Ryan James Martindale

Well, the baby came, but it was more exciting than we had hoped for.  Meg was induced Wednesday night and by mid-morning on Thursday was completely dilated and ready to push.  No matter how hard she pushed, the baby would not budge.  And every time she pushed his heart rate got lower and lower.  After about 45 minutres of pushing, the midwife helping us wanted to get a doctor's opinion on the situation.  When the doctor came in, she looked at the charts and said his heart rate has been too low for too long and we have to do a C-section.  They rushed Meg in to the operating room and me into another room to dress in a sterile robe.  As I was putting it on, a nurse came in and told me that I wouldn't be allowed in because they had to do a crash C-section (which means they just completely knock out Meg and get the baby out as fast as possible).  It was kinda scary sitting in my room watching doctor after doctor literally run down the hall into the emergency room.  About 10 minutes later, a nurse came in and told me the baby was born and that everything was okay.  Apparently, Ryan had the umbilical cord wrapped one time around his waist and one time around his leg and he was facing up instead of down.  For some reason, our babies really like it inside of Meg and seem to do all they can to stay there.

Ryan was born at 10:53 a.m. on Thursday.  He was 7 lbs. 7 oz. and 20.5 inches long.  Despite all the problems, he was perfectly healthy when he came out.  In fact, the doctor said he was crying (which apparently isn't always the case in C-sections) and peeing as they were lifting him out, which all the nurses seemed to be really impressed with.  I thought it was pretty cool, too.  Unfortunately, no one was there to get a picture of it.  To us, Ryan looks exactly like Lexie when she was born except with more hair.  He also wants to suck all the time just like Lexie did.

Meg is doing well, too.  Besides having her belly sliced open, there were no other complications.  The doctor said she lost more blood than most C-sections do.  So she is weak and in pain, but improving all the time.  Meanwhile, she's keeping the nurses well-entertained.  For some reason, she always turns into a comedian when she's in labor and recovering from delivery.

Anyway, here are some pictures of Ryan.  It didn't seem like there were too many good ones of him.  We haven't taken a whole lot of pictures either, since we've been so tired.  But here are a few and I'm sure there will be more to follow...