—Stewart Henry Gifford—
A wonderful blessing entered our lives on Tuesday, June 3, 2014. Stewart Henry Gifford was born in the American Fork, Utah Hospital at 3:38 p.m., weighing in at 8 lbs. 9 oz. and measuring 21 inches long.
I had spent several hours watching the love of my life go through such excruciating pain in preparing to deliver Stewart into this world. I was almost in tears seeing her suffering like that and feeling so helpless to do anything to help her other than be by her side reassuring her. So when Stewart finally made his appearance, I was so overcome with relief that the hardest part for Jill was over and with joy that Stewart was finally here that tears came to my eyes. I was so relieved that Jill was okay – she was my superhero! She was absolutely amazing! I was also overcome with such joy at our newborn son, so innocent and fresh from heaven, and new to this world. Words cannot describe to emotions that I went through in seeing such a miracle as the birth of my son!
Stewart didn’t cry much when he was born. They brought him up to snuggle with Jill right after the delivery and then he stopped breathing and started turning blue. One of the nurses grabbed him and put him onto the little bed for newborns that has a heater above it. She immediately started rubbing him down to stimulate him to breathe. He responded and started breathing again and pinked up, but his breathing was fast and shallow. We were all concerned for him.
They monitored him for 20 – 30 minutes in the room, watching his breathing rate and making sure his vital signs were okay. After that I went with him down to the nursery to be with him while he was “checked in.” This means they had to enter all his information into the computer, take his footprints, give him the newborn physical screening, give him his newborn bath, and get him dressed. Stewart and I waited for probably half an hour in the nursery before they could get to him because of about five other newborns ahead of him to get the same things done. Of course, Stewart didn’t mind because he was laying under a heat lamp on a little bed sleeping.
When the nurse got to giving him his bath, he didn’t mind too much, except when they took off his diaper and washed that area down. That was the most I heard him cry since he was born, and even that wasn’t much. It was just a short little cry.
After he was bathed, we had to wait some more while the nurse entered his information into their computer. However, it was fun to see all the babies in the nursery, and to be by Stewart as we waited.
With all of our other children, they’ve had fairly large feet at birth (for a newborn), and Jill had just been saying to me that we always got comments from nurses saying, “Wow, his/her feet are really big!” She didn’t want to hear anyone say that about Stewart. In fact, the nurse that checked him did NOT end up saying anything about him having big feet. I was happy to report this back to Jill. Of course, the next day Jill had a nurse tell her that exact same thing – that Stewart had really big feet.
Finally Stewart was ready, and I was able to take him to the recovery room they had moved Jill to so he could see his mommy. Jill was so excited to finally have her baby back in her arms.
…to be continued…
