How Funny the Post Below Seems Now...

If only I had known that I was about to endure my last night of that! :)

Of course, Im even more tired now...but I am able to occasionally sleep for a couple of hours at a time AND I don't have to pee as much.

Monday morning, December 1st, I woke up around 4:30 AM (after falling asleep again around, say, 3:45!) to extra back pain and a crampy tummy. And, without going into too much detail here, I was a little more leaky than usual. So I tried and tried to get back to sleep but I had two webinars that I had to do from home that morning, the first at 7:00, that I was afraid I not going to wake up for anyway, so I finally got out of bed around 6:00 and drained the rest of the apple juice.

In between webinars I took a shower and straightened my hair (what IF it turned out I was in labor - I would prefer to have straight hair in the hospital!). I kept thinking I was overreacting but Charles convinced me to call the doctor after I finished the second webinar, around 9:30. The nurse said it probably wasn't anything and sounded like pre-labor, which could go on for days or weeks, but to come in anyway to get checked out. So we made it to the doctor's office around 11:30 that morning. The doctor checked me out and I was a bit more dilated but still not showing any really strong signs of labor, although she did want to test the fluids I was leaking to find out if I might have broken my water. Five minutes after taking the sample she came back and said, "This buys you a ticket upstairs to labor and delivery." My water had broken, or had a slow leak, and it was time to have a baby!!

Charles and I were shcked, excited, nervous - we had really not been expecting this. My due date wasn't until December 22nd! It especially hit us hard when we walked up there and my doctor had already called to check us in and they took us to our room and said, "This is where the baby will be born." It didn't start to feel real until they hooked me up to the IV - and even then, it didn't feel real until the pitocin kicked in and my contractions starting coming hard and fast.

Lucky for me, things progressed very, very quickly. When I was dilated to about 6 I decided on an epidural, thinking I could have hours of this ahead of me - but then, as it turned out, when the nurse came back in 30 minutes later to insert the catheter and see if I had dilated anymore I was ready to push! I couldn't believe it. It was like things just kept happening faster and faster.

The baby was facing upwards and it turned out he had his hand up against his face, so pushing was hard. I pushed for about an hour and forty five minutes and at many times wondered if I would be able to do it. Charles was fabulous, as always, and kept motivating me and really helped keep me strong. At 6:26 PM on Monday, December 1st, Jack Lewis Lindsey made his entrance into this world and our lives will never be the same.