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My pregnancy went very easy, my only complaint was the heartburn I endured for the last 8 weeks. I even had heartburn during labor (I am so grateful for Mylanta!!) I gained about 40 pounds from my first doctors visit to the day he was born (of which I have already lost 30!). Dalton was head down since about July and he liked to kick me in the ribs on a daily basis. The orignal "due date" was September 18th, but those are just guesses, babies come when they are ready. So the 18th came & went with no dialation or effacement. I had a Non-Stress Test (NST) on my due date and it showed that Dalton was doing just fine. The doctor scheduled me for an ultrasound (my second) a week after my due date (September 23rd) This ultrasound showed us that the baby is a Boy and that he was about 8 pounds 12 ounces. Some of you may be thinking 'you waited 40 weeks to find out what baby is why find out from this ultrasound'. Well I figured since I was so close to my due date & getting anxious (as were our families & friends) that this little bit of information would make things easier. And maybe I would be able to get some shopping in before he was born. My best friend Lisa came with me for the ultrasound so she was the second to know Dalton was a boy. I called Mike as soon as we got home and he was in his glory!!! A little boy!!! And to make things even nicer, his best friend's wife is expecting a little boy in December. So just like Mike & Scott (the best friend) there will be another set of trouble makers!!! Anyway, Mike got home from work on the 23rd in the BEST mood that I had seen him in, in a LONG time. We decided since we got such great news (that the baby was healthy & on it's way, not that he's a boy) that we would go out for dinner. This turned out to be a great idea, since I went into labor that night! Around 10:30pm on September 23rd, we were watching TV when I got up and felt a "trickle." I immediately ran to the bathroom telling Mike that I thought my water broke. I'm still not sure whether or not that was my water breaking a little, or just the "bloody show" but about 11ish I started having mild contractions. In the begining they felt just like what everyone said they would feel like, menstral cramps. We called the doctors office figuring they would say stay home until the contractions were 5 minutes apart, but since I thought that my water had broken, they said come in. We got to St. Peters hospital in New Brunswick (the BEST hospital) and checked in. The doctor examined me to find I was about 2 centimeters dialated and 50% effaced. My "bag of waters" had not completely broken so they did an ultrasound to see how much "water" I had lost. It wasn't much, but since I was already at the hospital and a week late the doctor decided I should stay. (He also knows I'm a wimp and was gonna be asking for pain meds soon!) It was about 1:30am when he told us to stay to try to get some rest and he would check back later. For the next 4 hours I had mild to strong contractions, sometimes they would wake me up, sometimes they wouldn't. Needless to say I didn't get too much sleep. (Mike did, the brat! LOL) I used the breathing techniques I learned in my Lamaze class to help get through the stronger ones & I have to say it did help. About 5:30am the doctor came back and officially broke my "water" in hopes that it will speed up labor since I was only at 3 centimeters. For the next 2 hours the pain got worse, I only remember this because Mike was so good at feeling bad for me & trying to keep me as relaxed as possible. When they break your water it feels like you are urinating uncontrollably. But it didn't hurt a bit. At 7:30am they give me a shot of Demerol. This made me feel drunk & helped me relax some more. I think they also gave it to me so I wouldn't freak out when they said they were going to have to give me pictocin to speed up the labor some more! But it helped me rest, which I hadn't been able to do for a while. At 9:30 Dr. Pang came in and administered my epidural!!!!! (I almost kissed him!) As I said before, I don't deal well with pain so I had never wavered on my decision to have an epidural. I'm also a wimp when it comes to needles, but I never felt the needle go in, I believe they numb the area first. So trust me, it wasn't that bad at all! The epidural is a wonderful thing, because of it I slept from 10am to 1ish. Mike said my contractions were coming one right after another, as I was fast asleep! The nurse woke me up about 1ish to check my progress, when I saw blood, I panicked a little, but my nurse Nicole (who was WONDERFUL) said that it was a GOOD thing,it may mean I am complelety dialated. So she checked & called the doctor. I was at 10 centimeters!!! TIME TO START PUSHING!!! This got a little scary for a little while, they kept saying they were going to have to turn down the epidural so I could feel the contractions to push. I thought this meant that I was going to be able to feel the contractions in their full force & feel the baby coming out (I told you I was a wimp). But that never happened . They did turn down the epidural, but since I was "pushing like a pro" (the nurses exact words!) I was able to push the baby out in about an hour. Pushing was the hardest part, at times I felt like I was going to vomit. For those who haven't been through it, you push like you would push to have a bowel movement, but you push 3 times with each contraction. Each push lasts to the count of ten, (the only time I yelled at Mike was to count faster... well I didn't really yell & he still said no LOL) the 3rd one is the hardest to last until the count of 10. By about 2:30 the nurses said the baby's head was crowning and asked if I wanted to look. Up until that point I had no intentions of using the mirror to look at the birth, but I wanted to see his head crown. So they brought the mirror over for me to look, and then I had them take it away. My eyes were closed when I was pushing, so I wouldn't have seen anything anyway. I know at some point the doctor said she was going to have to give me an episiotomy (eeek) so after she gave me a local anastetic, she cut to give the baby more room to come out. When the baby's head started to come out it felt like being at ground zero of an explosion without the pain. It is such an intense feeling, it's so hard to describe but nonetheless, it is a GREAT feeling. After his head came out the doctor told me to stop pushing... the umbillical cord was wrapped around his neck. She quickly unwrapped it and out came the rest of our beautiful baby boy Dalton Lee!!! The doctor wiped him off a little bit & placed him on my stomach. The emotions that ran through me when I saw this little creature that had been growing inside of me for 9 months!!! He was covered in blood & all the other yucky stuff that babies are covered with but yet he was the most beautiful and awe inspiring thing I had ever seen. I said hello to my little boy, counted his fingers and toes, checked his ears (my dad had HUGE ears that stuck out when he was little) and then asked the nurses to get him off my stomach (it HURT)!!! A few moments later, after the doctor stitched up my episiotomy, I pushed the placenta out. Mike was a little nervous about picking up the baby from his warming tray, so I asked our nurse to pick up Dalton and hand him to Mike. I wish I was able to take a picture of him holding his son. I have never seen so much love and admiration that I saw on Mike's face the first time he held our son. We were truly in love with each other & our son. Dalton weighed in at 9 pounds and 21 inches long. He scored 9's on both his APGAR tests and after about an hour of bonding & getting to know our son, Mike & the nurses took Dalton down to the nursery for a bath and some other tests. I honestly believe that the weeks after giving birth were harder then the birth itself. If you have an episotomy, make sure you take several sitz baths every day to help heal, it really does work. Also, if you can, relax and enjoy your new baby as much as possible. Time passes a lot faster then you realize. Being a mom is the best feeling in the world and Dalton is just wonderful.
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