I know this was suppose to be posted yesterday but I have some family in town and I didn’t get to it but this is a picture of Josiah at 1 month.
I wanted to also post the story of Josiah’s birth today. The good the, the bad, and the ugly. Warning: this will be a pretty long post.
Josiah was due on Friday June 20th. I started experiencing some contractions on the evening of the 19th and went to bed hoping that this was the real thing. I woke up around midnight and went to the bathroom. I woke up again at around 2:00am and went to the bathroom again. Only this time I could not calm my mind down enough to go back to sleep. So about 4:30am I got up and went down stairs to the couch where I read some and still tried to sleep without success. Shane got up around 6 and we talked about going on into Little Rock so we would be closer to the hospital. I was having contractions about every 10 min. but nothing very intense. Around 9am we dropped Elijah off at the planned location and headed to Little Rock. We ate breakfast (probably shouldn’t have done that) then we went to a few stores to do some walking and sitting. The contractions died out for awhile and I was a little frustrated. Around 3pm we went to Sonic to get a drink and I was having a contraction about every 8 min. We decided to go to the hospital before heading the 1 hour 15 min drive back home. I was there over an hour but didn’t have much of anything happen and was still at about 1 cm. dilated and they sent me home with the directions of when to come back.
We headed home around 5pm and I was emotionally a wreck. I even told Shane that I was a failure and that my body did not know how to birth a baby (I was induced the first time). We picked up Elijah and went to McDonalds for a quick easy dinner. My mom arrived into town around 8pm. I was having contractions about every 6 min. but they were still bearable and not to the magic number of 5 min. Around 10pm Shane told me to go lay down and try to sleep (I had been up since 2am). When I tried to sleep the contractions would wake me up and they were starting to get harder but still not 5 min. (10 min laying down, 6 up and about). Shane called the hospital and they said to use a heating pad and tylenol. That didn’t help very much. About 11pm I was hurting and going to the bathroom between every contraction and we determined that my water may have broke. So Shane called the hospital again and they said to come on in. We headed out of Heber around 12am and my contractions got much worse very quickly. Shane made the 1 hr 15 min drive in about an hour the whole time me being very loud contracting every 3-4 min. with 1 min in between (Shane watched the clock that thought never even crossed my mind). When we arrived I was soaked with amniotic fluid. Shane called as we pulled in and they told him to take me to the ER. He wheeled me in on a wheel chair about 1am.
I made a huge scene through the ER. Shane said you could tell by the look on people’s face they knew I had jumped to the top of the priority list and they had moved down. They got me to the maternity ward (one floor up) and in a room. At that time it seemed to me like there were herds of people coming into my room. They got me in a gown and in the bed. They managed to get the contraction monitor on me but I was moving too much for them to get the monitor on me that watched the baby vitals so one nurse tried to hold it on me. My nurse checked me and told me I was at 8 cm., but I heard 3, and when he asked if I wanted an epidural I said yes (with a little more enthusiasm than that). Shane told me later he thought I was crazy for saying yes when I was already at 8 cm., he also told me that the anesthesiologist was actually in the room. But within 10 minutes of that the nurse checked again and he told me that I was at 10 cm. and wanted to know if I had the urge to push. I really didn’t know what the urge to push would feel like so I tried pushing.
They pulled the first doctor they could find to the room. She wasn’t on call for my doctor, but she worked for the time being. I pushed and yes I did have this happen to me (I warned them before hand and no one made a big deal about it). I think I pushed through 2-3 contractions and all of a sudden they told me to stop because the head was out. Then Josiah was placed on my stomach. He was born at 1:31am, just 30 min. after arriving at the hospital.
It was a crazy experience but I am so glad I got to have it drug free and the recovery has been much easier. It was so nice to get up out of the labor bed and walk to the bathroom myself. It didn’t seem like the stay in the hospital was very long because of such a short period of time before the birth. It went well and I didn’t even miss a meal. It was a wild ride but I wouldn’t change it a bit.
