Wehadababy Itzaboy!

Warning:  This is going to be LONG!

I woke up at 2:13 this morning to a contraction.  I knew immediately it was the real deal because it woke me up.  Twelve minutes later I had another one.  After about an hour of timing them they went from 12 minutes apart to 7 minutes apart.  I nudged Scott to tell him what was happening, then let him go back to sleep while I shut myself into our bathroom and labored on my ball for another hour.  Suddenly the contractions jumped to 3 minutes apart, and I became very nervous.  I woke Scott again and made him get dressed.  After my panic wore off they went back to about 5 minutes apart and I relaxed a little bit.  We hung out in our room for a little while so I could make sure it really was real before heading to the hospital.  At about 5am we woke my mom (who was in town to help for this very reason), ate a bowl of cereal, Scott and my dad gave me a blessing and we headed to the hospital.

Once we got in the car my contractions slowed down to every ten minutes and I felt stupid going into the hospital because I knew they'd send me back home.  So we walked the streets alongside the hospital a little, but it was freezing cold, so we went back to the car to hang out a bit before going inside.  After about twenty minutes in the car I got a crazy contraction and decided we had to go in right then.  So we did, I got checked at triage, where they looked at me like I was a crazy person because by then, I was barely contracting anymore, and my water hadn't broken.  The nurse checked my cervix and we were both shocked to find out I was 6 cm dilated with a bulging bag of water (I was seriously expecting a 4 and an invitation to come back when it got real).  We were admitted immediately.  They assigned me a natural-birth nurse, Kristie, who was AWESOME. She was about to graduate from a midwifery school, and was a huge advocate in helping me get the birth I wanted.  I felt very blessed to have her.  She put in a hep-lock IV (the compromise the doc and I agreed on), got me a ball and gave us permission to walk the halls because I was nervous that labor was starting to stall since the contractions has slowed so much.

Side note:  Did I mention that we were in a hurry?  Scott had a school final scheduled at 12:30 in the afternoon (it was about 7:30 or 8:00 at this time).  We couldn't reschedule, and he had to take that test, even if it meant missing the birth of our child!  We had given ourselves a deadline of 11:00 am.  The baby needed to be born by that time.

Anyway, we roamed the halls for a while and contractions picked back up again, which was awesome, but most of the time I felt very little pain.  While the contractions hurt, they were not the intensity I expected and I had a hard time believing that I was progressing at all, and started thinking the nurse had lied about the 6 cm.  It was weird.

At 9:00 am my doctor broke my water.  This was not something I wanted to do because I was really looking forward to no interventions.  However, I wanted Scott to be there for the birth and knew it would speed things up, so I agreed for the greater good.  At the time I was dilated to 7 cm. I entered transition, although it didn't seem like it because it still wasn't horribly painful, but the contractions were very near constant.  Scott, was amazing.  He applied a TON of counter pressure to my back the rest of the labor.  It really helped deal with the pain, and we still joked and giggled the entire time.

I knew it was getting close to pushing time, because the pressure in my bottom and hips started to get intense and I moaned through the contractions, but the urge to push didn't come.  I labored standing the whole time (Because when I got on my back I couldn't handle it), except during transition when Kristie recommended that I get on my hands and knees.  It helped, but the urge still didn't come.  She then recommended I sit on the toilet to help bring the baby down.  She and Scott helped me sit on it, and then she left the room for a minute.  It was literally about 3 seconds from the moment I sat on that toilet to needing to push.  That's when I got a little nervous, and almost started to cry.  Scott helped me back to the bed where I got on all fours again and he called the nurse back in.  She and the doctor came running.

They asked if I wanted to push in that position, but I said no, so Kristie recommended my side, because I was dreading laying on my back again.  I got to my right side, pulled my legs way up and began pushing (without anyone counting to ten, I just did it when my body told me to).  The doctor gave Scott some gloves and he got into position to catch the baby.  I remember asking if they even saw the head when I took my second or third push(I was still questioning my own progress I guess), and they all laughed and said yes.  Hearing that gave me the strength to push again, and the head came out.  They told me to stop because the umbilical cord was wrapped twice around the neck, they removed it and I pushed again.  The shoulders got stuck, just for a few seconds.  I screamed out in pain, "Get it out! Get it out! Get it out!", pushed again, the shoulders came out and our baby boy slid into his daddy's loving hands. It was 9:53am.  We made it before our deadline and it was beautiful.

This is our last baby, and I was really determined to get the birth that I wanted this time.  I am so happy with this experience.  It was amazing.  I don't know if it was the hypnobirthing or lack of pitocin, but I seriously didn't have a lot of pain, and never EVER thought that I couldn't do it.  Most of the time I was questioning whether or not it was the real deal.  I feel so overwhelmed and blessed that everything went so well.  What a great day.

We named our surprise little boy, Malcolm Rocco (Rocco is our male version of Rochelle, so our first baby was named after daddy, and our last was named after mommy).  He weighed 7 lbs 11.8 oz, and was 21 inches long.  Our biggest baby by far.  He is beautiful and perfect and already nursing like a champ.  We are so happy.

Thanks to both of our parents....My parents who came from St. George and actually got to be around when Malcolm finally came (5 days late!), Ross who let Marde leave him for 5 days to come help out, and of course to Marde, who missed everything because Malcolm is stubborn.  We are blessed to have all of you.

And now, the best part....PICTURES!