Baby Michael

He's here! After three weeks of "maybe this is it, but wait no it's not moments" Michael finally decided that he was ready to come. Immediately. My entire labor lasted about an hour start to finish. We barely made it to the hospital.

I had yet another afternoon/evening full of contractions, but that was nothing new. They weren't developing anything resembling a consistent pattern but they were pretty painful. I went about my evening, tucked the boys into bed and was thinking about going to bed myself, annoyed that once again I was uncomfortable and disappointed that these contractions were seeming to space out and go away like all the rest.

But suddenly I had a very strong contraction and my water broke. Jim was in the bathroom shaving his head and nearly tripped over me getting out of my way. I got myself cleaned up and changed while Jim rushed to finish shaving. He mentioned something about possibly having time to take a shower but quickly changed his mind when I declared that I didn't want to go anywhere because I didn't think we would make it to the hospital. We were in the car in minutes.

The ride to the hospital was very similar to the ride to the hospital when I was in labor with Christopher. In other words, it kind of sucked. At this point, contractions were strong and really hurt. I had grabbed my iPod and listened to my Hypnobabies track for most of the ride. Not too far before reaching the hospital, I became immensely frustrated with being told that I was feeling discomfort and pressure when I really wanted to scream that, no this was legitimate pain and it really did hurt, despite what the little speakers in my ears were trying to convince me of. I threw the iPod on the floor, maybe a bit dramatically.

We finally got to the hospital(it's really not that bad of a ride, but it felt like it took forever). I have only been there once to bring Christopher in to the lab for blood work. I had called a couple of weeks prior to find out which entrance and parking lot to go through. The person I talked to neglected to inform me that the entrance is closed after 8pm. So we first pulled in, found the lot, and Jim helped me hobble to the nearest entrance. It was the wrong one and the door was locked. I told him there was no way I could walk back to the car. He ran to get the van and I sunk to the sidewalk. Yes, the sidewalk, picture that for a moment and have a good chuckle at my expense.

Jim pulled up and drove me to the next entrance, which was definitely the one I had been told to use, so he dropped me off and parked the car. I went to the door and it didn't open. Okay, I am laughing about this as I type it, but at the time, it was very much not funny. This time there was a bench at least. I sat down and decided I was not going anywhere even if it meant giving birth right there on a bench outside of the hospital.

As Jim got nearer I shouted to him that I couldn't get in. A security guard drove through the lot and Jim flagged him down. He let us in and wheeled me up to L&D.

I was brought right into a room. There was some fussing over getting me changed, I went to the bathroom, came out and climbed onto the bed. I was up on all fours and pushing. I made some comment about supposing it was too late to ask for an epidural. I was half joking, half desperately serious. One of the nurses said she didn't know, she would have to check me. Someone asked me if I could sit back, then someone asked me to stop pushing. I heard, "Is she crowning? Get the doctor in here. You need to try to stop pushing."

Finally one of the nurses said, "Just let her push." And with that, his head was out. My night nurse caught Michael and handed him to me. The doctor walked in a minute later. I guess I didn't need that monitor and hep lock after all!