Our Baby Boy Is Born!

On Thursday April 17th, at 5:14 pm, our baby boy Benjamin Takumi Flood came to this world.  (Takumi [=拓海] means "a pioneer of the sea" in Japanese.) We are SO HAPPY, as you can imagine. 

Thankfully, the labor and delivery went well, it was a very efficient, safe and natural one: we went to the hospital at 5:30AM on the 17th, and we were joined by our doula, Susan, around 11AM; my contractions became very strong around 12 noon, and I was dilated to 7cm at 3PM, and the push started at 4:45PM, and surprisingly he was born at as early as 5:14PM!!

The nurses were surprised when they say Ben's head had already crowned at 4:45PM, and that he was born with just a few pushes after the doctor came to the room and started attending us.

All the staff were quite surprised that I went through this delivery without any medication (pain killer, anesthesia, etc.) nor episiotomy. One nurse said, "This is the first birth I've seen in a long time without any medication!"

I was quite proud of myself since I had really wanted my labor and delivery as natural one as possible, and I had been preparing both mentally and physically, reading a lot of books, going to prenatal yoga classes and talking to wonderful, supportive group of people I found at BABS (Bloomington Area Birth Services, the place I had yoga classes).

But I also know that I could make it come true largely thanks to the great help and support by Amar and Susan. Actually, I believe that I wouldn't have been able to do this without their warm, undivided, and effective support.

There are a lot of things we as new parents should learn, but we are looking forward to the long journey and lots of adventures ahead of us with our newborn son Benji (or Taku-chan, as I call him in Japanese).

Our doula, Susan

New Mom and her boy sleeping together

All Blacks hat from the new Grandma in NZ

Happy Dad

We are home!