Ian Daran Chapman
On January 21st 2007 at 2:45am, our son was born. Most of you probably got the email, so I’ll save my keystrokes here for a few quick stories and then some photos!
Turn the way back machine to January 19th, the first unofficial induction took place. (rumor has it amongst our group of local pals that Mexican food does the trick…) Here’s our pals who helped us out at Little Mexico.
Melissa’s due date was the 20th, and this is our first child, so it was expected to be late. Here’s a picture of about how preggers M’s belly ended up looking.
At 5:00 or so Melissa started having her first major contractions. For some reason I was told that we were going to Target at that point. After shopping, my Mom, Melissa and I went out for a bite to eat at Qdoba (Mexican food induction part 2!) at around 6. We began timing contractions. We drove home and packed the car while also timing additional contractions. Melissa waited as long as she could (meaning she was about 1 contraction away from me picking her up and throwing her in the trunk…) before we headed out at around 8 or 8:30pm, Grandma Sue (my mom) following behind by about 15 minutes.
We drove to St Mary’s hospital, and, as I said Ian made his appearance eventually, at 2:45am the next morning. I’ll let Melissa share any details about the actual delivery, but given that he was 9lbs, 3 oz, 21 inches long, and that Melissa didn’t take any meds, things went great. Special thanks to our Doulah Sue Bailey, who was very involved in the process, as well as our nurses, and of course, Dr. Jill Bultje.
Grandma Sue’s early arrival meant she got to see the little one when he went to the nursery for a little warming and to watch to make sure his breathing was up to par.
I told Grandpa Dave and Grandma Marcia that they should wait for the next morning before making the long snowy haul from the Detroit area, and they showed up with great big smiles and then everybody’s cameras started clicking! Some of those shots are used in the blog here, but anybody interested can click on these links to download hi-res version of all of those shots from my Dad’s camera. (GRANDMA, These are .ZIP files, so first try clicking on them with your mouse as usual… [alternately try right clicking and choosing something that basically says “save as] when the files have been downloaded then right click on them and and select “expand.” You should end up with folders full of pictures… though they could be named strangely. [like a series of numbers])
If you want some larger versions of the shots that I took on my camera, just drop me a line and tell me which images; I’ll park them somewhere online for you to download.
Grandma Barb and Grandpa Ray are on a flight up to Detroit from Florida at the moment and we’ll be adding more pictures to the blog from their arrival as well!
More of Melissa’s family visiting next weekend, so expect even more pics!
That’s about all the story I have for you at this point, but we’ll be trying to put a better effort into updating this blog, so keep an eye out please!
I’d like to take a moment to thank all of my family members (and our neighbor Susan!) for their generosity – frozen meals, visits, gifts, and supplies or the means to get them – bless you a thousand times! You’ve all helped us greatly and we’re about to make really good use of your preparedness and love. Many thanks!!!
-Daran
