So, on March 6, I received a text from my son...'it's go time'. Not much sleep for us that night. My husband was flying home from Toronto on some ghastly flight that got in at 2 am, and, then had to be on a 6 am flight to Labrador. There probably would have been minimal sleep in any case. In the morning we discovered that, two provinces over, the obstetrician on call had decided that the thing to do was dope my daughter-in-law up to the gills with gravol and morphine so she could get some rest. Labour stopped. So after an 8 hour snooze, it was decided to put her on the drip to speed things up, so that the baby wouldn't have to spend 6 hours in the NICU. Not all of this seems logical to me, however, that is what happened.
Rogers has no cell phone connectivity in Labrador so I had the number of a nice young woman who was working in Labrador with my husband in order to keep him up to date on progress. She, a young mother herself, was pretty excited to be on the receiving end of messages. And there were lots of them. Between my son and his sister-in-law, who is adorable, there were lots of messages. At 4:55 pm the message 'pushing' came through. My husband and his crew were just getting on a plane to fly home, so I was able to let him know that pushing was happening, as the flight attendant was approaching him to tell him to turn off the cell phone.
I don't remember pushing taking two hours, but apparently it can, and did. Henry was born at 6:55 pm, and the first pictures came through within fifteen minutes. I was able to text the info to my husband's colleague's phone just as they landed, and were able to turn on the phones. There apparently was loud cheering on the plane, and the phone was passed all over the plane for everybody to admire our handsome grandson.
He really is a beautiful baby. He started out at 7 pounds (3 kgs), lost a bit in the first couple of days, and really did like to sleep (could have been all that gravol and morphine), so it took him a while to make it back to his birth weight. He is going strong now, and is checking out his world more and more all the time. I am placing bets that he will be blue eyed...that newborn navy is more on the blue side that the muddy side that seems to go brown.
So far, since he was born I have only knit him two sweaters, a hat and a pair of socks. I think that is pretty restrained myself.
