Big news! S is here!

Let me tell you a story. It's a story about how "Amanda and I" became "Amanda, S and I." Lets start on Monday, August 9. We took this picture since Amanda was due on Wednesday.


BUT, nothing happened on Wednesday, so on Friday we played a board game with Grandma Bev instead.

Then, at 1:30 am Amanda started having contractions and woke me up at 2:30 to time them. So I made cupcakes for the nurses while Amanda took a bath. But there wasn't much hot water, so in between mixing and making the homemade frosting, I boiled water to add to the bath and kept track of her contractions in a journal.


Amanda was feeling sick the whole time as well. She was throwing up and couldn't keep any water down. Turns out she might have had the flu from a baby shower she went to just the day before. This is unconfirmed as of this writing. Then we called Amanda's mom - Grandma Bev - at 6:00 and she came over soon after. We are very lucky to have friends who live across the street who let her stay at their house while they were away. Then the water broke around 6:30 and it was a mad scramble to get the car ready to go to the hospital! We got to Madison Memorial Hospital in Rexburg at 7:00 and they let us right in since we had preregistered. Oh, and interspersed with these events I would occasionally read Hypnobabies scripts to Amanda to help her body relax. Maybe she will explain that better in a later post, but suffice it to say, it really worked for us.

A lot happened once we were in the labor and delivery room. They checked Amanda and she was at about 5cm. Then, while the relaxation music was playing and I was reading the Hypnobabies stuff to her during contractions, the midwife asked if she could put a saline lock in Amanda's wrist in case she needed medication - even though we expressed in our printed birth plan that had been reviewed by the nurses and midwife that we were going to have a natural birth. We agreed because we say things in the heat of the moment that we wouldn't otherwise. It was only in for a few minutes when Amanda had to move and the needle actually bent sideways, so they took it out to be nice :)

Around 8:00 they said Amanda could get in the jacuzzi if she wanted and we agreed, so they went to fill it up. But at 8:15 our little boy decided he had had it, and wanted to come out. And at 8:40 that's exactly what he did. And what a cute little guy he is too. He's the one on the left.


He was healthy, happy, and pretty quiet. He weighed 7 lb. 1 oz. and was 18 3/4 inches long (even though I still think it should be 18 3/4 inches TALL).

And the rest is pretty much a regular hospital experience. We didn't have a name picked out for him because we wanted to see him first. We had a list of names we liked but we wanted to see what he looked like. We agreed on his full name, S.L. Ondricek. I wanted to add "the eighth," but Amanda wouldn't let me. The nurses did all their screenings, he passed with flying colors and he eats, sleeps, and poops like a champ. Oh, and the hospital has the best bacon cheeseburger I have had in quite a while. Maybe I was just delirious, or maybe I'll go back next time I'm in the mood for fast food. I spent the night at the hospital with Amanda on a chair/bed (which wasn't designed with comfort in mind) and they had us watch some cheesy video about infant CPR which tried to mix useful knowledge with a workout video from the 80's. The last thing that is worth mentioning is that when I went out to get the car-seat I wrestled with it for 15 minutes and couldn't get it out of the base so I took the whole thing inside. Then I figured it out on the elevator ride back. Oh well, you win some you lose some. We're home now, mom and baby are doing great and I'll post some more pictures below. That's all folks, enjoy the pictures!