Thing 2 arrived fast and furious with a whole 23 MINUTES of real labour. We barely even made it to the hospital! He was born on November 10th 2006 @ 5:53am, weighing 5 pounds and 0.5 ounce. He is 18 inches long.

It was Friday in the early morning and I was getting up to go to the bathroom for about the millionth time. It was about 4am. I was hungry so I went downstairs and made some bread and peanut butter, had a drink and took another pee. This time I had a scant amount of bloody show. I knew it would be soon but figured I had tonnes more time. I wasn’t even going to wake Hubby up just yet as I wasn’t having any contractions so labour hadn’t started. Luckily I decided I probably should so we can get his dad here, finish packing and let Hubby’s work know that he wouldn’t be coming in.

We called the hubby’s Dad and then I called my Mom. She booked the next plane here. By now it was nearing 5. I decided to send out a couple emails and had maybe 2 contractions that were weak. A little closer to 5:30 I walked into the bedroom to make sure everything was in my suitcase and BOOM, short but massively painful contractions started coming back to back and I scream at Hubby to call our friend B who lives across the street to come until his Dad shows up and I’ll meet him in the car.

I swear we hit every bump possible on the way to the hospital. We got in the door and they took me right in to a room. They said they were glad I hadn’t waited and had tried to phone us back not to wait for Dan because I had a rapid labour with Thing 1 (but nowhere near this rapid). They told me the anesthesiologist was on his way up and had me change into a gown. She checked me and said I was 6. I had a contraction as she was about to finish checking and she got this look on her face, said I went to 8 and was going to get the Doctor. About a minute later my Doctor ran in the room preparing looked and I was crowning. During delivery we discovered I have developed a new allergy to latex. I’m not sure what exactly happened but I know how burnt I am now so I have a good guess. Thing 2′s heartrate decelerated down to 70 and she told me I had to stop fidgeting and pushing with my face and we need him out now. The next push there he was. The man with epidural walked in and said “I guess I am too late“. We also learned that my placenta had the same issues as Thing 1′s did. We sent it off to pathology.

He came out screaming and I cut the cord this time. He nursed right away like a champ.

Due to his size, my diabetes, our unknown Group B Strep status and that I was only 36 weeks pregnant they watched him pretty closely for a while. His blood sugars started to drop, he couldn’t maintain body temperature and would no longer suck so they brought him over to the NICU for a while for observation. After about 3 hours they brought him back because his temperatures were now ok but we had to get him to feed even if it meant tubing him because of his size and sugars. We pumped as much colostrum as we could, topped it up with formula and drop by drop got something in him. We did this often and about 12 hours later when his sugars came back up he started eating just fine again.

We did get to bring him home the next day. We wouldn’t have been able to but my Doctor allowed it for 2 reasons. We have dealt with what could happen before since Thing 1 was also small, and since my Mom is now here and is a nurse.

He is doing great now, nursing wonderfully and isn’t so bad about sleeping… yet anyway.

He looks nearly identical to what Thing 1 looked like at birth except that Thing 2 has a full head of dark hair whereas Thing 1 was blond and almost bald.

I’ll get some pictures up in the next few days.