Austin Noah Friedman

We've been so busy enjoying life as a family of four that I forgot to post about Austin's birth! We welcomed baby Austin on Wednesday 20 June 2012 at 9:07am. He clocked in at 8 lb 10 oz and 21.25" long.

Austin Noah Friedman, minutes after birth

Austin is apparently going to be our rebellious child. We had a C-section scheduled and ready to go on June 25, but at 38.5 weeks, Austin decided not to wait any longer. I ended up laboring for about 9 hours before he was born - we knew they would do the surgery as soon as we arrived at the hospital, but my parents hadn't arrived yet (they drove all day Wednesday), and we knew that taking Gabe to Team B at 3am would be disruptive to everyone. I toughed it out until 6am and then it was go time. As soon as we got to the hospital (around 7:30), everyone assembled as quickly as possible (apparently Wed morning is busy - all of the docs had to be pulled out of meetings!). Once we got to the OR, things went quickly, and before I knew it, we were in recovery bonding with Austin. After we got settled into our room, Sara brought Gabe up to visit, and he got to be the first one to hold Austin.

Brothers!

The rest of our stay was kind of a blur - my parents arrived that evening and came to visit twice - once en route from Indy, and again once they had picked up Gabe. Gabe was very good and handled the change quite well (in addition to being a big brother, this was his first night away from Mommy!) - he, Grandma, and Grandpa visited twice on Thursday, and when they came to visit Friday morning, they brought us back home with them. Apparently an evening full of births (16+ at UNC on Thursday night!) does wonders for your ability to be discharged after 48 hours :) Austin is an awesome baby - he looks so much like Gabe did at that age, and he's just as easy (if not easier!) - he eats and sleeps well, rarely cries, and is very happy. We definitely won the baby lottery!


I'll post more stories of our first month home and a bunch of photos soon.