First to set the stage: My due date was December 4, 2011 and my mom was in town with my aunt December 2nd to 4th. I remember talking to baby begging him or her to either come before the second or after the fourth. I really wanted to enjoy my mom's short visit and not have it occupied with silly things like birthing a baby. I had gone 41 weeks with Kira and was completely ready to do so with this little one as well.
So when I was woken up Saturday (Dec. 3) in the wee hours of morning with contractions I cried. I just really wanted a good visit with my mom before she had to leave. After I calmed down a little bit I realized that if this baby was going to come, it was going to come and there was nothing I could do about it, but unless things picked up dramatically I was going to ignore these contractions the best that I could. So Saturday went along exactly as we had planned. My cousin came over, and the bunch of us went shopping. I did my best to hide my contractions and ignore them. By the afternoon is was taking more and more of my focus to get through each contraction. I started letting others do things around me as I did what I needed to do. My mom made us a lovely dinner and we had a good little evening visit.
We put Kira to bed as normal, and everyone else was in bed by about 9:00pm. Ryan and I were still trying to get settled when I decided to take a bath. I told Ryan that I was going to slow these down a bit so that I could sleep and that I didn't think that anything was going to happen that night. By 10:00pm I realized that that was probably not the case and got Ryan to start timing. We called the midwife at about 10:45pm and she agreed we should probably meet at the hospital. Her exact words where: “Yup, it sounds like you are probably in it for the long haul, but no hurry, I'll meet you at the hospital at about 12:00am”
Since my mom and aunt were staying with us, we just woke them briefly to let them know we were leaving and left Kira to sleep. It is (in normal time) only about a 10 minute drive to the hospital, but for me it felt like an eternity. At one point I very calmly looked at Ryan and said “I know you have absolutely no control over this, but would you please refrain from hitting bumps while I'm in the middle of a contraction.”
We got to the hospital around midnight and Nicole met us at about 12:15. She checked me and I was 8.5cm dilated. I remember in my head doing a mental fist pump and thinking “YES!!!! I'm a rock star” LOL Baby's heart rate was a little bit elevated so the nurse wanted to put a monitor on me just for a bit. I also had to get up and pee and the nurse was supposed to check my hydration levels.
Nicole asked if she could break my waters and I agreed. Everything after that was a total whirlwind. Nothing that was just talked about occurred. Once my waters were broken I was ready to push and there was no time for anything else. In the middle of one push I had sat up in such a way that I could see baby's head and I was able to watch as he was being born. After only about 10 minutes, my sweet baby boy was born. '
Joseph Eldon was born 12:38am, December 4, 2011. He weighed 8lb 12oz and was 20 inches long. We were home from the hospital by noon that day and my mom even got to meet her grandson before she had to go home that day.
