Ryan Joseph Stucki ... May 23, 2008

Ryan was born yesterday, May 23, 2008. He arrived 4 days late. He weighed 3.8 Kilos (8 lbs 6 oz.). Heather did great, although her epidural wore off and they tried multiple times to fix it, only getting her the right dosage after about 30 minutes of SERIOUS pain (at least pain in my hand, holding hers, as she squeezed it in agony...OK, I am sure hers was worse than mine, but I am writing this blog!). Fortunately they got it right about 10 minutes before delivery and everything went quickly and smoothly from there. It was the second anesthesiologist who solved the problem, which is why he gets his picture in this blog.
Ryan is perfect. He let out a few tiny cries at first. His cry so far has been relatively quiet, almost like a full cry that is on soft mute. If this will be his cry for the future, count me in. He now just makes these tiny whimper noises, like a puppy. He is so small. Ashley is going to seem like a giant compared to this one! I remember bringing Ashley home from the hospital and only then did we realize how grown up Katie had become
He slept all night with the baby nurse, allowing both of us to sleep through the night (last chance for a while). She told us he slept from 10PM until 6AM. Again, if this is his sleep schedule, sign me up. I'm no fool to think that either his sleeping schedule or the decibal level of his cry will remain the same, but we can only hope!
Katie and Ashley spent the night with Jason and Laura Birnbaum and have not yet seen the baby. I'll go get them this morning and bring them to the hospital (by the way, the hospital, Telki, is like a hotel. We have our room with 2 single beds, room service, etc. ... very nice).
Thursday afternoon it all got started. We were told to come back yesterday morning, so we returned to the Dr. (Dr. Gyula Csermely) at 8AM yesterday to have Heather checked out. She was far enough along for the Dr. to tell us to meet him at the hospital at 1PM. Since we had time, we went to the immigration office to get our updated residence/work permits for our passports. We found that Ashley didn't have any blank pages left for the Visa, and Katie only had 1 left(what other 3 year old/ 5 year old is out of passport pages at this point in their life!!?) , so we went to the Embassy and had all our passports equipped with additional pages. They do it right there while we wait, which is very nice. And since I told the lady Heather was in labor, they did it extra fast!
From there we headed to the hospital, which is far out in the Buda hills. We had a simple lunch there before checking in. Ryan was born at 6:10 (we think, nobody recorded the official time, but was between 6 and 6:10).
Ashley has been super excited about "Baby Ryan" arriving. Katie was getting tired of going to school every morning and her friends/teachers asking her if the baby has arrived yet!
We are so excited to have this little boy join our family. We can not believe that we have 3 kids now. It will be a tough transition, especially here in Europe and ESPECIALLY around our travel methodology, as hotel rooms maximum is normally 3, which we usually got away with Ashley to a floor or shared bed with Katie. Now it will be much more difficult traveling now! :)
People ask us if having a baby in Hungary is hard. I think Heather would attest to the fact that having a baby is hard, but not because we are in Hungary. The experience has been great for her and she would tell anyone that except for the epidural issue, this has been maybe better than the last two in the U.S. and Canada. Although, admittedly, maybe she decides that the epidural issue was problematic enough to drop the experience down a few notches (and she suggested we photo shop out the mascara under her eyes, but since we don’t have photo shop I could not comply). Thanks to Dr. Csermely and Eniko, the mid-wife, for all of their help!We are tremendously blessed to have this new little boy in our family, in addition to the two perfect little girls we already have. We are excited to go through these new experiences and looking forward to them.