Archuleta Family Adventures: Baby William is Here!

To quickly update from our last post, Kristen graduated (finally!), finishing up her last class in July, shortly before going with Zach to New York on a week-long trip. There, Zach received training for his new job at Goldman Sachs.

Kristen's pregnancy continued pretty smoothly once the nausea cleared up, with just a minor scare when the first glucose test came back showing a possibility of gestational diabetes. Fortunately, the next test came back negative, and Kristen realized that she probably shouldn't have eaten a potato for lunch before taking a glucose test!

In September, we took a nice vacation visit to Seattle with Kristen's mom. Both Laurene and Kristen thoroughly enjoyed catching up with old friends and family. And we benefitted greatly from an offer Kristen's brother, Tom, made to give us a discount on a Select Comfort mattress - now we have a wonderfully comfortable bed to sleep on (when William decides to allow us that luxury).

During October, both Amber and Jen hosted baby showers for Kristen, one in Provo, one in Sandy.

And now for the highlight event: William's Birth

Kristen was really hoping that William would wait until November to be born - she really didn't want him to be a Halloween baby.

Both our families were so excited for William to be born. Kristen's mom was calling just about every day to find out whether or not Kristen had started having contractions. Zach's sister-in-law, Jen, kept calling and asking us to hold the phone up to Kristen's belly to tell William that he should come out and play already. And Amber told us to tell him that she just didn't know how she could possibly wait past his due date - so he should come then. Well, William decided to take his time. Fortunately, we had a couple of fun things planned around his due date. We attended a nice dinner with some of Kristen's BYU Food Science buddies the day after he was due, and the following Saturday, we went to a play with Zach's family.

Saturday night, after the play, we went over to Rob and Jen's home to play guitar hero. While we were there, Jen kept talking to Kristen's tummy, telling William that it was definitely time for him to come out. Well, he must have finally decided to listen, because that night, at 1:30 am (or 2:30, depending on if you counted daylight savings time) Kristen woke up to her first really painful contraction. She got up to use the bathroom, and her water broke. Her contractions were coming every 3-5 minutes, so we knew we had to get to the hospital right away. Between contractions, Zach helped Kristen get dressed and ready, and packed the last few things we needed. The car ride seemed to last forever.

When we got in, Kristen was dilated to a 5, and she decided to get an epidural. So they called in the anesthesiologist. By the time he got there and got everything ready, it was about 4 am. Zach nearly fainted while the guy was giving her the epidural (even though he did just fine when William was actually coming out). After Kristen got the epidural, things really calmed down. We both got to rest for about an hour or so.

They gave Kristen some Ptosin to speed up the dilation process - and it worked. When Kristen called Mom and Amber at about 6:30, she was dilated to a 7; by the time she got off the phone, the nurse checked and she was fully dilated! Zach and the nurse helped Kristen push through the contractions after that.

At 8:05 am, William was born. He was 7 lbs 15 oz, 19.5 inches long, and just perfect. We got to hold him right away, and then they cleaned him off and took his measurements. We stayed in the birthing room for about an hour and a half, while Kristen's parents showed up. Then William and Zach went to the Nursery to do some tests, and Kristen was taken to another room, where we would be staying for the next two days.

Everyone started showing up after that. William and Zach were still in the Nursery, so we all waited until Zach finally came and told us they wanted to hold William there because he was having some mild respiratory distress - he was breathing very rapidly, which could indicate some sort of infection. Luckily, they were able to let William out for a short period of time while waiting for some tests to come back from the labs, so everyone could have a chance to hold him. But he ended up having to stay in the Nursery for the rest of the time we were there at the hospital. They gave him an IV with some antibiotics, and after some time let Kristen go in to try to nurse him. Fortunately, by the time we were ready to leave the hospital, his respiratory rate had stabilized and they got the results back from the lab saying that he did not have an infection.

Over the next week, we visited with his pediatrician about every other day. The pediatrician was concerned about his low weight, and we also noticed some jaundice. So they had us get a bilirubin bed from the hospital to have him sleep on at home. That was pretty exhausting - the bed, while helping get rid of the jaundice, made William more sleepy, which made feeding him harder, because he would fall asleep while eating. And so his weight continued to stay down. However, by the second week, we were able to both get his jaundice levels down and his weight gain up. Thank goodness!

Kristen's mom came to help a lot, which was wonderful. We really appreciated it. We have also driven up to Kaysville several times and spent the night.

William has already been dropped on his head once. We were staying in Kaysville and Amber had offered to take care of him during one of his late-night feedings, and accidentally fell asleep with him on her lap. She dreamt there was something on her lap and pushed it off...and it was him! Fortunately, it was just a short fall, and when we took him to the emergency room, he didn't have any of the symptoms that they said indicated head trauma. So now he just has a slight bruise that shows up only when he's really upset.

Other than that, things have been gradually getting better. He's starting to sleep more at night, with his record time being about 4 1/2 hours between feedings. And William is SO cute. He's started smiling at us, which is just the best. And we have been helping him learn to turn over. He is so strong and he is learning and growing so fast. Last time we took him to the doctor's (he was having some diarrhea), he weighed 9 lbs 5 oz!

He had his baby blessing on Sunday, December 5th. He looked so cute dressed up in white. Zach did a wonderful job giving the blessing, and we loved having so much family together. Kristen's mom prepared a delicious luncheon afterwards, so that we could all gather for pictures and socializing.