Lucas Brett Steenblik

Lucas Brett Steenblik

Kymee is obviously otherwise occupied and in enough pain that doing a blog on the subject of the happiest day of our yound married life nearly impossible. So (new) Daddy Steenblik gets to chime in on this one. I can only imagine that most of the people who might be reading this have seen the pictures on facebook or through email so to keep from boring you I will take the liberty of telling our all to exciting tale in a little more depth.

Many of you know Kymee was scheduled to be induced on thursday, so over the weekend we spent the weekend getting the house clean and our bags packed for the fateful moment when she went into labor. So after a busy but contraction-less weekend I went to school on monday expecting very little in the way of babyness. Kymee was feeling hardly anything in that realm of possibility as well but she was... nauseous! She threw up numerous times during the day (I'll spare the number) and the nurses told her to go up to L&D in the hospital to get checked out because she has already had some scares with possible preeclampsia and gestational diabetes. So when I got home we routinely grabbed everything for the hospital "just in case." We really had no intentions of being admitted and we certainly got a funny look from the lady at the L&D desk wondering why we would come in for something so simple.


So she got hooked up and everything looked normal. She was still only dialated to 1, 60% efaced, the baby's heartbeat was wonderful and Kymee's contractions were far apart... this had all the makings for an uneventful night at home. While the nurse was out of the room I was joking with Kymee to make her laugh, which has been known to help her have contractions, when all of a sudden 4 nurses came running through the door! They threw a oxygen mask on Kymee and checked the baby and it wasn't until after that we saw that his heartbeat had dropped below 60 bpm, more then half his baseline. With that fateful moment we were now staying. The baby did this a few more times through the night and we are glad the doctors played it safe. So The doctor ordered an induction and we were only 24 hours from seeing baby Steenblik. This began the long night... an more than a few times did we hear the dreaded C word mostly because of the heart rate dips but also, as you will see, due to some difficulty in the labor.

The night passed with out too much trouble. But by morning time labor/contraction pains were bad enough that it was epidural time. So for anyone keeping track at home, based on my not-so-precise method of determining labor (aka labor starts when pain is bad enough for an epidural), we can call he labor about 12hr. I would give you all the details of her progression through this but i'll leave that for Kymee to update since I do not remember. Suffice it to say dilation was slow going... and then she jumped from a 6 to an ("8 almost 9" according to the nurse) in a little over an hour. Game on! Soon the was fully dialated and the pushing started. Our doctor and the attending doctor were in now in the room to stay (our Dr is a 1st year resident).

Anyway so starts the pushing. This is all well and good... but I have left out one hairy (upside-down?) detail. Lucas was engaged... but posterior. He was gonna come out facing up (somehow I have had this backwards all day). Well so like I said, pushing. Hard. Kymee had been pushing for about an hour straight when she realizes she can feel lots or pain... no good. Epidural is out. They call in the wonderful anesthesiologist (think Mr. Bean... if he were born in New Dehli). He said something classically funny (no I don't remember what) and gave her a shot of medication that would ultimately last for the rest of the labor.

Another half hour of pushing... no progress. Bad news folks... there was another doctor in the room. Old doctors in white shirts and ties are never good news. He was no exception. Soon they had the vacuum out (big suction cup for baby's head) and there would be assisted delivery and an episiotomy (*shudders and shivers*). As they are getting everything ready they are going over a check list for this (in ABC form!) and I caught them saying that the vacuum could only be used for 20 minutes... or else. So Kymee (she was so great and strong. women are capable of truly amazing things) kept going and about 15 minutes later there was progress but no baby. Cue C-word again. This evoked an ancient power... the kind that allows mothers to lift cars off of their trapped children. In the last 5 minutes she had two contractions and pushed the baby farther than she had in the precious 2 hours... and it wasn't a small difference. Then, on the last push, the last minute, out comes out beautiful baby boy!

Well he was out. And at 7:08pm March 22nd 2011. He measured in at 8lbs 2oz and 20in long. The Munchkin came out not crying or screaming... in fact he wasn't doing anything noteworthy. He was breathing and content. He would go the next 24+ hours with out crying or screaming once. He went through a bath (not even when the rubbed over his very raw, sore bruise from the vacuum), tests and shots. Not a peep. This concerned an already physically distressed mommy but everyone assured her it was alright. That wasn't that only source of concern though. The vacuum had pulled his head making it long and misshapen. This also concerned mommy and again she was told it was ok. This certainly skewed his length numbers up.





And so it was. So it is. He did everything perfectly after that. He eats like crazy and sleeps like a rock. We love this and hope it continues but realize it probably won't. But that is ok cuz we love him. He has passed every test, his head looks normal (minus the big red sore/bruise on his head) and he already loves mommy and daddy... but clearly loves mommy more because she has the food. But wait... his name! Well we had some picked out but were pretty sure we were going with Lucas and so once Kymee was feeling better and we were down in recovery he was dubbed Lucas Brett Steenblik. The Munchkin. We love him very much and for all the pregnancy and pain and recovery Kymee was the 1st to say that It was all worth it. We adore him. He grabs daddy's fingers (see above) and snuggles with mommy. He is precious to us and is just like the scriptures say "Children are an heritage of the LORD... Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed."

-Daddy, Mommy & Baby


PS. Our quiver... currently full. We plan on buying an upgrade in the future (don't hold your breath).

PSS. as a reward for reading all that... PICTURE DUMP!!! enjoy!