My little man is here, and I could NOT be more in love!
As of late last week, I wasn't quite getting the feeling that little dude was in any rush to vacate my tummy. I resolved myself to it, actually, and felt pretty okay with the idea that I might be going into August still pregnant. The hubby and I kicked off the weekend by seeing the new Batman movie in IMAX (aside from recent tragedies causing us to continually glance at the Exit sign, the movie was awesome), and letting the nug have a sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa's house so we could have a quiet night alone. It was SO gorgeous out on Saturday, we picked her up and spent the afternoon at the pool club, and Sunday we had a family beach day that could not have been more perfect. I even joined the hubby on a lengthy beach walk, feeling good and confident that little man wasn't going anywhere.
As of Monday morning at 9 am, I was the most pregnant I'd ever been (38 weeks 4 days). I still wasn't feeling particularly antsy, but knowing the lover of Old Wives Tales that I am (anyone remember all of my sex of the baby tests???), decided to use a few of the more "silly" ones to see if we could coax the little guy out. Truthfully, the hubs and I were just using it as an excuse to eat out every night and get all the yummy, spicy, not so great for you foods we've been trying to avoid because, well, they're not so good for you! We even plotted out restaurants to eat at every night(no way he was letting me have all the yummy food fun!). Monday we'd have wings, Tuesday we planned to have a spicy beef dish we love at a local Thai restaurant, Wednesday was going to be Indian food night, and so on. Except, we only got through Monday...
Monday, with the heat settling back in over NJ (apparently NJ was mistaken for Hades this summer), I decided I didn't want to keep the nug sitting in the house once again (I spent all of last week shutting us in the a/c), and took her to the local mall. The mall near us may as well be Disney World for her- between the choo choo train that runs downstairs, the horse carousel in the food court upstairs, the Disney store and the build-a-bear shop, the mall is an absolute wonderland to a 2.5 year old. We spent the afternoon enjoying some pizza, rides and strolling around; in retrospect it was a really great "last day" alone together--she was so well behaved and we had such a great time. Not long after we got home, the hubs arrived and we took her to Houlihan's because I love their buffalo wings (my first spicy food test!). We enjoyed our little trio time (inclusive of dessert, of course), and after we got home, we all seemed to pass out in record time...but the labor Gods had something else in mind for me Monday night.
I woke up with a quick, sharp pain at 1230 am- but any woman 9 months pregnant knows that sometimes, when you're unknowingly turning over in your sleep, you're certainly prone to sudden sharp pains. Nothing followed: no contractions, no tightness, no nothing- and I quickly fell back to sleep. Then at 1, another sharp pain. This time I knew this wasn't the typical, middle of the night adjustment pain, and I quickly realized that I was not only labor, but my contractions were already only 6 minutes apart. Since I'd had the nug so quickly, my doctor told me to call him after the first few consistent contractions, after 3 of them that were 6 minutes apart (and the most intense things I'd ever felt), I woke K about 1:30, told him I was calling the doctor, and to call his mother. Of course, the answering service first had to call the doctor and have him call me back, but being in as much pain as I was, I knew there was no way I wasn't going- I quickly packed the last of my items and waited for K's mom to arrive to stay with the nug. Thank the lord in Heaven she arrived as quickly as she did, and that K already had the car running and waiting to go. The 30 minute ride to the hospital was excruciating, with me mostly trying to keep myself calm. Although I'd told myself the whole pregnancy that I'd wanted to go natural the way I had with the nug, this pain was so much more intense than I could have imagined, with little relief in between. I promised myself if I made it to the hospital without wetting myself, I'd treat my body to the epidural.
When I finally got to the hospital, I couldn't even lift myself out of the car. Thankfully (seriously, I will use that word about 500 more times before this story is over...), a nurse happened to be sitting outside of the ER on her break and noticed my inability to move. She quickly retrieved a wheelchair, and she wheeled me right up to L&D. At first the nurses took their sweet time getting things going; I tried to express my agony, but being L&D nurses, I'm pretty sure they are used to women in agony thinking their pain is something special; not to mention, I'd only been in active labor for 90 minutes at that point. When asked if I wanted the epidural, I quickly explained that I needed to know how far along I was because last time, I didn't have time to get one. After I said that, the nurse put on her gloves to check me, only to be shocked herself to realize I was fully dilated, my water ready to burst and little dude's head ready to go. Yup. I arrived, 90 minutes from my first contraction, fully dilated, and fighting to not push. At that point things became fuzzy in an "all hands on deck" kind of way. They urged me not to push, I agreed only out of sheer fear. I hee hee hee'd through my contractions as best I could, but she explained that my doctor likely wasn't going to make it (but assured me he was speeding to try). The on-call hospital doctor suited up for duty and got into position, only for my doctor to run in wearing his street clothes at the very last minute. He got his gown and gloves on just in time for my inevitable inability to stop the baby from coming. In one huge push, little Ben flew right into the world, 25 minutes from my arrival at the hospital. He was 6lbs 7oz and 20 inches long (tall and skinny like Daddy). Not only did we not have time to get an epidural or even an IV, I'm not even sure the nurses knew my name before I pushed him out! It was quite literally the MOST intense 2 hours of my life.
I'm thankful for SO much about how this all went down. I'm thankful it happened in the middle of the night, when Kenny was home and when the roads were empty (you know, so Kenny could do 75 up the highway without ever seeing another car, let alone shore traffic!). Had the scenario played out during any other time of the day, I would almost surely not have made it (I'm not exaggerating, it really freaks me out how close I came to not getting to the hospital in time). I'm thankful my doctor made it, even if by the skin of his teeth. My practice has 8 doctors in total, all of whom are great, but the doctor on call happened to be my favorite of the team (and the odds of that are pretty slim since they rotate daily- each day I was there a different doctor from the practice checked on me). While in theory it's amazing that I labored such a short time, it was very scary for me if not a bit traumatic; and his presence was the only bit of control I had left in a situation where I had none otherwise. I'm thankful beyond belief that my little man was born a-okay with almost no monitoring through the process, that I got to spend my first 2 hours with him laying on my chest and nursing, and that so far, he seems to be a perfectly healthy, happy little boy. I'm also thankful to have such an amazing family, by both blood and marriage, who not only helped us along the way, but who helped welcome our handsome little clone of my hubby into the world.
A pretty funny side note of all of this? The "spicy" wings? Yeah--not spicy. Not even remotely spicy LOL! I guess he just decided Monday night was the night. Although I knew it was coming sometime soon, it doesn't cease to baffle me that on Sunday I was strolling the beach with my family, and Monday I was hanging with the nug, and by Tuesday, our lives had changed entirely. It's certainly been a whirlwind of a week. I can feel my OCD creeping in, as I had assumed it would, but so far it doesn't seem nearly as bad. This week has gone so fast I haven't even had time to upload all the pictures of him to the computer, so I'll be back on later today to photo bomb you all ;)
Many thanks to all for the massive amounts of congratulations and well wishes! We are SO blessed to have so many wonderful people in our lives to share these moments with!!! :))
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