the birth story

------------------------WARNING: ok, this is long people - and a lot of it is for me --------------------
                                     and my documenting purposes so if you don't want to hear
                                     my ramblings of my baby birthing experience, feel free to

skip this post.

I really didn't think I was ever going to have this baby... (isn't that how you always feel at the end?) I thought somehow, somehow he just might stay in there for absolutely ever.  Thankfully that wasn't the case.  Around two in the morning on Friday the 13th (so cool, right?) I started feeling contractions - itty bitty ones, and because I'd had false labor so many times with Lily I didn't allow myself to get excited.  But who was I fooling, I really wanted to be excited so just for kicks I started timing them as the thunder boomed around me and Kyle snoozed on.

To my surprise they were actually hitting about seven minutes apart.  Still I told myself it was probably nothing and they would probably stop all together any minute.  After an hour of timing them every seven minutes I decided maybe I should wake Kyle up.  I wanted to say something like, "Kyle! It's GO time!"  But instead I think what came out was, "um, Kyle - I think I may be having contractions."  I was still in denial.  Kyle popped up out of bed and insisted we go to the hospital (love that man) he quickly called his mom to come over and stay with lily while she slept and as she was pulling in, we were pulling out.

It was a good thing Kyle was so on top of it, he had a better memory of our experience with Lily (I think I blocked it out) because once we got in the car my contractions shot to two minutes apart and became much more intense.  I'm not sure how many red lights we ran through, it really was a good thing it was three in the morning.  We arrived at the hospital where I huffed through another contraction at the desk and then told them that I was here to have my baby.  They offered a wheelchair but the contractions were coming fast enough that I wanted to get into a room and put a gown on fast and I thought their wheelchair abilities might take just a titch too long.  So I briskly walked down the hall where we scored the last available labor and delivery room (WHAT???) and by then things were really moving right along.

I'd been sitting comfortably dilated to a two at my last few doctor's visits and once I got to the hospital they measured me at a six.  Done and done.  The nurse said something ridiculous to Kyle like, "well you don't have to worry about her calling you any names, there's no time!" and I thought about smacking her across the face, ha. ha.  The nurse left for a while, in the mean time I was thinking that having babies was utter insanity and why couldn't the cute fat cherubs just apparate out of the womb like in Harry Potter?  All this pain seemed a bit unnecessary.  In between a few contractions I told Kyle to get the nurses back in there pronto by saying something like, "WHERE ARE THEY?????" He's cool and he knows exactly what I'm saying even when I'm not saying it but screaming something else entirely.  They came back in and then things really got crazy.  Somewhere in the midst of contraction after contraction I was told the epidural man was unavailable and I was moving along so quickly that the possibility of getting an epidural was kind of not an option.  Not the news I wanted to hear.  Okay, I thought, we're doing this natural.  What about my birth plan?  Oh, the birth plan that was still tucked inside my go bag?  Yeah, no doctor ever saw that thing.

I'll be frank, I hadn't ever thought about the possibility of not getting an epidural and so I was completely unprepared for a natural childbirth experience.  I kept trying to tell myself that my body was meant to do this, and that my baby was on his way into my arms.  That didn't do it.  So I did what any normal human being would do in loads of pain, I war cried it out.  It seemed to do the trick because I made it through somehow and 45 minutes and 9 pushes later our cute little muffin was born at 4:14 in the morning, about an hour after we made it to the hospital. Kyle and I sat there afterwards in shock a bit (a happy kind of shock) and laughed at the whirlwind we'd just experienced.  I had never been so happy and so relieved; it was over, I'd done it and what was my prize?  The cutest, fattest baby boy in the world.  Yeah, this kid had rolls on his forearms and I loved him, loved him, loved him.  What a happy ending right??

Thank you a million times over to my sister Molly for coming and taking pictures of the three of us at the hospital.  I love them so so much.