He's here! Yea! We're in the hospital and I have a lot of time of my hands (which I'm guessing I will not have once I get home), so I thought I'd post a blog about the birth.
If you don't care about labor and delivery details, you can skip the rest of this and just know that he came fast and that we are both doing great.
Kendall and I with our #3
I woke up at around midnight on Saturday night to help Sammy in the bathroom. While I was up, I felt a little contraction. After I got Sam to bed, I sat in my bed and waited to see if I was going to continue having contractions. Well, they kept coming...about every four minutes. I woke Kendall up and we called his mom to come over. We got our stuff together and got over to the hospital around 2:30 AM. At this point I was still having contractions, about every 3 minutes apart and they were starting to get more intense. For those who didn't know, I was planning on no epidural this time and was using "hypnobirthing" method (pretty much just deep relaxation). Here's the deal, though... I could relax in between contractions but there was no way I could stay relaxed during them! I don't know how anyone can do that...they just hurt too bad! :)Anyway, I still got through them, staying as calm as I could. Kendall was AWESOME!! He was so attentive and by my side the whole time...keeping me calm. He talked to the nurses for me, filled out all the paperwork, got anything I needed, etc. I wouldn't have made it through without him! Anyway, my contractions continued to get more intense and I was starting to feel like I needed some help (drugs!), but then my water broke. A few minutes after it broke, the nurse checked me and I was at a 9. This is when things got crazy. While she was checking me, I started feeling the urge to push. She ran out of the room to call the doctor. My contractions were coming right after the other, painful, and I felt the baby coming. They were telling me not to push. I opened my eyes and the room was suddenly full of several nurses, a table full of tools, a baby bed, etc. I have no idea when they all came in...I was a little distracted. Anyway, I remember saying, "I need to push! Why can't I push?!" and they said it's better to wait for the doctor who was apparently 5 minutes away. I asked the nurse "Why can't you just do it?!" :) Anyway, there was no way that I could wait for the doctor. I was not pushing, but that baby was coming. He was crowning and they saw meconium (pretty much baby BM that they can breathe in and cause problems- it's not something you want to see during delivery), so there was a nurse calling down to Respiratory therapy on speaker phone and it was the answering machine. I had so much pain and pressure and burning and was kind of moaning (screaming?) involuntarily. Anyway, at that point Kendall said, "Just push." And so I did and his head came out and the cord was wrapped around his neck. The nurse pulled it off. I pushed once more and he came right out. It was such a cool feeling and SO relieving! I should have pushed as soon as I needed to. They called the doctor so late (because things suddenly happened so fast and the nurse hadn't checked me for a while) that there was no way he was going to get there on time. It would have been so much less pain and crazines if I would have just pushed him out right away. The nurses did fine delivering him. Anyway, they cleaned him up and sucked him out really good. The meconium turned out not to be an issue. It was just after 5 am when he was born. The doctor showed up 5-10 minutes later and finished things up (delivering the placenta and checking me). It was a crazy time...probably only 15 or 20 minutes between checking me and his birth, but it was intense! Delivering without an epidural was such an intense and empowering experience. I'm really glad that I was able to experience it, though it was probably the hardest thing, physically, I've ever done.
Brigg is a super cutey! We think he looks more like Sam than Luke. He has been pretty mellow, but it's only his second day here. He is healthy and we're so glad that he's here!
Me during labor, just after the birth and when I first held him (I thought these pics were hilarious when I first saw them. I had no idea I was looking so intense. )
We did a lot of this for the rest of the day. This is poor Kendall's bed in the hospital. He doesn't quite fit.
