He's Here!

Our sweet boy, Landon James, was born this morning at 1032 AM. He weighs 6 lb 7 oz and is 19.5 inches long.
We stopped at the 7-11 down the street so Jon could get a giant Icee, after all we knew it would be a long night. I was only 2 cm dilated when we got to the hospital. They offered that I could go home, I said no thank you! We did some walking around to get things going and by 4 am I was demanding the epidural. It was crazy painful going in but worked like a charm within minutes. I was worried that my water did not break all this time through all these contractions. But in the end it was protective and meant to be.
My doctor broke my water, which was meconium-stained which is an indicator of stress for the baby, at 7 or 8 am. Once I started pushing around 930am the baby began having decelerations where the heart rate drops with contractions and did not improving as quickly as it should. They put oxygen on me, put me on my side, said "I am suspicious that the cord is wrapped around your baby's neck", insisted I stop pushing for a short time, they brought out the vacuum just like with Avery, there was very loud, insistent encouragement from everyone in the room and NICU was there. Our nurses Stephanie and Polly were incredible. The baby had the craziest 'growth' on his head as they carried him to the warmer but fortunately it was just fluid displaced by the vacuum and within an hour or 2 it was gone, thank goodness.
The cord wrapped around his neck 3 times (quite rare according to our OB). He had apgars of 8 and 9, which to me as a neonatal nurse practitioner tells me we got lucky and that cord was not too tight. He already loves to eat. Avery came to see him this evening. I could not have scripted a more perfect first meeting, she said the sweetest things, hopefully one day we will be able to post the video. She was holding him for a while and he started to fuss because he was hungry and she was so so sad that I had to take him back. She wanted to feed him a bottle. It was sweet and sad. I had to tell her we didn't have a bottle to give him yet. But there will be plenty of bottles to come.
We are so happy to have this precious addition to our family. Now to sleep while I can. The nurses are taking him for his first bath and to let me get a little rest until the next feeding. The second child is so different. Jon and Avery went home and it is just me and my little guy, whereas with Avery Jon never left our side.