Jay

If you didn't already know, I did not have a very enjoyable pregnancy with Jay. The whole last month seemed to be just awful. I didn't make any plans for the month of December cause I knew that as soon as I did, the baby would come. Now I look back and wish I had made some.

I had contractions (which I don't think were Braxton-Hicks at all!!!) almost everyday until he was born, starting at about 37 weeks. At least 3 times I thought they were the real thing. The last two I even alerted my doula because they were so regular and seemed to be going some where. Which they didn't. He was 4 days late. Every night for the last week and a half before he was born I would have regular contractions and would go to bed expecting to wake up in a few hours and go the to hospital. Every morning that I woke up to no contractions I just wanted to cry.

The only day I had plans was Christmas day. The plan was to go to Hael and Krista's for dinner. I thought for sure that because I really wanted to do this, that the baby would come. Instead I woke up in the middle of the night throwing up and wasn't really able to do anything because of some 24 hour stomach bug. And I was so huge.

That was Saturday. Sunday I stayed home and rested and went to bed again with contractions only to wake up a couple of hours later cause they weren't going away. I didn't want to wake up Nick or do anything else in case the just went away again and I was still pregnant. Finally at about 1:30 I did wake him up and said the magic words, "We need to go to the hospital." Called my parents and sister cause Shannon wanted to be with me while I delivered. Called my doula and said we really are going this time. Then she called me as we were on the way to say that another mother of hers was in labor too and she wanted to go with her cause she was trying to do a VBAC. I totally understood.

Got to the hospital and the walk to the room seemed like the longest of my life. About the only thing I noticed was that it was about 2:30 when I got in there. She said that I was about a 6. The monitored me for about 15 min and then took off the belts cause that's what we had discussed with my doctor. Then it was all about getting through each contraction. I guess I was getting loud cause the nurses came in and said by the sound of things I was getting close. Checked me again and said I was about an 8 and my water hadn't broken yet. She wanted me the let them know as soon as it did. Seems like just a few minutes later that it did. All I could say was "Water. Broke" so Nick let them know. They came back in and wanted to get the heartbeat. Just as she was about to I had a really huge contraction, so she said she wait for it to be done. Then I had another really big one and said I needed to push. All the nurses were telling me not to, probably cause the doctor wasn't there but was no possible way that I couldn’t. Everything felt like it was happening so fast and when I pushed with my third contraction I thought that if felt really odd so I looked down to see a head! And of course the next push he zoomed right out. Yeah, 4 pushes. No doctor.

So Jay Samuel was born as 4:34 in the morning, two hours after I had gotten to the room in the hospital. He was 7 lbs. 1 oz. and 19 inches long. I forgot what his head measured but he was only in the 5th percentile. That probably helped him come so fast.

I have loved every minute since he was born. He is such a cute, wiggly, little baby. He moves and moves. In fact he is almost crawling. I wish he would wait till he is older but he seems to be in some kind of hurry. I can't wait to show him off to our family out west. Especially his grandmothers.