Oliver K. Whitney

Attention: birth story follows. If you're not into that, feel free to skip to the cute baby pictures.

Sunday, August 9, we went in at 11:00 am to get the tablet to ripen the cervix so that we could start pitocin in the morning and have the baby induced. Megan got the tablet around 2pm, and by 6pm, the doctor decided we would do best to stay the night. We passed the time and the contractions playing plenty of cribbage.


After awhile, Megan's contractions became strong and periodic, but then died away and became irregular. This, combined with something in baby's heart beat confused the doctor and she thought to start with the pitocin right away (around 8pm). But then things normaled out and the doctor changed the call back to rest through the night and pitocin in the morning after a good night sleep.

Megan's contractions had another plan though. At this point, they got stronger and more painful, making it difficult to sleep at all. By midnight, she was only dialated to 2 cm and they were ready to give Megan some morphine to help her sleep. However, even with the morphine, she was waking up frequently to have painful contractions. By 4 am, she was in real pain and amazingly dialated to 8 cm and baby's head was -2. The contractions felt like they were pushing, but she still wasn't supposed to at this point. They asked if she wanted epidural and she said yes, maybe, no, maybe. But then a really bad contraction came on and she said, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" But the doctor came in and said, "I see a head! Too late for epidural, start pushing!" That last painful contraction must have opened up those last two cm and dropped his head like a rock.

30 min of arduous pushing later, Megan birthed a perfectly healthy, beautiful baby boy at 5:03 am, Monday, August 10, 2009. 19.5 in tall, 7 lbs 5 ounces, with curly read hair! Oliver K. Whitney. I even must have had some paternal instincts kick in because I was fine coaching on Megan durin that last half hour, watching the baby come out in the end, and cutting the umbilical cord.

The three of us have spent a good day snoozing and being together. Megan and Oliver and doing just fine. We'll probably be in the hospital until Wednesday morning.