Well after all my griping, last Sunday night once again saw me pacing around the house with some rather painful and regular contractions. Around 2 in the morning, I decided that they were regular enough, painful enough and not going away enough that we ought to head into the hospital. Unfortunately we chose a busy night at the labor and delivery department.... When we got there they took us into a closet sized room, with an uncomfortable bed for me and a small hard chair for Dan, we waited an hour or so before someone could get there to check me and see where I was at. I was between 3-4 cm dilated, they decided to wait a couple hours and check me again. Dan stretched out on the floor to try and sleep a little and i tried to doze between the contractions and the worry. Before the nurse came back, Dan had to leave to take the girls to school, while he was gone, she came back and found that I hadn't progressed at all. She said that they couldn't admit me. I explained to her that my labors go fast and that if these contractions weren't real, I wasn't going to be able to tell the difference when they started being real. She nicely told me that I could walk around the hospital if I wanted. Well, I still had to wait for Dan to be done dropping off the girls, so I went and walked around and had a bit of breakfast. I went back up to tell them I was going home and they informed me that they had changed their mind and that they were going to admit me and start some pitocin and get this going. The only place they had room for us was in the high risk area so the nurse was excited to have an easy delivery ahead of her. They started the epidural and the pitocin. The on-call doc came in to check on me and found that I hadnt progressed much and for the next couple of hours, I didn't see anyone but my hubby and my nurse. At this point a couple of residents came in and checked me and found me dilated to 8 cm. They set up the equipment and I started pushing. Less than 15 minutes later, we had a new healthy baby boy. Unfortunately for me the epidural was really mostly just working on one side, so I felt the whole thing. It was probably a good thing that they didn't let me hold him for very long before taking him to be cleaned and checked, between 36+ hours with out sleep and the fatigue of labor, I was shaking like a leaf. By the time I finally got to hold him, It was so bad that I threw up all over myself and him too, now of course with my stomach empty, it was even worse, plus they wouldn't give me and pain meds until they were sure I could keep it down.... Anyway, I finally got my baby boy - clean and healthy and all we had to do was wait for a room to move us into.
We have named him James Allen Jones, he was born at 3:34 on January 23rd weighing in at a whopping 8 lb 10 oz (making him my biggest baby yet!) and 20 inches long. He is a remarkably calm baby - he hardly fussed while they were cleaning him off, in fact he hardly fussed the whole time we were there.
Somewhere in all the insanity, my mom had arrived, she came by, as well as the family in the area to see us. Dan brought the other kids in to see him - Evie is just enamored with her baby brother and all the kids have been very sweet and helpful. We spent the next couple days sleeping, feeding and recovering, before coming home on Wed afternoon. I made the mistake of trying to jump back into life and found that I really needed to slow down and take it easy.
James has a bit of jaundice and we have been getting him poked to check him out for the last couple of days, but it's looking like all is well and he probably won't have to go under the lights. Now I just need to learn to put him down - it's just so hard when he's so sweet and snuggly!!
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