It's a Boy!!

At 8:04am on Feb 22, 2007 we welcomed Diego Rudy Mendoza into the world. He weighed in at 7lbs 14ounces and was 21 inches long. Mom and baby are doing well. Pictures will be coming shortly.

Well I thought it might be good to expand upon the initial post above.

On February 22nd we arrived at the hospital at 5:30AM for our planned c-section with the actual surgery slated for 7:30AM. The night before Rudy and I had taken my parents to one of our favorite restaurants, Salut, for sort of a "last supper". We had a wonderful time and it was a great way to mark the end of one chapter of our lives and the begining of a new one.

The surgery went well with the only hiccup being that it took the anesiologist 5 tries to get the spinal block in the right location. I was also able to get the doctors to allow my step father, Gus, to be present in the room with me and Rudy.

The whole experience was amazing. The time leading up to when little Diego first made his appearance was apprehensive and tense but once we heard his first cries it was as if all that went away and the only thing that mattered was that he was finally here and healthy. The doctor said that, besides all the other reasons that made a c-section necessary, there was also a very big knot in the umbilical cord that would have made a vaginal delivery very stressful for Diego.

Once the surgery was finished they moved me into recovery where they started magnesium sulfate to keep me from going into seizures because of the pre-eclampsia. By about 10:00AM they had me moved to our private room and were getting ready to bring Diego in from the nursery and his first bath. Supposedly Diego howled through out the whole experience.

Needless to say it was a very busy day for all of us.