Whose your daddy?

This is why the blog was created, to document the arrival of our first child. Isaac Jacob Stapleton was born on October 12, 2007 at 5:24pm. He weighed 8 pounds 6 ounces. He was 20 inches long. He has huge feet (something we think he gets from his Grandpa Jacob.) He is about 5 minutes old in this picture.

Grandma and Grandpa Jacob



Grandma and Grandpa Stapleton

On my way home from the hospital

Some skin time between Isaac and Mom

Hello, I am just waking up

The Story:

Heather had an appointment on Oct 11 to schedule an induction because Isaac was already 8 days overdue. She went through various test to determine that he was doing fine in utero. We scheduled an induction for Sunday, Oct 14 at 7:30pm. They did an ultrasound and gave us a picture of him sucking his hand. Apparently he was pretty content! We came home from our appointment and went to eat dinner with some friends. While we were there Heather said that something was "different." We came home and went right to bed to get some sleep in case we had to wake up early. Heather woke me up at 5:00am to say that she thought it was getting close to time. We timed contractions until 10am when they were four and a half minutes apart. Then we went to the hospital. When they examined her she was 4 cm dilated, so we were on our way. By noon, she was 6 cm. The contractions were getting really bad and she said that she didn't think that she was going to be able to keep it up and do a natural delivery. We decided to ask for an epidural. They gave her an IV and started the bag of saline that is required before the drugs. After the saline they came and told us that the doctor was at another hospital and wouldn't be back for at least an hour. We hadn't wanted to use any other drugs besides a possible Epidural but all of the staff kept suggesting an injection of a morphine derivative drug to "take the edge off" that would last for a bit over an hour. We decided to take it while we waited for the doctor... or so we thought. Once the appointed hour was over, no doctor was there. They decided to check her dilation. She was 10 cm!! The nurse was surprised at how long Heather's contractions lasted. Normally women's contractions last 45 to 60 seconds. Heather's lasted close to 2 mins, which is why she moved from 4 to 10 cm so quickly. So she couldn't have an epidural anyway(doctors won't start an epidural once a woman is fully dilated). So, around 2pm she started pushing. She pushed for about an hour and we could see about a inch diameter circle of his head. Everything was going great, she was moving along quickly. Then Isaac got stuck. Heather pushed for the next two hours without any progress. Finally with Heather close to exhausted, we had to evaluate our options. The doctor said we could a) continue pushing, without much chance of it working; b) use forceps to help the baby out; or, c) have a C section. We went with b) Forceps. The doctor sold us on the idea by saying he was really good with them. Then as they got ready, we could tell he was going to let the resident doctor ( meaning doctor who doesn't know what he is doing yet) perform the forceps extraction. Heather who had been pretty quiet up to this point (besides contractions) asked him if he was going to do it. He replied "Do you want me to?" Which she politely responded "Yes." When what we were both really thinking was "Your goddam right you are going to do it it." It only took two contractions with the help of forceps for Isaac to be born. He cried right away and had an Apgar score of 9 out of 10, which is great. He only had a little scrape on his cheek from the forceps and his battle with the uterus.