I woke up around 3am on Thursday morning with pretty strong contractions. They were coming about every 15 minutes, so I had a feeling it was the beginning of the real thing, but it wasn't time to go to the hospital or anything. When our alarm went off at 6am, I hadn't gotten much sleep, but my contractions were still about 10 minutes apart, so Michael and I decided that he would go to work, and we would wait until they were about 5 minutes apart before going into the hospital.
I also decided to go to work, sort of last minute, but couldn't imagine staying home with nothing to do but count minutes and obsess. Pretty much everyone from Michael, to my older sister, to the girl taking over my classes for me thought I was insane, but I was able to sit at my desk and finish grading and entering grades into the computer. Much better to keep my mind busy. I decided it was time to leave when my contractions were about 6-7 minutes apart.
By this time I was in quite a bit of pain, and I was ready to get into the hospital and get an epidural. I called Michael and told him it was time to come home. It was about 1pm by the time we got to the hospital. They hooked me up to monitors and told me that as long as there was a change when they checked on me in an hour, I would be admitted. There was a change, so I was admitted and right away they hooked my IV up and called the anesthesiologist so I could get my epidural.
First, epidurals are awesome. Second, I got my epidural around 3:30 or 4pm and he was born at 8:11. It went really fast. Way faster than they expected. They started me on a pitocin drip after I had my epidural, but the contractions were coming so fast and strong that it made his heart rate drop too low and in a flurry of activity they stopped the drip, broke my water and stuck a monitor to his head. In an hour I had gone from a 4cm to 9cm. Pretty quick, huh?
When they realized how quickly I was progressing (amazingly without any pain--and thinking about the pain I went through getting from 2cm-4cm I'm extremely grateful for the miracle of modern medicine.) They called the on call doctor to come and deliver my baby. I pushed through 6 or 7 contractions (with a small break in between the first 3 and the last 3 to check his heart rate) and my tiny son was born!
My first words were "He's so small!" Like I mentioned earlier, he only weighed 6lbs 2oz. But he's perfect! He's strong and healthy and calm and sweet. I know I'm saying this because I'm his mom, but he is honestly the most perfect, beautiful baby I have ever seen. I loved him from the second I found out I was pregnant, and the moment I saw him that love was justified and grew 10 fold. I had no idea I would feel such an amazingly strong love for him so immediately.
Here's the pictures!
