in order to see them).

Thanks for reading!

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Sitzman

Errand-Running Monkey at Sitzblog
Hey! I'm Ryan Sitzman, the person in charge of Sitzblog. If you want to know more about me, you can check out my profile on Google or go to my personal site, RyanSitzman.com. You can also click on any of the redundant little boxes to the left and it should take you to my profiles for all kinds of social networks. Thanks!

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2 thoughts on “New Baby!

  1. Nuestros queridos amigos hermosas fotos. Muchísimas felicidades ya tienen 2 niños como.nosotros. Me alegra tanto verlos siempre nos acordamos de ustedes.
    Les mandamos.muchos abrsPs felicitaciones y disfruten al nuevo integrante de la.familia.
    Con cariño siempre Aurora, Juan pablo, Íker y pablo por cierto pablo se llama también Alexander.
    Besos

  2. Dear Ryan and family,
    Love photos of your boys! I liked your thoughts and writing about the birth of Alex! Glad that everything went so smoothly. Do hope that Angela has fully covered by now!
    We are waiting for our first grandchild to come any day. Jens and Sabrina are expecting a little girl. It she has not decided to come by herself th doctor will “start ” it all on Thursday!
    Give our love to Angela and the boys!!
    Maj and Heinz

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