Wednesday, October 12, 2005

"HADaBABYit'saBOY!"

Yes!!! Our baby boy, Hunter Thomas, was born on October 5, 2005, at 8:32 p.m., weighing in at a HEFTY 8.9 pounds, and 21" long -- THREE WEEKS EARLY...

Can you imagine if we had gone to term with him??? YEOW!

So, now I'm spending all of my time at home admiring my handsome boy ... but I'll give you a quick recap of the birth story... because it went FAST, in my humble opinion.

It really all began on Saturday morning, Oct 1, when I lost my mucas plug. Later in the morning, we went to Buy Buy Baby to purchase a stroller and a few other items I felt were crucial for us to have before the baby arrived... in a sense, NESTING. I returned from this shopping trip feeling very tired, and achy in my lower back.

Sunday afternoon (10/2), we had a tour of the hospital. The entire time (I kid you not), I was having contractions. Mild, but uncomfortable. I just assumed it was either false labor, or Braxton Hicks.

Monday afternoon (10/3), my husband played hookie with me because he was concerned about my discomfort, and we went out for lunch with friends, and then on to the Parinatologist to have the baby measured. The doctor said that the baby looked to be weighing in at 6 lbs 14 oz, (hmmm ... very interesting) and assured us that all looked well, and we had nothing to worry about right now. He thought we'd have a good sized baby in three weeks, but probably only about 9 pounds, and he didn't see a need to move the delivery up any. We went out for dinner to celebrate, and I arrived at home feeling relieved... very relieved, but tired.

Tuesday afternoon (10/4), I spent the entire day washing baby clothing, baby towels, blankets, cloth diapers, sorting, folding, and storing everything in the hamper until my husband finished putting together the dresser. What can I say ... even though I was put on bedrest, I was still ... "NESTING!"

Wednesday morning (10/5), 5:00 a.m. -- my husband had just left for work. He works about 40 minutes away. The baby shifted lower in the belly leaving me feeling a bit uncomfortable. Then it gave be a swift punch in the abdomen. I had just finished telling the baby that I was going to have to tell it's daddy that it wasn't being nice to it's momma, when I felt a strange rush of warm liquid. I ran to the bathroom, and found that it was continuing to flow at the rate of a gush here, a gush there, leaving me to assume that my water broke.

So, I calmly (yeah, right)... and slowly, (uhuh) went back to bed and tried to get in touch with my husband on his cell phone. I dialed, heard it ringing in the phone, and then heard it ringing downstairs. HELLO!!! He left his phone at home! Who does that when your wife is 37 weeks pregnant? Evidently, he does! So, I called his job (it was around 6:10 now). They paged him, and then came back to the phone to say he wasn't picking up and maybe he wasn't coming in to work. I said, yes, he is, and told them that this was his wife and I had a small emergency at home, and asked them to find him and have him call me immediately.

Within 10 minutes, he called me. He later told me he thought that this small emergency was something like a broken pipe, or the AC wasn't working, so when I told him I thought my water broke, and that I had been having mild (very) contractions since 5:15 a.m., he was totally thrown off balance. In fact he began questioning me ... "what color is it?" "is it like the mucus plug?" "how much?" After I answered all "his very important questions" -- He suggested that I call the doctor when their office opened -- 9:00 or 9:30 a.m. So we hung up. I felt nasty, so, while I was recording the contractions (5 minutes apart), I jumped in the shower, and the contractions just kept coming, and coming and COMING ... harder, harder, HARDER. By the time I got out of the shower, they were about 3-4 minutes apart. Now, we never made it to a birthing class, so really, I had no idea what this meant other than they hurt ... BAD. I called my hubby back and told him to come hoe right now, and explained what I was feeling.

He got to the house by 7:00 a.m. and found me sitting on the edge of the bed, nakied from the waist up, underwear and pad on from the waist down, breathing through some massive contractions and moaning that it hurt. He tried to call tmy OB, but we couldn't find his phone number any where. I finally got it from calling 411. The OB said to hustle my butt into the hospital, which was 35 minutes away, going in the flow of traffic. I quickly tried to dry my hair (not something I recommend during active labor), got into the car, pulled out of our neighborhood and hit a wall of traffic trying to get onto the highway. Great. We sat like that for 15 minutes before he flipped a U-turn and went out another way. He hit the highway, and said a silent prayer asking God to get us to the hospital without any traffic issues, and without delivering this child in the car. And He answered our prayers. Miraculously, the traffic was light and steady moving at 75 MPH (contrary to the traffic reports). I only remember the pain and constantly moaning "I can't do this." He kept saying, "but you are!"

He pulled up to the Emergency room, got me a wheel chair (which I could barely roll out of the Expedition to get into in between contractions which were now 2 minutes apart). He wheeled me up to labor and delivery and went back to move the car while I changed into a lovely hospital gown and they got me settled. He arrived just in time to hear the doctor on call announce that I was 5 cm dialated already, and to hear me politely demanding an epidural.

The nastiest I got to my husband was while he was trying to help me breath through a contraction. He said that he was telling me to relax, breath through it, when I raised my fist and shook it at him and said "SHUT UP!" --- I don't remember that at all.

Well, that's all for now... My boy is waking up, and it's time for me to feed him. I'll have to post more tomorrow (hopefully)!