Meet Baby Milo

It’s been nearly two months since our littlest little arrived, and I’m finally introducing him here on the blog and sharing his birth story.

Our 4th baby was due in December, so we were expecting an extra special Christmas gift in the middle of holiday crunch time. But, as usual with parenting, things didn’t go as planned or expected. When I was about 32 weeks pregnant, my doctor noticed that the baby’s intestines looked “off” in a routine ultrasound. Not alarmed and confident the baby was healthy, she decided to monitor the intestines with biweekly ultrasounds just to be safe.

Fast forward to 5 weeks later and the baby’s intestines still appeared enlarged at my ultrasound, just as they had at my prior two ultrasounds. So I was shocked when my high risk OB-GYN told me that I needed to be induced. I wasn’t due for another couple weeks; this was our 4th child and none of my previous pregnancies had been early. Obviously, I was not ready. Not. At. All.

My doctor reassured me that the baby was very likely totally fine. But since I was just about full-term, it was better to be cautious and get the baby out so that they could more accurately check with x-rays.

I tried not to freak out. I didn’t want to be induced. We didn’t even buy newborn diapers yet. I didn’t have an out-of-office message composed or my paperwork complete for maternity leave. I didn’t get to say goodbye to Winnie that morning, the last time she was still my youngest baby. I didn’t have anything packed for the hospital. And, most importantly, what if something was wrong?!

I was admitted to the hospital and sent to a room where I waited for Richard to arrive. They checked to see if I was dilated at all, which I was, and then started me on a very low dose of Pitocin to induce me.

Hours passed. I felt nearly nothing. My contractions were no more painful or regular than the Braxton-Hicks false contractions I’d been feeling for months. Richard and I used the time to pick out a name. We both felt pretty sure the baby would be another girl. Since our previous three girl pregnancies felt no different than this pregnancy, it seemed more than likely that we’d be adding to the females in our home. Plus, the baby looked a LOT like Carmendy in the ultrasounds. So we settled on a girl name and didn’t spend much time debating a boy name because it seemed like a waste of time.

Yet we had plenty of time to waste. The nurse informed us that my doctor had a couple emergency c-sections and that they would keep my Pitocin dosage low to slow down labor and wait for my doctor.

And so we waited.

And waited.

Finally, around dinner time, the doctor was available and ready. She broke my water to get things moving quickly. My main concern at that point: would I have the baby in time to order food before the hospital cafeteria closed?? I was starving.

After my water was broken, I didn’t feel much more progression with my contractions. Impatience started to creep in. The doctor was still very optimistic that I would have the baby well before midnight. I wasn’t so sure. My sister texted around 7:45pm asking how much longer I thought it would take (I’m not the only impatient person in my family, haha). I sent a hangry text back that I thought it would be several more hours at least.

A few minutes later, the contractions suddenly became much more intense. The doctor checked and I was about 9 centimeters dilated. Moments later the baby made its grand entrance with two pushes. It happened very fast; our little guy arrived at 8:14pm on November 28, 2018.

Despite being induced unexpectedly and the uncertainty about his intestines, our baby boy’s labor and delivery was the easiest and the smoothest. It was by far the least painful and the shortest time in active labor, even compared to Carmendy’s speedy arrival in our kitchen. So thank you, baby number 4!

And we were so pleasantly surprised – shocked – to see a baby BOY pop out! I was convinced we were having another girl, but so happy to have a little brother for Owen. And we were quickly reminded of what newborn baby boys are like because Milo promptly peed all over Richard upon his arrival, promptly making him my favorite kid ever. 🙂

Since we were convinced the baby was a girl, we had not fully decided on a name for a boy. But we had narrowed down our choices and as soon as we saw him, we immediately knew which of the names on our short list was the perfect fit. He looked exactly like a Milo James.

We usually try to think of names with purpose – tributes to family, special connections to us and our story, or a meaning that inspires us. Owen, Carmendy, and Winnie were all very intentional names (you can read about each of their names with their birth stories here, here and here). The name Milo is not quite so inspired. It doesn’t stir up any feelings or memories or remind us of anyone we admire or love. The name’s derivation is uncertain, but it’s mostly attributed to the Latin word for soldier which definitely does not speak to us personally. Milo does make us think of the movie Milo and Otis, which is not a bad thing for us since both Richard and I gravitate towards names used for animals or pets (i.e. Winnie the Pooh). But the reason we picked the name Milo is simply because we liked it and we thought the little guy looked like a Milo. His middle name was a name we were planning to use regardless of the baby’s gender – James, which is my father’s middle name. Not only does James honor my dad, it also allows us to use the cool nickname MJ. (Fun fact: our baby girl name pick was also an “M” name, so we would have had an MJ even if we had a girl.)

The best part of Milo’s birth was that his x-rays came back perfectly fine with no signs of an intestinal blockage. No one would’ve known he arrived early, because he weighed a robust 7 pounds 6 ounces (I gotta confess that I just had to look that up because I didn’t remember his birth weight…4th kid problems).

It’s been 7 weeks since his birthday, and most of it has been a blur of exhaustion with the holidays, many nighttime feedings, and an infection with a hospital stay. But despite the stress and sleeplessness, we’ve been soaking in baby heaven. Milo is so dang cute and sweet. He’s hungry, happy, content, and doesn’t seem to mind his 3 wild and loud siblings that are constantly trying to pick him up and crawl on top of him. Milo is our little chunky, cuddly bookend that we didn’t know we needed.