It's a boy!!!

Join with me in welcoming Jayden Lee Minnis into our world. After Mom went through a long excruciating 27 hours of labor (40 minutes of which were pushing), Jayden was born on August 29th at 3:51 PM. Jayden was a hefty 7 lbs 8 oz (which is quite big for how Kim looked) and was 19.5 inches long. Kim started labor at around 2 on Saturday when we were painting the picnic table. Kim knew it was happening, but she decided that we should go and get some ice cream...after all it might be our "last meal". So we went and had ice cream and came back to our place. Around 5:30 the contractions really picked up. The minutes between and lengths of contractions were such that we called the Doc. She informed us to go to the hospital to so they could check out Kim and the baby. We got to the hospital around 6 and they hooked her up to all the machines. Unfortunately, she was only dilated to 2 cm so they decided to send us home. We stayed at home till around 11:59:59 PM on Saturday. We called the doc up again because at this point the contractions were really coming on and Kim had the shakes bad.

So we got the hospital for the second time and this time they kept us as Kim had dilated to 3 cm. And that's pretty much were she stayed until around 8:00 AM, Sunday. Kim couldn't hardly take the pain any longer so she decided to get an epidural. They broke the water at around 8:30. Then I think it was around 9:30 they started administrating Pitosin to see if they could get the contractions to be more frequent and harder as Kim had still not dilated that much...probably around 4 cm at that point. The Pitosin was working so by 12:00 Kim was having major contractions (probably a minute apart) and she could feel her right leg and the contractions again so they had to up her epidural and gave her another shot of some other miracle drug. She was feeling more comfortable by 12:30 and had dilated to 6 cm. Then she dilated by 2 cm for each hour so by 3:15 she was fully dilated (10 cm) and the nurse gave her the go ahead to start pushing. Kim was a true sport and pushed like she was pissed. I'd coach her along and tell her to just get pissed and it apparently helped as by 3:40 or so, the Doctors and the ICU were on site ready to prep the Jayden as he came out. He had a bowl movement while inside Kim so they had to be sure to suck everything out of his lungs and stomach. After Kim had Jayden they moved him over to the warming bed to clean him off and check his vitals. He was having some difficulty breathing so they had him on oxygen for a little while, then gave him to Kim to hold. After about a minute Jayden started breathing hard again so they took him back to the oxygen. They took him back to the nursery for the rest of the time until 1:00 PM yesterday (the 30th). He had been on oxygen until 3:00 AM yesterday morning. We weren't sure if he was going to have to go to the ICU to get more diagnostics done. It was a very trying time and we were so elated when we finally got him back yesterday. We could visit him in the nursery, but it just wasn't the same.

About a half an hour ago we got to step into our home for the first time as Mom and Dad. It's pretty cool having Jayden here and to hear him cry a little bit...at least for now. I'm sure we'll have those nights that we would like him to not cry. :)

Thanks for all your visits and prayers along the way. It's been a true miracle of God to watch everything that's happened and the gift of life. I could see God had his hands right around Jayden as he was transitioning into breathing on his own. But, it was still hard to watch Jayden fighting to breath on his own.

As for all you guys out there who haven't experienced birth...Women are tough!!! They deserve every bouquet of flowers that you get them! :)

Visit the gallery to see Jayden's Photos.