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Meet JL

Wow. Labor this time around was speedy.

From the first contractions I felt to having him pop out of me, total time elapsed was about 6 hours. Everyone at the hospital seemed to think it would be fast from what I could gather by their off-hand comments. At first I thought it was a joke when my nurse said we'd be done by the time he got off shift which was in 5 hours. Apparently, he was not.

I was worried beforehand that I might not know I was in labor when it was actually happening, since last time, it was the breaking of my water that caused me to go in and basically be induced. Would I know these were definitely real labor contractions? I had been through all the signs - regular, increasing intensity of contractions that got stronger with activity. And, when they first started late Sunday night as I was lying in bed, their regularity every 6-7 minutes clued me in. I hated to wake up my husband since I knew it would mean a sleepless night for both of us, a rough way to start the day, but, what can you do?

I decided to take a shower and confirm that the contractions would continue, meanwhile getting ready to go into the hospital. As soon as I got up, my contractions got a lot worse, a lot more painful. Another good clue.

I started dreaming of epidurals.

By the time I was admitted and in my room at the hospital, I was REALLY ready for an epidural. I was having contractions every 4 to 4 1/2 minutes and they were intense. My pain threshold is pretty low, I think, and I was not shy about asking for anesthesia and the needle that would take away my misery.

I'm really glad I was vocal about asking for it because the delays involved- getting anesthesia to come, getting it just in the right place (3 times the charm as evidenced by the 3 holes in my back), and finally getting the medications dosed to the right level - took much longer than I had anticipated. In fact, by the time it was in and working, I had apparently on my own progressed to almost complete dilation.

Despite this, I'm still glad I did get it since the pain relief was great and it gave me that extra energy at the end to really push my large baby out. He was doing great in there until the end during pushing since I think a part of the cord was getting compressed while I pushed and his heart rate would drop precipitously with every contraction. I could tell it was getting important to get him out quickly because of this; they had called in support staff and were rolling me on my side in between pushes and had slapped an oxygen face mask on me.

I pushed for about 20 minutes, having initially forgotten exactly how to push (my epidural caused me to not feel my contractions or my lower half at all), but finally pushed out my 8lb 15 oz bundle of joy, JL.

He is healthy and strong (neck muscles! He can lift his head!) and I'm SO grateful.

It's a boy!  Coming exactly on his due date. Woohoo!