Welcome Derek!

On Tuesday night my true labor contractions finally started.  I of course couldn't sleep, but did manage to take a shower and eat breakfast around 2AM because I knew the hospital wouldn't feed me until after the baby was born.  After that, we headed in to Howard County General Hospital and I was admitted.  Several hours later, at 7am, I decided that I did want an epidural after all.   When the baby was finally born at 10:03AM after about 20 minutes of pushing, we knew he looked big.  I thought that maybe he would be as big as Lydia was at birth (8 lbs 11oz), but when the nurses finally weighed him, after spending several minutes suctioning his nose and mouth, he was a whopping 10 lbs 11oz (4.86 kilos).  Somehow the weight got adjusted to 10 lbs 12 oz - I have no idea which was right.  They also said he was 22.75 inches long (57.8 cm), though I have little faith in the accuracy of measuring the heights of newborns.  He was just about 4.5 pounds bigger than Karina was at birth!  I certainly thought I looked a lot bigger this pregnancy than when I was pregnant with Karina, and now I know why!  

Nate couldn't take many pictures when Derek was first born since the nurses said the hospital has a policy against photographing medical procedures (suctioning nose and mouth counts as a medical procedure).  

I finally got to hold him when the nurses determined he was breathing well:

Derek took well to nursing once he determined I wasn't trying to stuff a syringe down his lungs to suction them out like the nurses had.  Nate holding him for the first time:

Holding Daddy's hand:

Fed and happy in Daddy's arms:

Nate and I finally had to agree on a first and middle name.  This had not been an easy feat for us as we had been at a deadlock for months.  My name lists and Nate's name lists never had any overlap.  Finally, about a week before he was born, we tried the approach of process of elimination.  We started out with the top 1000 names on the social security index.  Lydia's name rank on the girls' name list was roughly equivalent to #120 on the boys' name list when measured by total number of births.  Since we decided we didn't want a name more common than "Lydia", we removed the top 120 for being too common, then removed less common spellings of names higher on the list, got rid of ethnic names, etc.  We kept whittling down the list by various criteria and found our top 10.  I suppose this method was effective since we ended up choosing a name that hadn't been on either of our original lists, even though we both really like the name: Derek.  

His middle name is Jasper.  He got a gemstone/color middle name just like Karina and Lydia, and it is also the English form of a name we both loved (Casper - one of the three wise men), but didn't choose because the 'er' ending clashed with the baby's 'er' ending last name.

Mormor and the girls arrived later that afternoon/evening to meet Derek.  They were beyond excited. 

Karina immediately wanted to hold him.  She was so proud. 

Lydia was ready to 'pet the baby gently'.  She also held his hand and tried to share her sippy with him.  

Mormor getting to hold her grandson:

I have a strong dislike of being in hospitals and wanted to leave the next day.  Unfortunately, the doctors wouldn't let Derek leave.  First, we found out he had a left fractured clavicle (hairline).  The doctor said this is incredibly common with big babies during the birthing process.  He'll heal on his own quickly though with no treatment.  The nurses kept commenting that he was happy to move his left arm around, which a lot of babies with fractured collarbones won't do.  This meant it wasn't bothering him and is probably pretty minor.  The second issue was that his bilirubin levels were slightly elevated  (jaundice) and they wanted to keep him overnight to test his levels in the morning.  We got the impression the pediatrician would have been fine with us leaving, but the hospital nurses wanted us to stay another night.  When they tested him in the morning, his bilirubin levels had decreased from high intermediate risk to low intermediate risk, and we were finally allowed to leave, no jaundice lights needed.  At least in theory we were allowed to leave, except that the pediatrician somehow forgot to click something on the computer making it official and we had to wait a few more hours before it got sorted out.   

We finally got to leave and were excited to head home with our new family addition.  Derek looked handsome in his little outfit.  We were glad that we didn't invest in any newborn clothes for him since he wouldn't ever get a chance to wear them.

First time in a car seat, ready for his next adventure:

That was the end of our hospital stay.  More pictures to come later.