Zachary

Zachary Bryce made his big entrance on June 14, 2011. I got my hopes up on June 2, when I went to the hospital with pretty decent contractions coming one minute or so apart. However, since I didn't progress enough and hadn't reached my due date yet, I had to take the "walk of shame" and was sent home. The nurses promised me that if I just went and walked the mall, I'd be back later that night, and even my doctor, who was heading out of town that weekend for a trip that would last past my due date (June 12), thought it was the "real deal." But a pedicure, Orange Julius, and long walk around the University Mall later, everything had pretty much stopped. Thankfully (or not?), Zach hung in there for almost two weeks so his mommy could have her own doctor deliver him.

The night before Zach was born, contractions started up around dinner time and became more and more regular by the time I went to bed. Feeling pretty gun shy about going to the hospital only to be sent home again, I was determined to "tough it out" and labor at home as much as possible. By 2 a.m. the contractions were waking me up. Genius that I am, I decided to take a bath "to relax" (which I've learned since can actually speed up labor), then I climbed back in bed. Within 15 minutes, my water broke. Grant and I both jumped out of bed, got ready to go, and got to the hospital around 4:45 a.m. Good thing we live only a short drive from the hospital, because Zach was born at 5:28! The admissions staff didn't take me too seriously, and took their own sweet time checking me in, but when the nurses checked me and started frantically getting the room ready, I started panicking. I asked one of them if I was even going to be able to have anything for the pain, and her nervous "Um ...." was not the answer I wanted to hear! Thankfully, they put me first on the list once the anesthesiologist got there, and bless his merciful soul, he gave me a spinal block. All I know is I have a whole new respect for women who deliver their babies naturally. I have never experienced pain like that. It was really scary. When the nurses commented to me afterward, "Wow, I bet you hope all your babies would come that quickly!" I said, "No way. That was scary." My doctor got there literally just in time to set up his table and deliver my baby. WAY different from my experience with Eliot, when I labored almost 11 hours, had to be given Pitocin to get things going, and slept through the worst of it thanks to an epidural I received early on. So that's Zach's story. Hopefully with our next child we'll strike a happy medium between basically being induced and practically having a baby in the car!

Our friend Heather took took some newborn photos of Zachary in our home. He was just a week and a half old, and I love them! As much as I don't love the fact that I'm in so many of them, showing off my postpartum blubber, I love that we captured little Zach so teeny tiny and sweet. Heather shot over 300 pictures, but these are some of our favorites:

Welcome, Zachary! We love you!

Zach's current nicknames include:

• Zachers
• Baby Z
• Mr. Z
• Zebedee (from his "Ampy" McEuen -- comes from his initials, ZBD)
• Eliot prefers to call him by his full name, Zachary Bryce
• Gator (from Grant's mom, who has assigned an animal name to all her grandbabies)
• Zachy

Some of our favorite things about "Mr. Z":

• His strawberry blond, fuzzy hair
• His big, almost goofy smile
• His persistence (he can hold medicine in his mouth for minutes at a time without swallowing)
• His grunting ... actually, we're glad that's dying off
• He's not a big crier and doesn't cry too loud ... yet. I guess we should really be grateful for the grunting.
• His "chill" personality
• We've got another TV junkie on our hands! He loves to stare at it.
• His tolerance for the amount of love his brother smothers on him.
• His resilience to the amount of love his brother smothers on him.
• His pinchable thighs.
• We think he's pretty darn cute, but we know we're biased!