Addition to the Johnson Family

On July 30th, Kent & I entered a new phase in our lives - we became parents!  And right from the start, our lives were turned upside-down.  My due date was Wednesday, August 3 and being the crazy, stress addicts that we are, we bought a new house in July and planned to move in the last weekend of that month (July 31).  We kept telling the baby that he had to wait until after we moved before being born.  Of course, he decided otherwise!  (more on the move in the next blog post)

My labor started late Friday night and ended nearly 24 hours later with the arrival of our very own Sabbath Blessing.  Without going into all the crazy details of the labor, I will give the highlights version.  I was able to “tough” it out and labor at home until about 1PM on Sabbath afternoon.  My labor pains were not at all similar to how the pregnancy books and our childbirth classes had described them.  I spent most of the night convinced that I had a horrible case of Braxton Hicks contractions.  Kent spent the night frantically packing up our master bedroom and taking apart the entertainment center!  When we got to the hospital, the contractions were on top of each other and I became quite certain that I didn’t want to complete my labor drug-free!  Thankfully, the anesthesiologist saw me being admitted (and nearly dropping to the floor in the middle of a contraction) and followed me to the room.  I received my epidural within 40 minutes of being admitted - yeah & thank you!  The rest of my labor was very calm and peaceful compared to the first part. :)

Our baby boy was born at 9:52PM; seeing our baby boy for the first time was so emotional for both Kent & I.  I became very excited and started talking incessantly to the doctor while Kent couldn’t stop looking at the baby and shedding a few tears.  The hospital where I delivered practices skin-on-skin bonding after birth and it was such an amazing thing.  I didn’t want to ever let my baby out of my arms.

The newly expanded Johnson family - 1 day old

Kent & I still hadn’t decided on a name for our baby boy and so this was a very important topic of discussion during the calm part of my labor.  We had narrowed our choices down to 2 or 3 names but couldn’t seem to reconcile ourselves to just one of them.  However, we knew that the hospital wouldn’t let us leave without a name for our baby!  We finally decided on a name the following day - Erik Anton.  We really wanted to have a Scandinavian name to reflect our mutual Norwegian and Swedish heritages and Erik-with-a-K was a Norwegian name that Americans can pronounce without problems.  The name also is unique enough that there shouldn’t be multiple boys in Erik’s future classrooms with the same name.  We choose Anton as the middle name as a further nod towards our family heritage - both Kent & I had great-grandfathers named Anton (3 generations back for me and 2 for Kent).

Erik Anton Johnson, born 7/30/2011 9:52PM.  7 lbs 3 oz, 20 inches.  Absolutely Perfect!!