Holden's Birth Story

I had my 40 week appt on Friday the 27th...no change, which I wasn't really surprised about since my contractions that week had pretty much stopped. She did strip my membranes again with the hopes it would put me into labor...which it didn't :(

So Saturday we woke up and headed to our state fair...I was determined to eat/walk Holden out. We only stayed a few hours and I really could have sworn I was going into labor...my contractions were so painful but once we got home they stopped. Boo! BUT I got the BEST EVER surprise later that day. My dad is currently living in Florida while he is undergoing his chemo treatments & I knew he couldn't come back up here because he has been so sick from the chemo. Well my mom & sister came over in the afternoon and handed me the phone because my dad wanted to talk to me. As I am on the phone with him, the doorbell rings....it was my dad!!!! He said he couldn't miss his grandson's birth...it truly meant more to me than he will ever know.

On to Sunday [the day!!!]...we spent the day just hanging out as we knew it was officially our last day as our little family of 3 [induction was set for Monday at 9:30am]. We put Henry to bed around 7 then just relaxed and watched TV before trying to settle in for the night. Around 8:30 I started to have all sorts of crazy contractions and we officially started timing them at 8:56 [I have no idea why I remember the exact time]. They were about 5-8 minutes apart. I called Labor & Delivery and they said I could either come in or labor at home for a little awhile. After about an hour more of contractions we decided to get ready to head to the hospital- I was not about to have my baby at home or in the car!

We called my parents to let them know what was going on...Ryan's parents are temporarily living with us until they find a house so we woke them up to let them know. I went in and kissed Henry goodbye- which was WAY harder than I thought it would be. And we were off to the hospital. We got all checked in and settled into our room & they checked me around 11:30 and I was 5 cm!!! It was all happening so fast!

I requested an epidural after a few hours of laboring on my own. To my surprise...it didn't work. They had to come in and try again...and it didn't work again. I was seriously in the worst pain of my life and the nurses started talking about trying the whole thing without any meds...I was freaking out.
They finally came in a 3rd time and did the epidural again as well as some other procedure where they injected the numbing stuff right into my spinal fluid- I can't remember for the life of me what it is called or if that is really what they did. Anyways, it worked instantly and I was in HEAVEN!

Shortly after I was totally numb, the dr came in to break my water...thankfully I didn't feel it and also Holden had not had a bowel movement. Henry did & I didn't get to hold him for about 20 minutes after he was born. I was pretty excited that Holden would get to be placed on me right away after birth! It was only a few more hours until I was full dilated and ready to start pushing.

This is the BEST part...so the nurses wanted me to do a practice push to see how I could get things moving. One push and they ran to get the dr because he was coming...fast. 4 contractions later [25 minutes total] and Holden Jon was born!!! I can honestly say it was literally pain free- I was still completely numb and didn't feel a thing!

I still can't believe I am a mom to two little boys...we are soaking up every moment because it won't be like this for long...