OUR LITTLE BUNDEL OF JOY,BABY MORRISON GABRIEL POULTER'S VIDEO DEBUT

this kid already thinks he is tough...

Morrison's first mohawk... likely not his last...

so, it all started on christmas night (well, i guess his story started back in march, but for purposes of this story we will say that it started on christmas night, december 25th, 2008) we were scheduled to arrive at nineish to get started with the inducing of baby morrison.
thanks to the super snowy roads and amazingly bad drivers (i figure that if i, with my limited experience of driving in the snow and driving a little two wheel drive honda civic could make it up the hills to the hospital without getting stuck, than all of the people i passed in their big 4x4 suv's blocking the road must have been bad drivers) but we made it about nine thirty. the nurses were happy to see that we had made it and got us set up in the room right away.
the first step was to let a quarter dose of some sort of magic pill (sorry, i dont remember the name... i know, i should be better at that kind of stuff) anyways, the pill was placed in sandra's upper lip at the gumline to dissolve. Now, i dont know if it was the pill, or sandra's body knowing what was supposed to be happening, but the contractions started right away. we both laid down to rest awaiting the next few doses of the same pill.
an hour or so later the nurse came in and said that everything looked great, so good in fact that they were going to forego the subsequent doses and jump straight into the heavy stuff. she was given something to help her deal with the pain while we waited for the big guns. The pitocin was started around 4:00am on the 26th. we had both been resting as much as we could between the bathroom breaks. (i don't think i had realized how often sandra had been waking up to relieve herself these last few weeks until i was called on to carry the I.V. bag for every trip. i dont know how she did it, but i love her for it.)
the pitocin is a synthetic form of oxitocin which is the hormone that the body secretes to get labor started (see, i paid attention and caught some things) The contractions continued and sandra's water broke on its own at 5:45 am. it was a high break so there was no gush, but a trickle with every contraction.
we were suprised to here that she was only dilated to 3+ centimeters after a full night of contractions, but we were relieved to know that we would not be sent home packing again (that is another story) but that they would stick with us.
by morning and exam time sandra was feeling pretty uncomfortable and asked for the epidural (the nurses had given her the option much earlier). THAT WAS A LIFE SAVER.
sandra's body kept on doing what it was supposed to be doing. She would nap between the nurses visits, uninterrupted by potty runs thanks to the catheter that was placed at the time of the epidural. The next exam she was up to 5 or 6 centimeters. more resting, a few more little pumps of epidural, and a few hours later she was up to 8.
At around 2:00 the nurse declared her to be the full 10 centimeters and that it would soon be time to start pushing.
The anesthesiologist gave her one last dose with the epidural, the doctor was called and the pushing started at 2:10ish.
Sandra is an amazing pusher. It was only on the first or second push that i first saw the wet and hairy little head. The contractions slowed down a little bit but that didn't stop the party and sandra took advantage of every one. after about a half dozen contractions with 3 to 4 good pushes each the doctor still had not arrived. The nurse actually had sandra rest a little bit, not wanting to get too far ahead of herself before he got there. she skipped the pushing on two contractions. the nurse had sandra push on the next and the doctor walked in. The doctor was there for 2 more contractions and on the second MORRISON GABRIEL POULTER was born.
He weighed 7 lbs 1 oz and measured 21.5 inches. (yes, that is 21.5 inches, over a third of the height of his mom already ;) yeah, a perverbial slap in the face to all the doubters that thought that she was carrying "too small"