Introducing Benjamin Malcolm Rider

So, yeah, I haven't updated the blog for a while. But I have a very good reason this time - I have been rather busy giving birth and all, and dealing with a whole lot of unexpected side trips on the journey from pregnant lady to mother.

A few minutes old

My water broke around 2 AM last Tuesday, almost 3 weeks early, and as we had planned, I spent most of the day at home, waiting for active labor. For most of the day, I was without contractions or other problems. Obviously, I hadn't been planning on having a baby that day - I was supposed to have a baby shower at work, for Pete's sake - so I had a few things I wanted to take care of before heading to the hospital. I cleaned Kirby's cage and processed half a box of peaches for the dehydrator. What?! I didn't want them to go to waste! In the late afternoon, my contractions started, so we headed to the hospital. By 8:30 or 9 PM, my contractions hadn't really gotten very strong, so the doctor on call (who was not my normal doctor) said I could have an Ambien and try to sleep until morning, when my regular doctor would be available. However, the Ambien relaxed me to the point that my contractions started getting pretty strong. Since Ambien is supposed to put deeply asleep (it is one of the sleep drugs that makes people sleep eat and drive and other wacky things) I spent 3 or 4 hours in a hallucinatory sort of state, kind of awake but also kind of dreaming and seeing things during contractions and passed out in between. I started pushing around 3 AM, and Malcolm was born 25 minutes later, beating the doctor by a couple of minutes.

Tired but happy new father

After spending about an hour with us, a routine blood test discovered that he was hypoglycemic and very cold, so he was taken to the NICU to get an IV and some warmth. Because he was a bit early and so small - 5 pounds, 3 ounces - he just didn't have enough body fat (takes after his father that way) and glycogen reserves that a normal 40 week baby should have. That and a few other minor-ish problems (minor in the grand scheme of things, major to a brand new parent deprived of her baby) that made the doctors cautious, he ended up staying in various stages of the NICU until yesterday (which meant so did I), when we were finally allowed to bring him home. Now he can be treated like a normal baby - hurrah! He shouldn't have any lasting problems, since they were all basically because he was 3 weeks early and not quite ready to be out in the world, and not anything disabling or systemic.

Trying to get and stay warm

 We are overjoyed to be home as a family at last. Benjamin is glad to not have to drive back and forth to the hospital every day to see us. I am especially glad to be done with beeping monitors (that went off all. the. time.) and decent but bland hospital food! For the record, I refuse to acknowledge the validity of calling anything made with Jell-o a salad, no matter how much fruit is in it.

Home at last!

Oh yes, Benjamin Malcolm Rider is the 11th Benjamin Rider, and will go by his middle name. Yes, he is partially named after Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the Firefly ship Serenity. Yes, we are big geeks.