Welcome Jaden Andrew Frank!

That's right- Heidi had her baby this morning! A little boy, born at 8:25am after almost 12 hours of labor. Jaden came into this world weighing in at 8lbs 2oz and 21" long.

Heidi's labor started around 9:15pm last night (Thurs. 3-29, her due date). At 9:30 she called me and asked, "what do 'real' contractions feel like?" I knew from that question that she was in labor. Her contractions were 7-8 minutes apart at that time. An hour later, at 10:30pm, we talked by phone again and the contractions were now at 4-5minutes apart. She had just got off the phone with the hospital and her and Andy were heading on their way. I gave her strict instructions to call me right after the baby was born, no matter what time of night/day it was. I charged my cell phone and slept with it under my pillow.

When I awoke at 6:15 this morning and realized my cell had never rang I admit I was disappointed. At 10:30am my phone finally rang. It was Heidi. She accused me of carrying the phone around with me because I picked up before the first ring finished.....her accusation was correct. ;) Heidi gave me all the details, hopefully I remember them correctly:

By the time they got to the hospital last night she was dilated to 4cm. She was 3cm at her OB appointment that morning. She slowly progressed to 5cm, then 6cm and requested an epidural. They tried 5 times to insert the epidural line but didn't succeed. She was given another form of pain med that only lasts for a few hours. Soon she was at 8cm. Shortly after that she asked to get into a warm bath to relax her. That's when they found her to be at 10cm and denied her the relaxing bath, it was time to go to work! Heidi pushed for 2 hours, trying to bring her little man into the world. By now the short-lived pain med had worn off and she was on her own.

At 8:25am little Jaden Andrew Frank came into this world. Things were looking wonderful! Then came the problem. Her placenta wouldn't deliver. After trying various approaches an OBGYN was called in and had to manually scrape the placenta out. Heidi lost alot of blood during that process and things are not healing as well as they should. My parents were by to see her this afternoon and said Heidi is very pale, and very weak due to the amount of blood lost....and she's still bleeding more heavily than she should be. Baby Jayden is doing just fine but the concern lies with his mom. This afternoon the nurses made the decision to limit the number of visitors and the length of time visitors could stay, hoping to give Heidi the best chance of healing that they could. At last update Heidi's blood pressure was fine but her heartrate was very high, meaning she was still bleeding much more than is normal. She's still weak and very tired...but is holding her own. Hopeully we'll have better news come morning.