Alexander Charles has arrived!!!

Hi everyone. This is Josh here to inform all that Alexander has arrived!!!! For those of you who haven't heard the great news yet, Xander was born Tuesday, July 5th, at 9:34am, 6lbs 8oz. - 19-1/4" long. Mommy and baby are doing great. Everyone is home now recovering and doing excellent. Michele did a phenomenal job and received much praise from the Backus doctors on how well she held things together for her first child. With that said I want to give special thanks to the Backus staff on how well they treated us during our stay. They did a great job of keeping the atmosphere loose and laid back especially during Michele’s labor and delivery. As all of you parents know, labor can be an overwhelming experience from start to finish and they did a great job keeping us calm and on the right track.

I would also like to thank Michele's coaches Kari and Berlynda.
- Kari, I'm sure you would have stayed later if you could. Unfortunately people have jobs to attend to and they require sleep. Something I'm going to be doing very little of for a while. LOL. We just want you to know we are very grateful that you were there as late as you were.
- Berlynda, you were awesome. You were there start to finish and experienced everything that I experienced. It felt so good to have another family member in the room with us during the night that could help support Michele when she needed it. Thanks for everything!!

The Timeline
Michele started having her contractions at about 7:15pm on the 4th of July. Of course we weren't home at the time. We had just finished supper with Michele's parents at their place in Jamestown, RI which is about an hour and 10 minutes from home doing the speed limit. ;) To add to the mess we had our dog with us and we had the wrong car. Meaning we had the car with nothing in it as far as baby preparation goods. Needless to say, by the time we got home and switched cars and were headed to Backus (about 1.5 hours) Michele's contractions were now between 3-5 minutes apart. Fortunately this isn't one of those stories that ends with the wife giving birth in the front seat of the car but believe me, I didn't know that was the case and the Taurus suddenly became a 4 door ambulance with total disregard to speed limits. In between contractions, 70-75mph. During contractions, 85-90mph.
We arrive at the hospital and finally get her admitted at about 9:30pm. From there she remained in hard labor until about 1:30am when they finally decided to give her Morphine for the pain since she's not actually dilating yet so an epidural is not an option. To our surprise the Morphine has little to no effect on the pain. At 4am they examine her and determining she's 2cm dilated. Time for the epidural. So after about 8 hours of hard labor with virtually no pain relief, they administer the epidural. I held her in an upright position on the bed and they did the rest. For those of you who haven't seen it done don't go out of your way if you're squeamish.
After that, things went smoothly. By 7:30am she was 8cm. By 8:30am, fully dilated. At that point they reduce the dose of the epidural. By 8:50am, she's ready to start pushing and after 14hours or so of labor, Xander is born at 9:34am.