The last weeks of pregnancy feel like eternity. From the start I was convinced she was going to come early, well 37 weeks came and went. She was full term and making no leaps to introduce herself to the world. At 37 weeks I was measuring 2cm and by 38 had only gained 1 cm. Since both us and the doctor were worried about me delivering due to her size (at 36 weeks she was measuring over 7 pounds) we decided to schedule and induction for May 5th. The doctor said I wouldn’t make it till then, especially since she had stripped my membranes, but she had said that the previous week so I had little faith in her estimations.

I decided to go to work on Friday since sitting at home wasn’t going to make her come any faster. Once I got home I lounged on the couch with Krystal who prompted me to go lay in bed for a nap – I’m so thankful I did or I would’ve never looked at our couch the same. Around 5 pm I woke with the sudden urge to pee and stood up to my water breaking. I yelled for Krystal and for some reason she never comes fast enough when I really need her- by that I mean it took her 20 seconds instead of 5 second to get to the bedroom. The next 30 min were a buzz of us wondering if we go to the hospital calling family and notifying them it was “go time” and grabbing the hospital bags. Oddly enough my contractions didn’t start till we were en route to the hospital and boy did they start!

Once arriving at the ER we waited 20 or so minutes to be taken up to labor and delivery where we arrived right before shift change for the nurses. Although this seems like a bad thing we actually got extremely lucky because I would not have been able to handle the amount of struggle bus of the nurse going off shift. Our nurse that came on shift was the absolute sweetest and calmest person and not one bit frazzled. The intake paperwork and labs took a little time but thankfully they got me an epidural pretty quickly since I was already at 6cm. For most of the pregnancy this was my biggest fear about childbirth since I knew all along I wanted to be selective about other types of pain relievers but was absolutely going to get the epidural. It really wasn’t that bad and the anesthesiologist was great by talking me through each step before he did it. The worst part was “the cramp” but it quickly began taking away the pain of contractions. My legs weren’t completely numb and I did have some control over them but the nurse got me a peanut pillow to help move the baby down since walking around wasn’t really an option. I figured, just a small pillow or ball right? This “peanut pillow” is like a giant exercise ball in the shape of a peanut. It was massive but it seemed to do its job. The doctor wanted to give me some Pitocin to help speed up the contractions however we opted not to and let everything occur on it’s own speed.

At this point we had a waiting room full of people who would come in sporadically and brought Krystal some food-which she ate in the waiting room because I was restricted to ice chips. My biggest regret throughout laboring was that I had forgotten to take all my medicine that morning which included something for my acid reflux. It was torture, they tried to give me something but it only worked for a few minutes. I threw up about 6-7 times during labor several of which while I was pushing. Let me tell you after not having eaten since lunch it was not fun…

I started pushing around 11p.m. What they don’t tell you is you push for quiet sometime with just the nurse till the baby is down far enough AND THEN the doctor and everyone else come for the actual delivery. We had to have a few extra people in the delivery room because our little pooper had pooped in the womb (muchonum). Although this isn’t serious it can cause infection and get into the babies airway. This meant that she had to be suctioned and checked quickly after birth which delayed skin to skin for a few minutes. To avoid getting to much TMI, I’ll skip to the part where she was born at 1:08 a.m. However, I will say the nurse asked me if I wanted a mirror and I would highly recommend it to any expecting moms who are considering it, it was definitely the coolest thing to watch.

Because of the muchonium and because I had an extremely short umbilical cord we were not able to delay the cord cutting as much as we would like. Krystal did get to cut the cord (which squirted blood all over her – at least she had a little of the dirty work). And we also had to delay skin to skin. Once she was cleaned up a bit and checked out to ensure she was healthy I finally got to hold our beautiful little girl and it was priceless.

We were able to do a delayed bath till the following day so family came in around 3:00am to meet her after all the medical team had done their job and we had some time with her.

Although I was in labor for 8 hours it felt like time stood still and we were only there for a few hours. Krystal was my rock every time I would start to get scared or emotional she was right there to cheer me on, wipe my tears, and help me get just a little closer to meeting our Amelia. I could not have asked for a better support person (as the hospital would say), wife, or companion to hold my hand throughout the beautiful but hard time. Becoming a mother is no easy feat y’all but it is worth it!