Hello friends! I'm sorry for the blog hiatus! I'm having so much fun with our sweet baby in this beautiful summer weather that it makes it hard to find time to sit down and write. Perhaps I should try blog writing while I'm up for hours in the middle of the night....I'm thinking this post would make even less sense then than it will now so I'll stick to trying to find some daylight hours to blog :) Please forgive spelling errors and typos...
I'm not quite sure where to start with updates so I figured it'd be best to start from the beginning with a very PG version of Grant's birth. Believe me...it's the one you would rather read!
I have started the sentence "Childbirth is like..." a few times and erased it because there really is no description that quite captures it. It's wonderful, amazing, a miracle, excruciating, terrifying, and empowering all at once.
As I posted what feels like forever ago...I was on "modified bed rest" for about the last 3 weeks of my pregnancy due to high blood pressure. It wasn't so bad but I was feeling a bit stir crazy by the end. Plus it was getting hot around here and we have no AC! Pregnant + HOT + No AC = Misery. I went into the office on Monday June 18 at 39 weeks because they wanted to schedule a date to induce me. At that visit they accidentally broke my water while checking my cervix...crazier things have happened I guess. It was a blessing in disguise for me because it meant I didn't have to pick an induction day (something that was giving me lots of anxiety!)...that day or the next would be baby day!
We headed to the hospital about 6 hours labor around 8pm...no contractions yet as you can tell from my smiling posed pic :) This was the view from Labor and Delivery - not bad huh?
We waited in our room for a few hours because the floor was completely full of women having babies...
My mom and Meg made it up from VA (they drove up that day - lucky I didn't go in any earlier than that!)...they stopped by to say hello.
Around midnight a resident was available to administer a drug that was supposed to help with dilation. We thought we'd have a few hours to sleep but about 15 mins later I started having contractions. At first they were manageable...I did some of the things we learned about in my natural birth class (walking the halls, etc).
The pictures stopped here because things quickly changed. Contractions sped up, came stronger, closer together, and lasted longer than I imagined they would so early on in labor. My only effective pain relief was in the bathtub (I know it sounds quite hippie but worked for me). I told the nurse I couldn't get out unless I had an epidural! Ha. Epidural it was for me by about 5am. It was amazing.
After that I rested easy for most of the day...contractions were coming steadily and things were progressing until about 3 that afternoon then things stalled. The doctor started Pitocin and about 4 hours later I was allowed to start pushing. By this time my epidural had mostly worn off. Pushing is painful. I'm going to leave it at that.
I pushed for almost 2 hours. Whew. The room was full. 4 nurses - there was a shift change but my day nurses stayed to see if he was going to be a boy or girl :) My doctor, a resident, Meg, my mom, Matt! I was oblivious. Meg documented some of this part...
My mom said you fall in love with the doctor that delivers your baby and it's so true! I absolutely loved ours. She was amazingly calm and I trusted her so much it made my delivery feel like the most natural (although painful) event.
I can't describe how it felt but I was so surrounded by love and support. That feeling was what kept me going when I REALLY thought I couldn't. Grant was born at 7:56pm on June 19th after almost 19 hours of labor! His actual birth is a blur - I remember being so thankful that he was healthy and OUT that it took several minutes of holding him to realize that he was a boy!
The only thing I hoped for (other than a healthy baby) was to be able to hold him immediately after he was born. I was grateful that Grant was able to be given right to me. They took him briefly to get his footprints and check his Apgar scores once Matt cut the umbilical cord and then I got him back.
Matt spent that time letting everyone know he was here :)
Then he finally had his chance to hold him...
I couldn't believe that about 1 hour later we were told it was time to head down to the mother/infant unit. I was shocked I was expected to hop up out of bed and get in a wheelchair! Luckily I managed much better than I thought :) Downstairs Meg and my mom had a chance to hold him...
Spending 2 nights in the hospital was nice. It was great to have the support of the doctors and nurses as we learned how to take care of our sweet baby.
It was just a bit scary to head home! Good thing my mom was around for a while at our house. I'm not going to lie...the first few weeks are rough on the mom. Your body feels torn apart, you don't sleep, your hormones are crazy. It takes a while to get back to feeling like yourself.
As nice as the hospital was for the support...it was also great to come home!
We were super excited to see our noodle again :) She has been great with Grant!
I tried to have no expectations for what his birth was going to be like but I think they would have been exceeded. Our experience was so wonderful and we loved the doctors and nurses at our hospital. I am SO grateful for his smooth arrival and can't believe it was already 5 weeks ago!
OK more later!
xo!
