Sweet Mateo,We cannot believe four weeks have already passed since you were born. Time has simply flown by!! Your features have changed so much since your first day out in the real world. Although, from the beginning, people you meet are constantly telling us how much you look like your daddy. You are growing into your own little person with your own personality.
It’s amazing to watch you when you are awake and when you sleep. In both instances, the hiccups you get do not bother you. Thank goodness because you seem to get the hiccups often (for which you can probably thank your mother). We enjoy the sweet little noises you make in your sleep so much and hope we can catch them on video for you. We’ll want to remember those for as long as possible.
There’s not a lot that you are in need of learning. You have been proficient at sneezing, coughing, hiccupping, and crying from day one. We’re very impressed! It took you a few tries, but you are now eating like a champ and you weighed nine pounds when our midwife weighed you yesterday (Monday, Feb. 23, 2009).
At some point this past week, you began focusing more on the person’s face who is speaking to you. This past weekend you began making small, not long lasting, facial expressions when we make silly noises with you or play with your hands. It’ll be fun when you learn you have TWO hands!
We had been giving you sponge baths until you were able to take a real bath and you were never thrilled with those. You were finally able to get a real bath this past weekend. You weren’t a fan of that either. We have that on video . . . we hope you’ll keep us as parents after that! More importantly, we hope you learn to love bath time.
Right now you are sleeping about 4 hours after your last feeding of the evening. You don’t mind sleeping and you’d rather be held and rocked to sleep, but you are able to put yourself to sleep when we put you down awake and that is wonderful! However, it is really hard not to rock you all the time. You’ll only be this little for a short time and we must take advantage of this while we can.
This past month has been a fun one and we have learned a lot about what makes you happy, fussy, sad, and mad. What a ride this has been for us as new parents! We are SO glad you are finally here with us, and while we will miss you being so little, we look forward to watching you grow.
With more love that you can imagine,Mommy and Daddy
My due date was Sunday, February 1st.
My office allowed me to start working from home on Monday, January 19th.
Monday, January 26th, started off pretty normal around 6:30am....getting ready for work and working all day. I attend a bible study on Monday nights (BSF); so, I got my things together and headed off to class. We were supposed to get freezing rain on Tuesday and Wednesday. Since I was out Monday night, I stopped by the grocery store after class and stocked up accordingly. I got home around 10pm that night.
Around 10:45pm, I noticed my contractions were different from the past few weeks. (I had been having a contraction every two hours for the last 2-3 weeks.) This certainly put a concerned look on my face as I was hoping to be heading to bed for a good night's sleep!
It was 12:30am on Tuesday when Irv decided we should start timing these and that he should start packing his bag. Mine was pretty much packed and ready; including the bag of food and other stuff we would need / want to have at the Birthing Center. Irv was diligently timing and writing down the time and duration of each contraction amidst his packing.
The contractions were about 3 minutes apart lasting 45 to 75 seconds for over an hour. This was the sign to phone the midwife on call. Becky Burpo was on call that night and said she'd meet us there around 3am. (We called her around 2:15am.) We actually got there around 4am which gave her plenty of time to get the room ready for us.
When we got there, Becky did an exam and I was 100% effaced, at 4 cm, and baby was at 0 station. Around 6am, I had progressed to 6 cm and tried out the birthing tub for a while and it was very nice; However, it was slowing things down so I didn’t get to stay there. At 7am, there was a shift change at the Birthing Center and Amy Giles was there for us along with Michaela Bevin. At 9am, Irv called my mom to let her know what was going on and asked her to wait at home while taking care of our dog, Mia.
The baby was not facing the correct way and my long labor was all back labor. Irv was great!! We were doing all the things we had learned in our Bradley classes to cope with the crazy pain such as counter-pressure, heat, the birthing ball, even walking up and down stairs in an attempt to get the baby to turn and face the correct way. We managed, but were getting really tired!
Amy and Michaela had several herbal remedies up their sleeves to help the progression and those sure worked (i.e. Black Kohosh). I stayed at 6 cm until the water broke around 4pm, Tuesday, then 10 cm was here and it was time to push which started around 4:30pm.
Less than 2 hours later, Amy delivered the baby’s head and Irv was there to catch the rest of the baby. Once the baby was finally here, Irv handed him to me and everyone’s hands were in the way trying to find out the baby’s gender. “IT”S A BOY!” His little ankles locked his legs together and he was not too happy with us. Amy and Michaela clamped the cord and then Irv was able to cut the cord.
Mateo Benjamin Avila had finally arrived at 5:55pm…still not facing the correct way. ;o)
We were home by 10pm. There’s nothing like “Home, Sweet Home”!!!Our first family photo; we're all packed and ready to go home. 
Our midwife, Amy, and a portion of the room we were in all day.
