As of September 17, 2017 at 8:20 p.m. Braeden Lucas Bearden officially entered the world.  He arrived a healthy weight of 8 lbs 9 oz and a length of 20 inches.  Braeden was born 9 days early.   In the words similar to what Kevin Hart would say, I wasn’t ready.

Braeden Lucas Bearden

After months and months of discussion about what to name him, we finally came to the conclusion of Braeden Lucas.  Jolene and I both disagreed with many names.  Some names she would like I hated, and some I liked she hated.  One of the few names we could agree on was Braeden.  Jolene wanted a different spelling, but for me Braeden was important to be spelt the way it’s spelt.  If the letters r a and e are moved around, his first name spells Bearden.  Jolene didn’t like any palindrome names, so this was a compromise unique to Braeden.

We felt that Lucas broke the repetition of similar sounds and is shorter.  We love Star Wars, so Lucas fits accordingly.  Hey, we created a nursery dedicated to Star Wars so why not choose something related.  We didn’t directly choose the name Lucas because of George Lucas, but it did help confirm his name. Since, Braeden was born a week early, we still have yet to finish his room.  We have a lamp to install, and some more star stickers to put up.  Other than that it is complete.

The Birth of Our Son

At 4:15 a.m. Jolene woke me up to tell me she thought her water had broken.  Jolene’s last pregnancy with Johanna went fairly quickly.  When her water broke then, Johanna came 30 minutes later.  Since we assumed Jolene’s water was broke this time, we called Jolene’s parents to take care of Johanna.  Jolene’s dad came to watch Johanna and take her to school the following day.  We went Loma Linda University Medical Center labor and delivery around 5:30 a.m.  Originally Jolene’s contractions were very regular at 6 minutes.  By the time we arrived at the hospital they were very irregular.  The doctors ran some tests to see if the fluid was indeed amniotic fluid.  However, two of three tests came back negative.  They were about to send us home, when they ran a fourth gold standard test and it came back positive for amniotic fluid.  She was 3 cm dilated.  However, she had been 3 cm dilated at her previous doctor visit.

Jolene was then admitted to the hospital and they decided to induce her with Pitocin.  She rejected an epidural.  Her contractions were then around every two minutes in length.  She didn’t however feel her contractions till 3:00 p.m.  Around 6:00 p.m. her contractions started to become painful and got to 4 cm dilation.  At 8:00 p.m. she was finally 7 cm dilated.  All the nurses and doctors expected it to be another few hours and left the room.  At 8:15 Jolene started screaming saying she had to push.  I began to see his head to poke through.  Finally at 8:17 a random resident doctor came running in.  They told her to stop pushing, but Jolene said she couldn’t stop. 8:20 Braeden burst out in his glory.  I say burst, because it literally was an explosive burst.  Had the doctor walking down the hall not heard Jolene screaming, I would have had to deliver the baby myself.

Braeden was a little cranky at first.  Come to find out most of the crankiness was because the room was set to 65 the entire night.  Early in the morning I realized everyone was cold.  I set the room to 72 after discovering we could control the temperature and Braeden calmed down.  Now he rarely cries and loves sleeping.  He is a bit jaundiced.  No where near the amount that Johanna was sent home with.  Luckily we won’t have to use a any billy lights to get rid of it.

We were finally released on September 18 at 11:55 p.m.  His first night went great.  He never cried.  Jolene set an alarm to wake him up every three hours to feed.  We are not used to this, as Johanna used to cluster feed and kept us up all night.  We had to walk the halls for hours to get her back to sleep because of her colic.  We will take the blessings that we can.  Hopefully, he continues to be this way as he grows.

Now I realize not many people will read this post.  This is a more of a personal post, so that someday Braeden can read the story of his birth with all its accuracies, and un-inflated stories.  Even though I wasn’t totally ready, personally I don’t think everyone can be entirely ready anyway.  I know when I became a father the first time, I realized that most of the time parents are really just winging it anyway.

So to my little Jedi, welcome to the world.  Daddy loves you.  I loved before you were born.  I’ll continue to love you always, because always my baby you will be.

Timothy