Sydney's birth story is more or less in my personal journal so I never put it on the blog. Perhaps we'll give it a go for Holden's story since it's much simpler.
In reality, I could probably sum up my delivery with Holden in about 2 sentences.
We'll stretch it out a little more for dramatic effect.
Friday
10:00 am- Weekly OB check. No dilating. No nothing. No signs of early delivery.
Sunday
7:00 pm- Parents over for dinner. "I wouldn't mind having the baby early just so long as it doesn't happen this week and keep Jericho from going to Rob's wedding." [Rob=Jericho's BFF and he's in the wedding].
Monday
12:20 am- Woke up yet again to discomfort and random contractions. [Been happening for a couple of weeks].
1:00 am- Go online and re-read "real" versus "fake" contractions. Concluded still fell into "fake" classification. Cursed at fake contractions for not letting me sleep.
1:00-3:00 am- Awake... time for cereal. Remember after I poured the milk that there's ice cream in the freezer. Blast!
3:30- Sydney wakes up. Cause that's what she does now. Feed and play with Sydney. Put her back to sleep.
4:00- Call midwife on call with explanation of mystery contractions. "Take a bath." "A what?"
4:15- Take bath for 45 minutes. Woke up Jericho to update and explain why I was taking a bath at 4:00 in the morning. Read book. Timed contractions. Amazed I was able to fit in the bathtub with minimal water displacement.
5:00- Contractions even out. Call midwife. Leave message.
5:00-7:00- No call back from midwife. Contractions further apart and inconsistent but get more painful and like I could pee fire. Half-heartedly start packing my hospital bag, tell Jericho to do the same.
7:00- Call back midwife.
7:00-9:00- No call back. Put friend on alert to watch Sydney for the day. Put on makeup in preparation for gross post-delivery pictures.
10:00- Call midwife. Talk to her this time. Tells me to come into the hospital just to get things checked out [since office is closed due to holiday] and since my contractions are so... whatever.
12:00- Get to hospital. Check in. Meet with midwife. Checks my progress [Most painful part of the entire delivery. Imagine getting a tooth pulled via your sphincter]. Turns out I walked in there at a 5. "Good. If you'd said I was only at like a 1 and sent me home, I would have been so pissed." Smile at the comments of my obvious high pain tolerance.
1:30- Get epidural [b/c I'm not that tough]. Broke water. Dilated to 7/8. Let me sleep some with my happy, happy epidural. Jericho runs home to get all the stuff we didn't pack. Frown at my ugly toes that never got their pre-delivery pedicure.
4:00- Check back. Dilated to 10. Wait it out a little because baby is still sitting high. "Page me when you start feeling pressure."
5:00- Can't feel a single thing. Check to make sure baby hasn't come out without me knowing.
5:30ish- Check back again. Baby time. "Push right here." "Where?" Laugh because still can't feel anything and have no idea if I'm pushing. "Am I doing anything??" Push as best as I can figure and then we have a baby. Done and done.
And that's pretty much it. The worst parts all happened before I even got to the hospital. I don't know how many times Jericho has pointed out how different this delivery was from Sydney's. I've had more complicated dental procedures. Clearly this baby knew it was time and got here without any fuss. Plus it also helped that my epidural was still there for the actual tough stuff this time. My first go round it didn't make any sense to me why people got epidurals because I still felt everything when it came time for the actual delivery. Mad props to all those that go sans-epidural the whole time.
Things were so different for this delivery. Not just the logistics but the overall emotions and atmosphere with this baby were so different. Nobody cried [except for Holden]. Nobody was leaving in a couple of days. Nobody was strung out on anxiety and lack of sleep and hormones. Nobody hesitated to send the baby to the nursery for the night. Nobody forgot to bring the Harry Potter DVDs.
This little boy was ready to get here. He started out without us knowing. And he pushed his way into this world two weeks early with no notice. My friend said of her two youngest that are closer in age that maybe in the pre-existence they were so close that the younger one couldn't wait to join the other here on earth. What a sweet thought. I hope that's the case with Sydney and Holden. I hope this means they'll be the best of friends and never ever fight and spend their days holding hands and singing Carpenters songs.
We're bottle feeding again and I'm totally fine with it. Nursing is beautiful and wonderful and instinctual for some and for some it produces panic attacks. Sydney was bottle-fed and she's a rockstar and so will Holden.
Welcome to our world Baby Holden! We love him so much already [even though he was way squishy newborn alien-like when he was fresh out].
And do we like the name Holden? I've concluded that I don't identify my babies with a name until they're more than a week old. Holden is still just "baby", "little guy", "buddy", "honey".
