This lit­tle guy has now brought us a year of love, bless­ings, and memories.

Now:

Then:

Excuse the eye makeup under my eyes. The pre­vi­ous 40 min­utes were a lit­tle intense.

Some­thing I noticed dur­ing my preg­nan­cies and after hav­ing my boys is that there are def­i­nitely a lot more hor­ror sto­ries float­ing around out there than there are low-drama, no prob­lem, happy to be preg­nant, great labor stories.

Why is it that “they” and some­times “we” feel the need to scare women who are not yet moms or who are preg­nant and have not yet had their babies? It’s not like scar­ing them makes our expe­ri­ences more valid. When I tell peo­ple that I had pretty great preg­nan­cies and very, very fast labors, peo­ple look at me like I’m crazy not to have had some hor­ri­ble expe­ri­ence. I just don’t know what comes of scar­ing some­one like that. It just seems mean.

Two years ago tonight, I was in the hos­pi­tal. I was try­ing to decide if I was in labor or not. Look­ing back, I would guess it’s safe to say that I was.

Two years ago, on Novem­ber 2nd, I had an appoint­ment with the cer­ti­fied nurse prac­ti­tioner. I was 36 weeks preg­nant, and the prior week, I had been dilated to 3. I wasn’t hav­ing any major con­trac­tions, and it was my first baby so I assumed that I would still have a while. K wasn’t due until Novem­ber 29th, so I didn’t even have my bag for the hos­pi­tal packed or any nurs­ing bras! At my appoint­ment, the NP told me that I was dilated to a “good 5 cm.” I was shocked to say the least. I had been think­ing I would go late, and I had even told my mom, who was com­ing to stay with me after the birth, not to worry about tak­ing any time off until at least Thanksgiving.

That after­noon, I decided to run some errands. I picked up a pair of paja­mas for after the baby was born. I also bought myself a cou­ple nurs­ing bras. I may have even stopped for ice cream or cof­fee. To me, it was just a reg­u­lar day like any other day.

That night, my hus­band, Jason, who was work­ing on his master’s inde­pen­dent study, was meet­ing with his advi­sor. While he was at his meet­ing, I real­ized I was hav­ing some­what reg­u­lar con­trac­tions. I decided to start tim­ing them, although they didn’t hurt and I couldn’t feel them at all. I drank a lot of water and laid down on the couch. After tim­ing for about 30 or 40 min­utes, I called him and I told him I was hav­ing con­trac­tions, but he did not need to come home. Well, ten min­utes later, he walked in the door. His advi­sor had sent him home. Thanks, Dr. O!

We waited and timed and waited. Finally, around 8, we called the hos­pi­tal. I didn’t want to go, but know­ing I had been dilated to 5 ear­lier in the day, I wasn’t sure what to do. I kept telling the nurse that I didn’t feel the con­trac­tions yet, and she said that I should still come in and get eval­u­ated. We got to the hos­pi­tal at about 8:30. I was 5 1/2 cm. They wanted us to walk for a while and see what hap­pened. We walked, they checked. We walked some more. By the time we were checked the last time, I was about 6 cm, and I was stay­ing overnight in the hospital.

The next morn­ing at 7:30, my doc­tor came into the room with a res­i­dent and said, “Scoot down, let’s break your water.” Know­ing I wanted a nat­ural birth, prior to com­ing to the hos­pi­tal, I was sure I did not want my water to be bro­ken. How­ever, for some rea­son, I said noth­ing and just did what she said. She broke my water, and she said she’d check on me later that day. Jason and I decided to watch tv and relax. I did pretty well for about 2 1/2 hours. Then, sud­denly around 10, the con­trac­tions started in and were very intense.

Around 10:45, I asked if the nurse would check me. I was start­ing to get over­whelmed by the con­trac­tions, and I needed to know if I was mak­ing progress. Look­ing back, I prob­a­bly should have changed posi­tion, laid on my side, closed my eyes, breathed, or any num­ber of other things. I didn’t though. I just sat in my bed and tensed up wait­ing for each con­trac­tion. The nurse checked me and I was 8 1/2 cm dilated. About 5 min­utes later, I started say­ing, “I have to push! I have to push!” Sure enough, I was ready.

I pushed and drank ice water for about 45 min­utes and K was born! He had the cord wrapped around his neck, but as soon as that was taken care of, he was just fine. He was born at 36 1/2 weeks and was 18 inches long and 6 pounds 12 ounces. Not a huge baby, but he was def­i­nitely big for being 3 1/2 weeks early.

Look for pic­tures tomorrow.

Yes, 40 min­utes from start to fin­ish is what it took to deliv­ery my son.

On July 15th, we got up, and we went to church. A few of my friends knew I was over­due and asked me if I thought the deliv­ery was com­ing soon. I told them it had to be some­what soon since I was already 3 days late. I didn’t think that day was the day though. We went out for lunch after church, and I had a big, greasy, YUMMY ham­burger and onion rings. I told my hus­band, “If I go into labor today, I will prob­a­bly throw up.” We got home from lunch at about 1:15. I laid down for a nap at 1:30, and at 2:19 (yes, I remem­ber the exact time), I woke up with my first con­trac­tion. Know­ing that I had been dilat­ing about 1 cm a week since I was 34 weeks, I was some­where between 6 and 7 cm dilated. I laid in my bed and waited to see how long I had before the next con­trac­tion. At 2:29, I had con­trac­tion #2. I knew at that point it was the real thing and that I needed to get my hus­band and tell him to hurry. I went to the bath­room, and at 2:31, I had my 3rd con­trac­tion. Yes, that’s right. They went from noth­ing to ten min­utes apart to two min­utes apart in 3 contractions.

My son, K, was tak­ing a nap. I told my hus­band to wake him up, call the hos­pi­tal, and get in the car. I called a friend who was going to meet us at the hos­pi­tal to take K to her house until my mother-in-law arrived. By this point, my con­trac­tions were about a minute apart and a minute long. I def­i­nitely had to breathe through them.

We got into the car, and I said, “Drive as fast as you safely can.” We live 10 miles from the town where the hos­pi­tal is. Ten miles on the inter­state wouldn’t have been too bad, but at that point in the sum­mer, there was road con­struc­tion on about 5 miles of the drive. We were behind a truck who was abid­ing very closely to the 40 mile an hour speed limit. At that point, I called the hos­pi­tal to let them know I would not be able to make it up to labor and deliv­ery on my own. They told me that we should drive into the emer­gency room area, and they would meet me there.

The drive seemed to take for­ever, and 2 miles south of the exit for the hos­pi­tal, I told my hus­band, “I HAVE TO PUSH!!!” He said, “Don’t!” Then, I noticed that he was breath­ing as deeply as I was, and I told him to knock it off. Well, he informed me that he was breath­ing for him­self and not as an exam­ple for me. Haha, poor man.

As we pulled off the inter­state, we came to a red light, and I was beg­ging him to run it. I hon­estly didn’t think we were going to make it to the hos­pi­tal before the baby was born. I won­dered how one would clean a car after hav­ing a baby in it. Yuck. For­tu­nately, we did make it. We pulled up to the emer­gency room, and they had a garage door open for us to drive into. There were prob­a­bly 20 peo­ple wait­ing for us, and they had a stretcher.

I rolled out of the car and onto the stretcher. They strapped me on and pushed me up to the labor and deliv­ery ward. We arrived in labor and deliv­ery at 3:00. I rolled off the stretcher and on to the bed. My water broke at 3:01. I pushed a few times, and my doc­tor told me that the baby had passed meco­nium, so when he or she was born, they would have to take him/her before putting the baby on my chest or let­ting me hold him/her.

I laid on my side, and I pushed a few more times. My baby was born at 3:03, just 44 min­utes after my first con­trac­tion. When the baby was born, I asked, “Boy or girl? Boy or girl?” Some­one told me that he was a boy. They said, “He’s big.” I knew he would be big though, because my fam­ily has a his­tory of big babies, and because my pants had been too small around the waist for sev­eral weeks by that point. When they finally were able to weigh and mea­sure him, I found out that he was nine pounds, twelve ounces and twenty-one inches long.

Whew! It was a much faster labor that I had antic­i­pated, but every­thing worked out in the end, and now I have one great story to tell for the next sev­eral years.