He's Here! - Birth Story

Benjamin Robert was born on January 5th at 1:55AM!!! Labor went really well, I was very fortunate and could not be happier with my birth experience.

The Birth Story (this is not horribly graphic but still may be TMI for some peeps)
I was in labor all day Wednesday, but not very painful at all, and contractions were somewhat irregular so I was not sure it was the real thing. When I got home aound 3:45pm they got slightly worse and regular (7 minutes apart), and then stayed that way until DH got home around 6pm. We sat for a bit, he walked the dogs, and then I went up for a shower. After the shower the contractions worsened significantly. I ended up getting sick/vomiting. DH came upstairs to clean it up and I sat down in a camping chair in front of our computer. A few minutes later my water broke... and boy there is a lot of it! DH and I could not believe how much there was! It was actually fortunate where I was sitting and all because its a cheap chair and it is water resistant material, so the water pooled instead of going all over the floor.  DH immediately started rushing around - put the dogs up, got me clean clothes and such, packed the hospital bag, loaded the car. I got dressed and gathered myself and we headed down to the car, and off to the hospital. I got "checked in" around 8:20pm and was 5cm dilated with contractions about 3 minutes apart. I refused the epidural when I got there and did not have to refuse again, and hardly even thought of it. I think that once I got to the hospital I probably spent 80% of the time with my eyes closed. The time line gets really iffy at this point for me. It went so fast though. I had a lot of back labor. After a while on the yoga ball and then in a rocking chair I really needed to use the restroom, but I know this can be a "trick" your body plays so I asked my nurse and they checked me out, I was up to 7 cm. I went to try and use the bathroom and this posture worsened the sped up the contractions significantly. We moved back to the bed and it seems like only 2-3 contractions later they were setting me up to push. Those were the worst though - the contractions when I wanted to push but they said I was not ready. Once we started pushing it was much easier. Painful but pain that I knew was productive and had more control over. I pushed for awhile, but neither DH or I really know how long. It was longer than they expected, they kept saying how close to done I was but it just kept going, turns out the baby was sort of stuck crowning and did not want to come the last inch. When he did come it was so sudden, I thought I would be pushing forever and then he was there and they put him on my chest. It was weird, even before they said anything or I could see anything I just knew it was a boy. It is an amazing experience and I am really proud of myself for doing it the way I intended and so happy it all went to smoothly.

Here is the beautiful results: