Happy One Week Birthday!

Happy one week birthday to my precious baby boy! Austin and I thought it'd be fun to celebrate his first week of life with baby cupcakes, complete with a candle that we blew out together. And the timing was perfect because William was actually awake for the candle part!

I thought it'd be nice to get back to blogging and in honor of William's one week birthday, I thought I'd back up and tell you more about what happened ago one week (in two hours) ago. Do not read ahead if you don't want birth details!

Last Monday night I was restless. Austin and I generally go to bed around 10 or 10:30 (ok really we go to bed earlier but I didn't want to sound lame) but on Monday night I couldn't get to sleep until almost 11:00 - which meant it was my third night in a row of restless sleeping. Then I woke up at 2:00 and could not for the life of me fall back asleep. I tried getting up, tried turning over, drinking water, waking Austin up - nothing worked. So I stayed awake in bed from 2:00 until 6:00 when my alarm went off. I was miserable getting ready for work - and it was only my second day back! I told Austin that I had FINALLY gotten to the point that not only did I accept that William could be born on Feb 2, but I WANTED him to be. The bad part of this was that, at this point, I was just certain it wasn't going to happen.

That changed at about 10:00 when I realized that I was having contractions every 5 minutes. They stayed that steady for an hour, but then they tapered off a bit to about 7-8 minutes apart. I wasn't supposed to call the doctor unless they were consistent at 5 minutes apart and lasting one minute each, so I just continued to work (or tried to) through the contractions, just hoping they'd pick up sometime. At 11:30 my coworkers threw a baby shower (perfect timing huh?) so I tried to smile through it despite the fact that I wanted to be in the hospital working on delivering a baby!

I talked to a few people about how far apart the contractions were and spoke with the nurse once, but because they never made it back up to 5 minutes apart the nurse wanted me to keep my 4:15 appointment for that afternoon. When I got to the doctor's office the nurse took my weight, measured his heart beat - just did the general initial check-in type things. The doctor came in and wasted no time - first thing she did was check my cervix. I don't think we spoke for a full minute before she sent me to the hospital. Her words, which I'll want you to remember in a few minutes, were "You're 4 centimeters my dear, you're in labor. Go to the hospital and I'll see you there in a bit - I'm on call tonight". She left the room and I just stared at Austin in shock. True as it may be that 12 hours prior to this point I was begging to go into labor, hearing the words were just unreal. I'm going to have a baby? Really? Be a mommy? I mean I know I've been preparing for 9 months - but really??? I couldn't believe it!

We got to the hospital and got situated around 5:30. Apparently there were 4 other women who arrived within 30 minutes so the triage nurses let me know that Sue would be coming in to finish the shift, and then at shift change we'd get the nurse who'd be with us all night. Sue was NOT my friend. She started out nice enough - and I'm not too picky about doctors or nurses, but when she made it abundantly clear that she thought it was ridiculous that we were even in the hospital, Austin and I were both pretty irritated. We didn't go to the hospital on a whim or just because we felt like we should - we went to the hospital because my DOCTOR told me to. If the nurse had an issue with that, shouldn't she have been taking it up with Dr Russell rather than me? She also told me more than once that I was not having real contractions, and that the only reason Dr Russell sent me in was because I was complaining of the pain and couldn't handle it. Please remember that Dr Russell and I spoke for less than a minute at my appointment and my pain level had not made it into that brief conversation. Please also remember that I had been having contractions for 3.5 weeks, so I'm pretty sure I had the hang of it at this point. I called Dr Russell at one point to make sure there wasn't some sort of confusion, because I didn't appreciate being told that I wasn't in labor and that the doctor only sent me to the hospital essentially for pain management. She assured me that I was in labor and that because I had so much pre term labor, she anticipated that at some point things would pick up and William would be born rather quickly so she wasn't comfortable sending me home.

She's a doctor for a reason.

At 8:00 she came in and said I was 5 centimeters and that she was going to break my water. As she was going to break my water she noticed I had a contraction, and also noticed that the monitor wasn't picking them up. Thanks a lot for believing me, Sue. She recommended that if I intended to have an epidural I do it soon because you never know how quickly things will progress. And she was right! The anesthesiologist came in at 8:30 and finished his job around 9:15. At that point Sarita (Sue left sometime after 7 thankfully and was replaced by Sarita who I loved) had a few things to take care of and she finished off by checking my dilation. She said I was about 7cm, which surprised her because she still hadn't been able to get the monitor to register my contractions so she had no idea I'd go from 5 to 7 cm in an hour. I asked her what her prediction was for a birth time, knowing there was no exact science by which to predict, and she said she'd guess sometime around 1 or 2 in the morning. I said "oh, I kind of wanted it to be before midnight". She was on the left side of my bed at that point and she walked around to the right to mess with the monitor. In the time it took her to walk around the bed I said "Sarita, I feel something very odd...its weird..." She kept asking me to describe it but I couldn't, so she said she'd take a look again. Then she said "Well that little monkey! You're going to get your wish - you are 10cm!" She told me that I needed to try very hard to not push because he'd be born very soon and she needed to get the doctor back in. Dr Russell came in around 10:15 and Sarita told her that I was 10cm but that his head wasn't "there" yet, so we were still ok. As Sarita helped Dr Russell get her gown on, Dr Russell took a "peek" and said "nope, his head is right there. Ok Amanda, next time you feel like it go ahead and push. It may take awhile, I don't know, but he's right there ready to come out" A couple of minutes later I felt it again, so I pushed - and with one push he was out. I wasn't even sure what was going on and all of a sudden she was raising up this perfect little baby for me to see.

I have to say, as cliche as I know it sounds - there has never been a more incredible feeling than seeing my son for the first time. Months of dreaming of him, planning for him, praying for him and wondering what he'd look like - in one instant it was all a distant memory as he was right there in front of me. And he was more perfect that I had ever imagined he'd be. He has a full head of blonde hair, his daddy's eyes, his mommy's mouth and he is the most beautiful sight my eyes have ever seen.

We spent the next day and night in the hospital and were discharged Thursday to come home. What a surreal feeling! The last time I had been at my house I felt like I had weeks before he'd be here, yet there I was carrying him around and showing him his home. It's been a blur of a week - days and nights running together, time passing so quickly I can hardly keep up. I had no idea how wonderful this experience was going to be...and I know it has only just begun!

Austin is on paternity leave right now and will go back to work next Tuesday. I am so thankful that he has had this time off and we've been able to enjoy this quiet time as a new family of three. The extra help during the days has been great too :) My mom and Alfredo are coming to visit next Friday, then I believe Candace and Herb are coming, and after that Brandon and Dana are coming - so I know the next few weeks/months will be just as much a blur as the last week has been. I'm doing my best to relax and savor every moment - watch him make his faces, listen to his sounds, and cuddle with him as much as I can because I know that time won't stand still just because I want it to. I'll do my best to keep up with the blog, but I can't promise the frequency that I once offered - staying home with William offers much less extra time than working full time at Western Union :) I'll try to post some short, quick blogs just to keep it updated - maybe that'll be a nice compromise.

For now - here's our baby boy at one week clinching his daddy's finger as he sucks on his hand, the exact thing he did the moment he was first placed on my chest. We are in Heaven.