Welcome Baby Jacob

We are happy to announce that Jacob Gregory Finch was born today (August 20, 2007) at 4:09 pm. Both he and mom are healthy and well. Jake was born a big boy - nine pounds exactly - much larger than any of our other kids. Twenty and a half inches long and a nice round fifteen inch head circumference (Tammy loved that during delivery).

Here is a picture of him just a few minutes after he was born.



His first bath a little while later. He didn't like that much.



He seems to mostly like when he can be held by mom.



But he did pretty good with his brothers and sisters too. Here's four year old Lizzy holding him this evening.



Six year old Anna with her new baby brother.



Even eight-year old Adam couldn't help but smile holding this precious little one.



And two year old Ben has a new pal. He's very excited!



Tammy and I dropped the kids with some friends early this morning and went to the hospital. Because of some concern, the doctors wanted to induce labor a few days early (Tammy's due date wasn't until later this week). Shortly after arriving at the hospital, they broke her water hoping that would start labor. The rest of the morning were spent wandering the hallways at the hospital hoping the contractions would start, but nothing really happened.

Around noon, the nurses came in to start the IV with pitocin, but had a very difficult time finding a vein to insert the needle. Three nurses tried twice each before they finally got one (6 rather aggressive needle sticks in all). Here's a picture of Franken-Tammy after all the poking. Notice all the band-aids on both arms.



Once the pitocin started, things picked up pretty quickly. Tammy was phenomenal throughout the whole experience (as she always is). She's never used any pain medication with any delivery before and thought going in she might try it this time to see what difference it made. But when it came down to it, she chose to continue without medication. I usually just stand there in awe the whole time watching how well she controls her pain and feeling kind of helpless to do much.

After just four hours of labor, she was fully dialated and given permission to begin pushing. It took just 90 seconds or so from that point until the baby was born. The nurse was pretty impressed - she commented that Tammy was the most controlled labor patient she'd ever had (and she's been doing this a long time).

We feel very blessed that everything turned out fine. The doctors have been confused, not understanding why the baby was not affected by the disease Tammy has (which nearly always seriously afflicts positive blood type babies). Our Iowa City doctors have all said that most likely the baby somehow has negative blood and that's why he's not shown any problems. But today we learned otherwise - Jacob has O-positive blood.

And so we attribute the health of our little one to a miracle from God. All babies are miracles from God, but we feel especially blessed that this baby was born entirely healthy. We know that many of you have been praying for this baby and we thank you for those prayers! Thanks for your interest in our family and your love and concern throughout this pregnancy. We are so happy to have our new little one here with us now!