Matthew Thomas Burns!

So Matthew Thomas was born November 18th 2008 at 2:35 AM. He weighed in at 9 pounds 11 ounces and was 22 inches long! So basically, he is huge. But he is also adorable, and SO strong – he can nearly hold his head up and he is only 3 days old!

Everything with labor and delivery went really well, it just took longer than expected because my body hit a sort of plateau half way through and we weren’t making any progress for about 4 hours or so but eventually we made it. I was in labor for about 18 1/2 hours (not too bad really, considering so many stories about women being in labor for easily twice that) and about 3 hours of that was pushing. Towards then end they were wanting to use the vacuum to help get him out but I just kept pushing as hard as I possibly could and they didn’t have time for the vacuum because he started making his way out! Afterwards our doctor said that she had honestly thought we would end up with a c-section because of how big Matthew was, and we (especially me) are so glad we didn’t have to go that route! As for the epidural, a lot of people know I was wanting to try to do it naturally, but once the pitocin really kicked in the contractions were making me sick to my stomach and my whole body was shaking so I just decided I would much rather do this more comfortably (especially since we had no idea how long the induction process would take) … but the epidural wore off at the end. The first couple times I pushed I wasn’t even totally sure I was doing anything because I couldn’t feel those muscles but after about a half hour went by I could feel everything – so in the end the pushing was done naturally and I have to say – while it was painful, it wasn’t that bad. Plus I think it would have taken a lot longer with the epidural because my pushing just wasn’t very effective until it wore off. But either way – we now have a beautiful baby boy!

Anyway, we are SO tired, but really loving having him at home now. The dogs don’t know what to think of him… Violet sort of ignores him (except the occasional time she tries to sneak up and lick the top of his head) and Puppy is very protective and gets really concerned and anxious any time he cries. He is so calm most of the time and sleeps through noise wonderfully! He is usually content to just hang out and look around. Hopefully this will last!

So a lot of people have been asking us to post more pictures – so here are a handful we’ve taken. We also want to say thanks for everyones support and it was really nice to see so many people at the hospital!

Matthew – minutes old

The Burns family!

Matthew still in the hospital, about a day old.

Check out his dimple! SO cute.