Monday, March 16, 2009

Lincoln Asa Nobmann






On March 1st, 2009, we welcomed Lincoln Asa Nobmann into our family. This now makes boy number three. A friend once made the comment that when he and his wife had their third, this required the switch from man-to-man to zone defense.

Unfortunately, since we were already losing to the two boys, I fear the consequences of "Team Offspring" now taking advantage of always having one man wide open in the paint. We may need to impose the mercy rule--also known as "Pixar."

Mother and baby are doing fine, which is not to say the delivery was routine. We arrived at the hospital at 10 AM Sunday morning and the nurse said Katherine was already at a nine. Since she was already so close, and not in much pain, she passed on the epidural and they broke her water. After a couple of hours, the baby had still not engaged. The doctor came to check on Katherine and, eyes wide, said, "this is a big baby!"

Katherine started pushing, and after a few sets of pushes, the baby's head would come down, but not stay down. The doctor again commented on the size of the baby and said a c-section may be necessary. As a last resort, the doctor suggested Pitocin. This baby was not coming out any time soon.

Katherine then got an epidural, and started on the Pitocin. After about an hour, the baby was engaged and the pushing began again. Shortly, the head was out, but the shoulders were stuck. There are four options to try to remove such a baby, and ours was out after three of the four. Step four would have involved the doctor reaching in and breaking the shoulder bone.

Occasionally, even option four is unsuccessful. When this happens, the doctor tucks the already-emerged head under, and pushes it back inside. Yes, back inside. An emergency c-section is then performed. Fortunately, Lincoln only required the first three options, as somehow my amazing, petite Katherine was able to deliver our 8 lb 12 oz "Lincoln Log."

Notwithstanding the delivery drama, Lincoln has been an absolute dream baby. We have to wake him up at night to feed him, and have often laid him down when he is tired, but still awake, only to have him fall asleep on his own. We are absolutely floored. We would have been less surprised if he'd come home and cleaned the bathrooms.