Graydon's Arrival

On November 21, my birthday, at 9pm we went in to be induced with our beautiful baby boy.

When we arrived at the hospital we had to go through the emergency room. Of course everyone gave that "awe she is huge and in labor" look. After a million congratulations from the sick, nurses, and hospital volunteers we headed up to labor and delivery.

After settling into our cozy room we were greeted by a young night nurse that obviously hated her job and possibly her life. She was NOT going to ruin my night so I simply did what any good hearted christian would do and NOT ignore her. Yep, I tattled taled on her. HA. Okay a little extreme, but did she expect that every pregnant woman was going to let her talk down and huff and puff at them anytime they had a question and concern? I think not. It was my time to shine dammit, I was about to push a child out of my vagina for crying out loud- I didn't know if the hoohaa would ever get back to her oldself or not. So I didn't want any extra concern on my plate. Our next nurse, however, was a doll. She was awesome and even talked about Miss Rudness with me. As I thought, I wasn't the first to complain about her.

After getting weighed and set up, they checked my cervix and to my surprise I was only dilated to a 1. A ONE?! Those ball bouncing nights, running up the stairs, and chasing after Noah helped very, VERY little. The nurse then set me up on an IV and placed a small, disolvable pill way up in you know where and the waiting game began. Since I didn't have an epidural in, I was able to get up and go pee any time I needed to. About 3 am, I decided I needed to go again and as I was headed to the bathroom my water broke! I was estatic. It didn't happen without the dr. help with Noah so it was a neat experience to say the least.

When the nurse came in to check I was at a 5 and the contractions were getting pretty intense, but I wanted to wait them out to see how much I could handle. Yeah, that didn't last long. I made it to almost a 7 and I thought I was dying, but because my belt wasn't on my stomach right the machine wasn't reading my contractions. Of course, Dr. Kevin Cheney thought I was making it up and wanted sympathy. So glad my nurse had children, she told him that a woman at a 7 dilation was definitely having severe pain and that his wife was NOT making it up. She then fixed my contraction belt and he then saw how steep that "mountain" got on the screen.HA! He felt bad the rest of the day.

When the nurse popped back in, I begged her for the epidural and said I needed to get through the new bag of fluid she put up for the IV. The whole time Kevin was breathing through the contractions with me and getting my mind off the pain. Finally the anesthesiologist came in, and decided he wanted to have an hour long chat, or so it seemed. After yelling at him that I did NOT care of the risks of the epidural, he finally began. IT WAS HEAVEN IN A NEEDLE.

Not even an hour later, I went from a 7 to a 10 and it was GO TIME! The sweet nurse asked if I minded students coming in to watch, and of course I was so excited and feeling great I told her the more the merrier. After all 7 students arrived, I got the OK to start pushing and I could tell Kevin was EXTRA nervous about it--again. I thought after doing this once the second time would be easier? Yeah, I think it was worse. While waiting through pushes, why not tell jokes, right? Thought I would lighten the mood. These young children looked as if they saw a ghost so I thought it seemed appropriate. I could definitely tell they appreciated it just by their body language.

Around 3 pushes later, 12:08 pm, on November 22,2011, my 7.4 lb sweet baby boy was born. I didn't want to get him weighed right away or measured. I wanted to skin to skin. After about 1.5 hours I then let the nurses have him. Let me tell you, that bonding moment was amazing. Why should these nurses get my baby 10 minutes after giving birth? I kept him alive in utero, I went through contractions, and I pushed him out into the world. Dammit, 10 minutes doesn't seem fair. All I wish was, I knew about this skin to skin with Noah because it really truly was amazing.

About 4 pm that day, Kevin went to pick Noah up from the sitter so she could finally meet her new baby brother and lets just say, she was in love.