William Gregory Beckstead

The long awaited, newest member of our family is finally here! William was born May 14th at 11:39 pm. He weighs 8 lbs, 5 oz and is 21 inches long, making him the biggest baby by quite a bit.

I was scheduled to be induced at 7:30 in the morning. So of course, the hospital called me at 6 to tell me their beds were full and I was being pushed back. The nurse's words were, "Just get a little more rest. You're first on our list, so we'll call as soon as we get a few things settled." At noon, I finally called them to find out how long these "few things" were going to take. They told me it would be a few more hours. It is really hard to find things to pass the time when you were expecting to be in the hospital having a baby! We spent the morning watching "Chipwrecked", taking the kids to the park, reading books and wandering aimlessly around the house. Finally, they called at 2:30 and told me they were ready.

When we got there, they started out by getting me hooked up to IV antibiotics for Group B Strep. They want you to have the antibiotic for 4 hours before the baby is born and the doctor was a little worried that my labor wouldn't last that long, so she wanted me to just hang out for a little while before they started pitocin. They ended up starting the pitocin around 5:30. It took a good 2 hours after that before I really felt like I was in labor. Once I was dilated all the way, the nurse said he was still a little too high. She had me turn on my side and said it would probably be about an hour before it was time to push. Two contractions later he was about to fall out.

It was not long at all before he was here and we got to hold and love him! He was our first to be born in Arizona and one of the things I loved about Banner Gateway was that they kept him with us after he was born. At American Fork Hospital, I got to hold to kids for a minute, the nurses spent some time trying to force the baby to eat (which they never wanted to do), and then they were taken away for a bath. That bath always seemed to take forever to me. Here, they let me feed him when I was ready to and gave him a bath in the room. It was wonderful.

After a little bit of sleep (a very little bit on my part), morning arrived and doctors started coming to check on us. William had been making a purring sound in his sleep, which I thought was adorable, but the pediatrician didn't love. She said it was a sign that he was having trouble breathing and that she would keep an eye on him. After meeting Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Matt and his brother and sister, the nurse came to check on him again and decided to run tests to make sure he was ok. They did a chest x-ray, drew blood and then put him in the nursery so they could watch his temperature and oxygen levels. I went to the nursery to feed him, but he refused to wake up. That was about the time that panic set in for me.

His blood cell counts came back good, so they sent his blood to be cultured for 24 hours to make sure he didn't have an infection (Group B Strep, in particular). The nurses called the pediatrician and because he wasn't eating, she decided that he needed to stay in the NICU, where the nurses could watch him. Again, adding to mom's panic.

That night, they called me every 3 hours to come feed him. All night, he woke up and ate really well and the night nurses said they didn't hear a single noise from him while he was sleeping.

When the doctor did her rounds the next morning, she said he looked fantastic and released him to come back to our room! Yay! She also decided that as long as his blood culture came back negative, we could go home that evening. About 3 pm the NICU nurse came in and said that his blood looked great and as soon as the doctor signed his release we were free to go.

We are so grateful that nothing came of his funny noise and that we finally have him at home! He went to the doctor yesterday morning, just to double check and make sure he was still fine. The doctor saw no signs of Group B strep. He did find a heart murmur and jaundice, both of which are very mild. We're taking him back again next week to make sure that both of those things have gone away, but he seems to be a perfectly healthy baby!