HI all, its been a very crazy busy week and few days! On Saturday October 2nd at 6:59 pm our little man, Benjamin Thomas, joined our family! He weighed 7lbs 11ounces and was 20 inches long.
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Birth story(thought I'd put it down here in case anyone doesn't want to read it)
My labor started at 4am with contractions that were about 4-5 minutes apart. I timed them for an hour and they got more painful. So at 5am I called my doctor and they told me to head in. I got DH up and took a shower. And he called his mom and then got Scout up to go potty and feed him. His mom got here around 545am and we got to the hospitalaround 630 am. They hooked me up to the monitors and my contractions had spaced out to 6-7 minutes. They checked me and I was dilated to 3cm(the previous day I was only dliated to 2) and was about 70% effaced and my bag of waters was bulging. So they told me that they wanted me to walk around for an hour and see if I could make some more progress. After the hour was up they rechecked me and I hadn't dilated anymore, but I was about 80% effaced. The Dr said I'd definitely have the baby today, but that I was in early labor. So I had 2 options. To leave the hospital and walk around until the contractions picked up. Or they could break my water. I decided to walk around. So DH and I went to breakfast and walked around Boston for a few hours. When I went back they set me up in a room and rechecked me. I was 3.5 cm and fully effaced. I told them at this point I didn't want an epidural and that I'd like to try to give birth without it. So they hooked me up to monitors for a little bit to see how the baby was doing. He was fantastic. So they unhooked me and I walked around the room and used the birthing ball for the next 4.5 hours. The contractions were more painful, but still manageable. When the doctor checked me at 5pm I was only dilated to 4. So I had them break my waters. They wanted to hook me up to monitors again to see how the baby reacted. That was an agonizing 20 minutes laying in bed in which I decided I wanted the epidural. the epidural guy came and got it placed at 6pm. Unfortunately, only my legs went numb. When I informed them of this at 610 they decided to check me. I was 9.5 cm dilated. So basically I got the epidural too late. At 630 I was complete and at 645 the doctor was suited up and I started pushing. I pushed for 15 minutes and out he came followed by a tidal wave of fluid(my fluid had been measuring high throughout the entire end of my pregnancy). It makes me giggle to remember, because it got arc and the doctor got soaked! lol. They laid Benjamin right on my chest and cleaned him off leaving the cord intact while they stitched me up. I got to hold him for a good 20 minutes and then they did thier assesment of him and handed him to DH while I delivered the placenta and they continued to sew me up. His birth was actually a really really good experience and I am kind of happy the epidural didn't work. I wanted to go naturally to see what it was like and with Meri I wimped out. I tried to wimp out this time, but got forced into it. I was so happy he finally made his appearance as my grandmother who lives 4 hours away has been failing in her health and they didn't think she'd make it but a few more weeks. When I called my mom at 730 pm too tell her that Benjamin had arrived she let me know that at 720pm my grandmother went to be with God. She hung on until my son was here. And I was able to go to her funeral this past Friday. Her pastor told me that she'd like to think that as her soul was on her way up to heaven and Benjamin's was coming down that they had a moment for a hug. Its really hard for me to be sad about my Gram's passing. She lived such a good long life(she was 94) and for the past 2 years has been slowly losing her memory. Now she is up in heaven looking down on us, knowing us all, and satisfied(I hope) with the legacy she has left behind. God is good! That is all I can say! :)