Baby Noah

Noah came over the weekend. I (Nathan) am writing this to share some initial thoughts about the delivery, the first few days, and what you all really want--pictures. Tina will translate this to German and probably edit it a fair amount, too, when she gets a chance.

Noah David Starr was born on Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 11:43 p.m. after about 16 hours of labor. Tina started having mild contractions Saturday morning around 6:00 or 7:00. By about 8:00, they were getting pretty strong, but they were pretty far apart. I decided to leave for an hour or two at about 10:00 to find Tina's birthday present. I was standing in the checkout line at IKEA at about 12:30 when Tina called me to say she thought we should go to the hospital. The contractions were coming about 2-3 minutes apart by then. I hurried home, and we drove up to the University of Utah hospital. They got us situated and we just started waiting.

Tina was in a lot of pain at this point, so she decided to go ahead with an epidural. The epidural helped quite a bit for the next 6 hours or so, although Tina mentioned a few times to the anesthesiologist and the nurses that her right side didn't really feel numb. They kept telling her to turn on her side so the medication could migrate down. She did that, but it didn't really work. She told them it wasn't working, but apparently, they didn't believe her or something.

About 10:30 or 10:45, it was time for Tina to start pushing. At this point, the epidural pump was completely empty and Tina was feeling basically everything. She pushed for about 45 minutes and delivered Noah. We were both very teary and excited when they pulled him out and they put him on Tina's belly. He stayed there while the doctor stitched her up, sans epidural or painkiller, which was not too fun for her.

After that, they measured (20 inches/51 cm) and weighed (3.32 kg/7 lbs 5 oz) him and cleaned him up a little bit.

After a couple hours to recover some, they moved us over to the maternity ward, where we stayed for the next 2 days until we came home. When we got settled in the room, the nurse took Noah out for a bath, while I tagged along like a Japanese tourist for some photos. These two are the only ones that turned out ok.

After that, we just spent the rest of the time in the room until we left on Monday afternoon.

Here are a few pictures since we've been home.