the a-team makes a baby!: birth story

well, i think it's obvious i don't have any control over anything :) brady arrived into our lives just hours after my last post. yeah, the one where i hoped he'd hold off til june. til after mike's golf tournament, and my 37 week OB visit, and hello my pedicure appointment tuesday morning!! i can't say i minded missing all that though, as soon as he debuted my life changed forever & we fell madly in love with a little six pound peanut.

this post is not for the faint of heart, as i want to record for myself our birth story with little man. i want to write it all down before the memories fade...as they always do with time. his birthday was amazing & miraculous & we could not be any happier in life.

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monday may 28, we spent the day at the huntingtons for a memorial day bbq. this is my last bump picture - SOOOO glad i took my camera along for the afternoon. i love this picture because i am so unaware that in a few hours labor would begin & our next chapter in life would begin. jen's due date is (was?) 12 days after mine...such a sweet blessing to get to go through pregnancy with her. i'm so glad we took a bump shot together.

monday night after the bbq, i came home & tuned into my weekly ritual of the bachelorette while mike played pool in the basement with a friend. i wasn't having any contractions that evening besides my normal, mild braxton hicks - but i did notice that when i got up from the couch each time to go to the bathroom, my pelvis hurt. just felt achy and stiff, and i'd kind of limp the first few steps. i just brushed it off to late-pregnancy aches & pains...but looking back i guess maybe bubba was moving into position :) i headed to bed about 10:30pm, and mike followed shortly after. we turned off the lights & were laying in bed talking about our plans for the week. he was leaving the next morning for a golf tournament in denver for two nights with his buddies, and i was getting a mani/pedi the next day. or so i thought! about 10:45pm, while laying there chatting, i felt a gush of fluid & said "oh no!" - then jumped out of bed & rushed to the bathroom. it was pretty obvious to me right away that my water had broken - since it definitely a lot of fluid & i'm not known for being incontinent :) i walked back into our bedroom a couple minutes later & confirmed to mike that my water had broken and he got out of bed and started packing. of course i hadn't yet packed my hospital bag (i still had three weeks left, thank you very much) so i threw some things together while intermittently rushing back in the bathroom to change pants YET again! i kept gushing more fluid every few minutes. i still wasn't having any contractions though. i even had a slight meltdown in the closet, complete with a few tears & exclamations of "but i'm not ready to have a baby today!" i just really didn't think i'd be early, so mentally i was very surprised by the development! mike was so calming for me though, and just kept putting things in our bag & he was really excited about baby A coming soon...which helped me really calm down about it.

we got to the hospital a little after 11pm and got checked into the L&D floor. i was the only active labor patient that night so i had lots of nurse attention :) it was obvious that my water had broken (perhaps by my soaked pants?) so i went straight to a labor room and got hooked up for vital signs & a cervical check. i was dilated to a 3 when i got there. my contractions started about an hour later, and i felt them a lot in my lower back. the doctor on-call came in about midnight & did an ultrasound to confirm that baby was "sunny side up" or facing the wrong way and that's why my back labor was so intense. we all hoped he would turn during labor as it's pretty painful to deliver them that way. thankfully he listened & turned over at some point because he came out the right way. the L&D nurses assured me that i could have my epidural as soon as i was ready for it, which was so nice to know that i had control over that one thing! i thought i would have to wait til i was at a certain dilation or something. i labored in the room until about 3am, when i was more than ready for some pain relief. the pain in my back became overwhelming and i didn't feel like i could manage it anymore by just breathing or moving through the contractions. i'm not sure how close together my contractions were, but i think about 3 or 4 minutes and i didn't have much relief between them. thankfully mike was able to snooze on the couch while i labored most of that time, since there's not really a whole lot he could do to help me through the contractions when they were still relatively mild. i asked for my epidural at 3am and was dilated to a 5 at that point. at 3:45am, the anesthesiologist came in and placed the epidural without any complications. i honestly didn't even feel the numbing meds or the needle pressure - and i had relief within just a few minutes. i did have a "window" in the anesthesia, where i could feel the contractions in my left butt cheek - but that helped me later when it was time to push and i could manage the pain of that by moving around in bed.

i was checked again at 6am and was fully dilated but baby hadn't moved down far enough yet. the nurses & doctor changed shifts at 7am while i continued to rest in bed and wait for him to drop into place more. at 8:15am i was checked again & was ready to start pushing! mike & two nurses helped me with pushing and everything went really well. i could feel pressure to know when to push and baby tolerated it very well - at one point he had a late decel & so they rolled me on my left side and put oxygen on me for the rest of the time but overall he did great. pushing was REALLY hard work, and i expended every ounce of energy i had working to get him out. at a little after 9am, they called the doctor in to deliver him and at 9:23am on tuesday may 29, our little peanut made his debut!! the last ten minutes of pushing was excruciating for me, i think the epidural had worn off as i felt everything (including the tearing - TMI i know, but this is for my record of the whole thing!)....but the moment he came all the way out, the relief was instantaneous. the doctor put him up on my belly, as mike cut the cord - and the three of us were crying, and mike was laughing and it was the sweetest moment of my whole life. the three of us became a family there together & it was like no one else was in the room.

and now...a few pictures to go with the story :)

waiting to start pushing...feeling pretty good!

brady's first few moments! this was after the nurses took him off of me to get him cleaned up a little. mike went with him to the warmer, and brady immediately grasped his finger. sweetest thing ever.

brady weighed 6 pounds, 4 ounces - same as his momma :) he was 20 inches long.

first time meeting my little bubba. he was so quiet & alert.

my favorite picture from the delivery room.

our first family pictures!!

momma is looking a little swollen from all the fluids & pushing with all my might ;)

this is after we moved down the hall to our post-partum room which was like a hotel room. MCR was an amazing hospital - we loved being there, and the care we received was over the top. such a good first inpatient hospital experience for me.

the views from our room were amazing!

checking out my boy fully for the first time. he's SO TINY!!!

rob & suzanne brought us our first post-delivery meal - wendy's burgers, fries & coke which i swear was the best meal i've ever had! after almost 24 hours of nothing to eat (i had skipped dinner the night before after eating a ton at our afternoon bbq, and of course not realizing that i would go into labor)...i was ravenous, and inhaled my lunch. and then mike, brady & i collapsed for naps. brady took his first nap on daddy :)

loved seeing my little peanut in the bassinet next to me (where he didn't stay for long...we couldn't put him down!).

i could not stop kissing him. the bond i felt with him right away was overwhelming. he was just instantly so snuggly and calm and sweet. this is one of my favorite pictures of him, just an iPhone pic, but so precious to me.