Caleb's Arrival

For those of you who are interested in how Caleb made his grand entrance into the world here it is. Sorry it is long I just want to get the details down somewhere.

Wednesday, March 16th

Afternoon: It was a beautiful day and I decided that I needed to take a walk and see if that would start labor. I called my friend and she brought her twins over so we could all go for a walk together in the afternoon. We walked for about and hour with a stop at the park. I had to chase Grace up and down the equipment and wondered if that alone could put me into labor.

Evening: We had a normal dinner and evening. I might have been having more Braxton Hicks contractions that normal but nothing too weird. Then at some point I went to the bathroom and thought I might have lost my mucus plug. That could mean labor in the next couple of days though.

Bedtime: I told Matt that I wouldn't be surprised if I woke up in labor but wasn't really convinced of it.

Thursday, March 17th (Caleb's Birthday)

2:30 am: Woke up to pee like I did often at the end of pregnancy and went back to bed. I laid there for several minutes and just couldn't fall asleep.

2:45 am: Felt my first contraction and knew it was different. I waited to have a few more until I woke Matt up and told him that I thought I needed to go to the hospital.

3:30 am: Was having contractions every 5 minutes and had already called the hospital to tell them I was coming and our friend Erin to come stay with Grace. Got ready to leave and waited for Erin to arrive.

4:20 am: Checked into the hospital, hooked up to some monitors and checked for dilation. I was 3 cm at this point and my water hadn't broken. The hospital I gave birth at typically does labor and delivery on one floor and then after birth you transfer to another room and recover on another floor. They just started a new program where you can do all things in one room on a different floor. You have to pre-qualify for this by having given birth already and being low risk. So, at this point I was just waiting for Caleb to do some moving inside of me so they could move me down to the other floor. They need to make sure he was active.

5:30ish am: Moved down to the other floor to our room for the rest of the stay. Was still having contractions every 5 minutes. They were painful but not horrible. At this point I was told I could get my epidural whenever I wanted.

6:00ish am: I decided I might as well get the epidural (espcially since the anethtesiologist would be switching shift around 7 and I didn't want to be caught in the middle of a shift change waiting for epidural). Started my fluid that was needed for epidural.

Just before 7:00: Got my epidural. This was actually the worst part of the whole thing because it took 4 tries to get it in right. Uggg! My contractions still weren't horrible so I was focused on the pain of getting the epidural. It was weird that I never felt contractions as bad as I did with Grace.

7:30 am: The midwife came in to check me and I was still at 3 cm (although other things had been progressing). That explains why the pain wasn't too horrible. My water still hadn't broken so the midwife broke it and hoped that would get things really going. And it did. So thankful for the epidural at this point.

8:30 am: My epidural was perfect. I couldn't feel the contractions but could feel the urge to push and was starting to feel it at this point. The nurse checked me and I had quickly progressed to 8 cm. So, I wasn't ready to push yet. Caleb was getting there though. They told me I would probably get to 10 cm pretty quickly so just wait as long as I could and let my body do the work. So, I laid there and fought the urge to push for a while. It wasn't that hard just pretty uncomfortable.

10:00 am: Decided I really needed to get the baby out so I called the midwife. She came in and got everything ready to go.

10:15 am: Midwife wanted me to do a practice push. As soon as I was done with that she said she needed to get dressed because the baby was coming soon.

10:32 am: After a few pushes Caleb was on the delivery table screaming, I was getting my 1 stitch (which is great that I only needed 1), and we had our son. All 8 lbs, 1 oz, and 21 inches of him (which by the way is the exact same stats as Grace).

The next hour or so was great. I got to hold Caleb, nurse him and just enjoy time with him. We were in no hurry to get out of the room because that was the room I was staying in. He did great with nursing right from the start.

After that we all just rested, ate, watched basketball and waited for Grace and the Grandparents to come visit. The nurses we had were AMAZING! We were the only people on our floor so we had lots of attention. We were required to stay 24 hours and told them that was how long we wanted to stay so we started getting everything done that needed to be before the next day.

The rest of the day, night and next morning went well and we even got a couple of hours of sleep. We checked out before noon on Friday March 18th. It was a blur but quite a good experience:)