Happy Birthday To My First Son: A Birth Story

Today my first baby turns six years old and I can hardly believe it. It feels like it was just yesterday that I was bringing him home.

It all started in October of 2003, when baby fever hit me....and it hit me HARD. I told my husband (now my EX-husband) that I wanted a baby and he was totally on board, so we got to it. Next month when I missed my period (I am very regular) I knew I was "knocked up"! It was November at that point and we wanted to wait until Christmas to surprise our parents with the news. I am NOT good at keeping secrets, especially something major like that, so it was a tough month, but I managed to keep quiet and both our sets of parents were THRILLED.

Anyways, I had an awesome pregnancy. I had no morning sickness at all, and I was just a little tired during my first trimester and at the end of the pregnancy. I worked full time back then, so that probably contributed majorly to the fact that I was tired a lot. Other than that, it was the best I'd ever felt.

I remember going to my 20 week ultrasound. I was all ready to find out boy or girl. Yes, I wanted to know...neutral babies in yellow are not my style. So, we get there and no matter what I did, he wouldn't open his legs and let the tech see, so I left the hospital in tears and wasn't able to get another ultrasound scheduled for two weeks. Luckily my OB/GYN is super cool and he "made up" a reason for me to have another one since my insurance wouldn't have covered it. So, when it came time for that appointment, I ate a ton of sugar, drank soda and did some jumping jacks to make sure he was awake...and we got the good news that he was a boy!

I don't know if this has happened to any of you, but I am guessing it has....for my entire pregnancy, not only was everyone under the sun trying to touch my tummy...I mean even strangers at the store (weird), but everyone had a labor horror story and thought it appropriate to share with me, a nervous first time mom. Bitches.

Then, nine days early, about 1 am on a Sunday night (well, actually it was Monday morning), I felt an odd trickle of liquid, that I was pretty sure wasn't supposed to be happening. It was a few dribbles every few minutes, and I wasn't sure if it was my water breaking or not, because it wasn't one big gush as I'd expected. Finally I woke up my hubs and told him that I'd been "leaking" a little bit for the past 15 minutes and he told me to put on a pad (a maxi pad) and put a towel down on the bed. I figured he was right and since it was the middle of the night, I decided to try and get some sleep. No sooner did I put that towel on my bed and sit down did that BIG (and I do mean BIG) gush I'd been expecting happen. Luckily between my pad and the fact the bathroom was right next to my bedroom, I made it to the potty and didn't make any kind of mess. Dodged a bullet there.

Anyways, I wasn't in labor....at all, so I decided to wake up my poor OB/GYN (at 1:30 am) and tell him what had happened. I figured he was gonna send me to the hospital, which he of course did, so I made myself a nice little snack because I knew they wouldn't let me eat once I got there, and then I headed over to the hospital, which is probably about 20 minutes away.

So there I was hanging out at the hospital for hours on end, on IV antibiotics, until they decided to start inducing me around noon the next day. Sidenote, I was STARVING by that point and ice chips certainly weren't doing the trick. Anywho, I was having mild contractions by the time they gave me the Pitosin to induce me, but once they gave it to me, the contractions slowed down. They picked up a few hours later and around 6 pm and I had my epidural, which was heaven on earth. I'm sorry if I offend anyone here, but I think it's completely insane not to take an epidural. It was so beautiful that I was able to take a nap for a few hours until they woke me up and told me it was time to start pushing (which was around 11 pm at that point). If you're keeping track here, yes we are talking 20 hours later from the time when my water broke.

I literally felt nothing from my belly button down, so when they were nagging me endlessly to push, apparently I wasn't doing it hard enough, and the pushing nonsense took over an hour. And pushing is tiring. That is until my doctor came in and told me if I didn't pop him out on the next push, he was prepping me for a C-section. Sure enough, that did the trick and at 12:15 am, my perfect baby was born. And he was perfect. I was super happy about finally meeting my baby, but elated over the fact that my labor/delivery was a breeze. I never even felt him pop out. The recovery, even better.

Now here we are six years later, and anyone who has kids of their own knows how fast it goes by (sob, sob). I wish I could freeze time, but I guess I'll just settle for as much time with him as I can get before he grows up.

My second son is also an August baby, but the labor/delivery and especially the recovery wasn't so easy. Stay tuned for that on August 16th.