It's A Boy!!

Meet Matthias John Nett

On the morning of Friday, March 20th, I woke up a little before 6 am needing to go to the bathroom.  When I laid back down in bed, that's when it hit - the first contraction.  It was 10 days past the due date, and the day my OB left for vacation.  Thankfully, though, it was the first day of Matthew's vacation and he awoke not too long after I did.  The contractions were about 6 minutes apart, so he went downstairs to work out a little bit.  After about an hour, they were coming in at 5 minutes apart, so he called his parents to come watch James & Charlie.

We got to the hospital a little before 9, and the contractions, which had been coming every 4 minutes, started getting further apart.  I was 4 cm dilated when they admitted me.  I tested positive for Group B Strep (you can read more about that here), so I was given a dose of antibiotics via IV.

Things went along pretty smoothly for awhile.  I had gone to bed late the night before and didn't sleep well, so I laid in bed for a couple of hours and was actually able to doze a bit between contractions.  The on-call doctor, whom I had never met before, popped in at some point to introduce himself and see how things were going.

Just around the time the IU game started (2:45), things got a lot more intense.  I labored on the birthing ball for about an hour.  I was pretty exhausted, and climbed into the bed.  The nurse checked me, and I was 8 cm dilated.  She started getting the room ready for delivery.  I kept alternating between being really hot and really cold, so poor Matthew kept having to turn the fan on and off and cover me with a blanket when I nicely commanded him to :).  At one point, he was feeding me ice chips and gave me some right before a contraction started.  I couldn't stand to have anything in my mouth, so I spit them out on the bed, which made Matthew laugh, which made me yell at him not to laugh.  Sorry!

My hands and legs started going numb with each contraction, and I said something to the nurse.  She told me that I was breathing too quickly through the contractions.  About the same time, the baby's heart rate started to decelerate with each contraction.  They hooked me up to oxygen, although I'm not entirely sure if it was for my benefit or the baby's (or both?).  Around that time, it seemed like the room was suddenly full of people, which made me start to worry.  I thought maybe something was wrong that they weren't telling me about, and when I asked what was wrong, the nurse said "You're going to have a baby!".  (I think it was a neonatal team that was brought in, but I'm not sure).

I was checked again, and the nurse said with one more contraction I'd be at 10 cm.  I was feeling a lot of pressure, and with the next contraction, I didn't push per se, but gave things a bit of a nudge and my water broke.

When the next contraction came, it was the craziest thing - my body started pushing without me consciously telling it to.  And out came his head!  His shoulder was stuck, so the doctor told me to do a small push between contractions so he could reach in and dislodge his shoulder (ouch!).  He came slipping out with the next contraction at 5:03pm.

Matthew cutting the umbilical cord

He came out an angry little guy - he screamed for quite awhile!

We got to cuddle with him for a while and feed him before he was cleaned off, weighed and measured.  He was 8 pounds, 10 ounces and was 20 1/2 inches long.  By far our biggest baby!

My parents and then my brother and sister-in-law came to the hospital to meet him.

We got to spend a couple of hours with him before they took him to the nursery for observation and his first bath.  Matthew & my brother tagged along to get some pictures (at my urging :).

The next day, he got to meet his big brothers.  It was love at first sight.

He also got to meet my Grandpa (who was too nervous to hold him) and the Nett side of the family, including his 6 month old cousin Caleb (I love that they'll be in the same grade when they start school!).

He wasn't named for almost 24 hours.  We really struggled with a boy's name the entire pregnancy.  About a week before his due date, we sat down came up with a list of 4 names that we liked, although we weren't sure which one was "the one".

After spending some time with this beautiful boy, we decided on Matthias John.  Matthias, which is the German form of Matthew, was the name of Matthew's Great Great Uncle.  He was his maternal Grandmother's favorite Uncle, and Matthew was named after him as well (his parents preferred the english Matthew to the German Matthias).  Thanks to a little research done by his Great Grandpa Stengel and Grandpa Nett, we learned that St. Matthias was the apostle that replaced Judas.

His middle name is after my Grandpa, John Vincent Stengel (my Grandpa goes by Vince).  March 20th is the feast day of St. John, which also helped us in making our decision :)

We are very in love with our little Matthias John!

And for those of you wondering if he looks like his brothers, here are their side-by-side pictures from the day they were born: