He's here!

Baby J has made his debut!

Wednesday night at about 10:30 I began having contractions. Since I had been having contractions for a while I didn't think much of it at first.

When they hadn't let up by midnight, I began to wonder. They became quite painful over the next few hours. I used the breathing tecniques I had been practicing and even sat in the warm tub for relief. By doing these things I was able to cope for few hours on my own while hubby slept.

By about 5 am I woke hubby and asked him to start timing the contractions. They were 6 minutes apart. I had been told to wait until contractions were 5 minutes apart, but being that we are so far from the hospital, we decided to leave at 6am.

At 7:30 I was admitted. I was 4 cm dilated, 100% effaced and baby was at 0 station.

I labored until 5pm with no medication. At 5pm I had progressed to 7cm. At this point I requested an epidural. By 6pm I was numb to the pain! I requested a low dose epi and so the anesthesiologist obliged. He started me on a high dose and said that it would wear off in a few hours and when it did, the low dose he programmed would kick in.

For the next 4 hours I relaxed and waited. I slowly began to get feeling back in my legs, but the epi was still taking the edge off the contractions.

At 10pm I was 8cm. My water still had not broken. Since I had already gotten so far on my own, I asked the midwife if she could break my water to possibly speed up the last 2cm. Keep in mind it was 10pm on Thursday, the 30th. I was desperate to not have a Halloween baby. so my water was broken then. Unfortunately there was thick meconium in the fluid, which meant I would not have the baby handed to me immediately after birth.

At 11:30pm I was 9cm. Now I knew I was going to have a Halloween baby.

At this point I stopped watching clock. The high dose of epi was completely wore off by now and I had only the low dose to get me through. well, the pain was pretty much unbearable. I hit the self administer button for more epi probably 5-10 times in a row but it did nothing!

The good thing was, I knew when it was time to push. I called the nurse and she said the baby's head was right there and ran to get my midwife.

When my midwife came in i wanted to push immediately. The urge to push was unmistakeable and unrelenting.

With each contraction I pushed three times. I felt my baby's head come out and the rest of him just after the 4th contraction. After only about 10 minutes total of pushing, my baby was here!

Baby J was born October 31, 2008 at 1:12am weighing 6lbs 7 oz and 18 inches long. Only a one ounce difference between him and Gigi.

The meconium in the end had no effect him and his apgar scores were 9 and 9.

Yes, I was in pain - but it was all worth it! I had atempted a vbac and was succesful!

I'll post more later along with some pics of my little man.