Welcome Will!

*Awesome photos of Will: courtesy of my brother in law, photographer, Jimmy Clemmons.

Monday, May 24th our family welcomed baby William Tate Evans... "Will". Since we have been asked a few times about the name, both of us have great grandfathers who were William. "Tate" we both just liked the sound of.
Things were a lot easier in some ways with this labor/delivery. I can say that I would rather go into labor on my own than to be induced as I was with Lily. I started having contractions around 7:00 or so that morning and he was born at 6:32pm. Not too bad.
The only issue of concern was my blood pressure. Usually if a woman is going to have bp problems it will be right after the epidural. I was fine afterwards. About an hour or so later though my bp crashed and stayed there. They pushed 5-6 bags of fluid into my IV in hopes of bringing it up and even gave me a shot of ephedrine. Nothing worked. The L&D nurse did not leave the room for a long long time because she kept expecting me to pass out I think. She certainly asked me a lot. The lowest it got was about 87/38 which I admit is pretty dang low. The highest she managed to get it was 101/53 I think. The baby's vitals never waivered though... they kept saying he was the "happiest" baby they'd seen.
Anyway, jump to the end... About 40 minutes before he was born they decided it was necessary to turn my epidural OFF. Yes, off. They think I had a reaction to something that is mixed in with the epidural medicine which is what caused the bp problem. Since they could not get it up, they decided to turn it off. They also assured me that it would not wear off before he was born. Well, that was partially true. I felt more than I would have liked to.
Immediately after be was born the LD nurse and the LD tech starting making bets on how heavy he was. I knew he had to be bigger than Lily was. Turns out the Tech won. He was over 9 lbs and thats what she was betting on. 9lbs 6 oz. 21 inches long.
He was a big boy.
I felt immediate relief after he was born. I knew my guts were squashed and I was right!


Because he was over 9 lbs they had to monitor his blood sugar level for a certain amount of time. Every 3 hours he had to have a blood sugar test. That made for a long night. Every time we would finally get to sleep they'd come in and retest him. Lily came by to say goodnight but because he was in the nursery for his first round of testing she did not get to see him till the next morning. He also had a good portion of his face bruised during his birth so they also had to watch him for jaundice (bruising evidently tends to increase the odds of it happening). So, his first 24 hours were full of being poked unfortunately.
He is a really sweet baby and very cuddly. We are holding our breath to see if maybe we managed to have a second baby that is as good as the first one was. Of course, its still early.
This past Tuesday we went for his 1 week check and he was not under his birth weight. He was 9 lbs 7.3 oz so we don't have to go back till his 1 month appt.

The video that we took of Lily meeting her brother is precious. Enjoy...