a child is born
For the five of you that still visit this blog, I have not deserted I’ve just been busy. Life with a baby is so different than life before… but in such an amazing way that makes it 100x better. I am loving being a mom and find such joy in watching Noah be a dad and in raising this little boy together.
I know some people like to know about delivery stories so here’s a rundown of the event, as best I can recall:
- Monday, December 21: having contractions about 20 minutes apart most of the afternoon but wasn’t alarmed because those same contractions had been teasing me for over a week.
- 10:00pm: I took a shower. While showering and getting dressed I noticed that I was having more contractions than earlier and they were more uncomfortable so I started timing them. 5-7 mins apart.
- Hung out, folded laundry, watched TV… contractions continued at pretty steady 5 min intervals.
- Midnight-ish: called my family to tell them that I thought we would be having the baby soon.
- 1-2am contractions became about 3 mins apart
- 2:10am we were out the door, headed to the hospital.
- 2:30am: Admitted to the hospital. Dilated to 5 cm. Baby time!
- Sometime around 3am maybe my family began arriving. My mom and sister Jackie were in the delivery room with me for a while (I ended up booting them at some point when I was in an extreme amount of pain and they wanted me to switch positions, or so I’m told. I have very little recollection of this.)
- Around 5:30am (?): Dilated to 7 cm., Midwife broke my water at this point and things started getting really painful. Like, really. :o)
- I didn’t want an epidural but the nurse and midwife suggested an IV pain reliever to help “take the edge off” and help me relax a little between contractions, because they were coming really fast but I wasn’t totally dilated yet and was getting a little… I think “panicky” is the best way to describe it. — Yeah… pain med didn’t kick in at all for pain but they did make me pass out between some of the later contractions and Noah tells me I was talking nonsense in my “sleep” which I’m sure was at least slightly entertaining.
- At 7am the nurses changed shifts and my fabulous nurse was replaced by a giant bitch. Thankfully I didn’t say anything offensive — I was afraid that in so much pain I’d lose control of the brain-mouth barrier, but I apparently maintained my manners through child birth, which is nice.
- At 8am the midwives changed shifts which was GREAT because the one that was on duty was irritating me and the one that came on shift was so amazing and supportive and if not for her I don’t know if I would have gotten my monster baby out with as little wreckage as there was.
- I don’t know how long I was pushing for but it couldn’t have been more than an hour since the midwife came in at 8 and he was born an hour later. All I remember was screaming, trying to push without screaming, wanting to bury my face in Noah’s chest (he was such a champion of support for me through the whole thing), and being more thirsty than I’ve ever been in my whole life.
- 9:07am: Johnny was born and I continue to fall deeper in love with him each day.
- At around 10:15/30am I was all sewn up and the chaos of delivery was over and cleaned up so mom and Jackie came back in to meet the boy.
- 2pm: Visiting hours started and so the rest of the family (Dad, Meghan, & Bryan) finally got to meet baby John.
- December 23: Around 2pm we were discharged from the hospital. The nurses were encouraging me to stay another night but I wanted out. Everyone at the hospital was amazing but with the checks on me and on the baby, I only got maybe 45 minutes of sleep because they kept waking me up for one thing or another all night long. I really wanted to get home to my own house and start living life at home with baby, without all the outside interruptions.
