Wow, where should I start? This has been the longest week of my life!

As I started getting closer to my due date/induction date I began to panic about all of the horror stories that I've heard about being induced and how 40% of first time moms end up with c-sections because their bodies weren't ready to have a baby and they forced it. My sister-in-law is an all natural kind of girl and I knew that she would have some great advice for me on how to get everything going before I had to be induced, starting with EPO. Evening Primrose Oil supposedly has natural prostaglandins in it and will help "ripen" the cervix, and since mine was still closed at the appointment before my induction was scheduled then I started popping these babies daily.  I also started walking a mile a day, swimming more, eating spicy foods, bounced on the birthing ball, exercising and doing squats to help the process along and something must have worked because I started having contractions 10 minutes apart for 3 hours on Saturday night!

It was so exciting to be able to time them and try to let my body relax and "open up" during each one of them. That is something that one of my friends told me to do, not to fight the contraction, but to just relax and breathe through it so that it can do what it was meant to do. They broke apart that night and I knew that it was just pre-labor. I knew that real labor was just around the corner  and made Josh go ahead and pack his bag just in case. I spent the next day laying around wondering If today would be the day, but nothing ended up happening but a few random contractions each hour... although, they did hurt much worse than before. I spent my mornings scouring babycenter.com looking up people's experiences with inductions and researching my strange contractions. You see, my contractions weren't tightening my gut... at all. It felt much deeper than that, but when I would poke my belly during one it wasn't tight. I know what a Braxton Hicks contraction feels like because I had had 2 previously where my whole stomach tightened so tight and I made Josh feel it, but these were different. I looked up "cervical contractions" and found that a few other people had been having what I was describing, fairly painful contractions without the tightening and all of these women said that they had fairly pain free labor and when they finally went in to get checked that they were dilated to an 8 and delivered fairly quickly! This put me into full blown research mode. I was calling all of my nurse friends and asking them about what I was experiencing and if they thought I should go and get evaluated at the hospital, and sure enough one of them let me know that my water could be broken with a slow leak and that I should get checked out. I didn't want to be a hypochondriac, but thought that maybe I should get checked out because I had read about your water breaking and if you don't deliver in 24 hours then your baby could get an infection. Josh agreed that maybe we should go and get checked out and we were off!

We walked into labor and delivery and I saw my doctor in the hallway! She was there delivering another baby and asked what I was doing there. I told her that I thought my water may have broken, but it probably hadn't and the nurse assured me that it probably hadn't.

She took the swab test and it turned blue! She said, "Well I think your water MAY HAVE broken actually! You are 3 cm dilated and 80% effaced". WHAT?? My doctor came in and said that it could be a false positive, but that since I was there and she was there that we might as well just have the baby tonight! I got a little nervous at this point...

They sent the swab down for more testing and it did show that I was leaking amniotic fluid and they ordered an ultrasound to see how much fluid I had left. I had a "5" and I guess the normal level of fluid is an 8. They put me in the gown and started to give me my first IV. I was really nervous at this point. I had never been in the hospital and never been in any significant pain before and all of these scary things they were about to do to me had me a little anxious. I asked for a pain killer for the IV and she said that they don't normally do those, Josh mocked me a little and asked if he should hold my hand, and the nurse very firmly told him "Yes, come and hold her hand". I gripped his hand really tight as she put the IV in and once she did I said, "Oh, that was it?". She laughed and said that some people think it is terribly painful to have one put in.

She hooked me up to the monitors and said that I was having uterine irritability and was wondering why I wasn't feeling those contractions. She said that I was having pretty strong ones, but not feeling them. I told her that it was because I had been reading my Bible lately. She laughed pretty hard. Her and my doctor both told me by the end of the night that I had a very high pain tolerance (I felt pretty cool when they said that, like a macho woman or something),

We waited a while and started to alert the family/friends that we were having a baby! Then they came in with the pitocin... the dreadful stuff.

When I first visited with my doctor at 7 weeks pregnant the first question that I asked her was "When can I get the epidural?" and luckily she said that I could get it whenever I wanted it. So when they were about to hook me up to the pitocin I asked for it. She came back in later and said that I might need to labor a bit so that the anesthesiologist would know how much pain killer to mix for my epidural. I agreed, but said, "As long as within 15 minutes of asking for it that he will come in and give it to me". They all agreed.

The pitocin was a piece of cake for about an hour, until the nurse came in the "check" me. It seemed like she was trying to shove baby through my throat! It was pretty painful and when I sat up (I labored the entire time until my epidural sitting  up) the rest of my water broke and started gushing. The scale was off when I checked in and said that I was 275 pounds (by the way, I ended up weighing in at 217 full term) and they asked me to stand up and re-weigh. Oh, right then dear readers I asked for the epidural. The contractions were getting harder and closer together now that there wasn't a cushion in my uterous. Ouch! Well I heard some really bad news in the hallway a few minutes later, "Oh, he just went into a c-section, it will be a while".

Gulp.

I asked Josh to pray and he and his mom prayed with me and during the prayer I felt a pretty good contraction and just kept my eyes closed once he was finished, but his mom put her hand on my hand and I just said, "Don't touch me" in a kind of mean voice. I thought it was Josh! Oops!

I labored for 2 more hours as the nurses kept coming in and upping my pitocin drip. It started to get pretty intense and I beeped my nurse to see if the epidural was coming soon, she walked in with a syringe of "pain medicine" and I quickly asked her what that was and told her that I didn't want anything that would make the baby lethargic. I just decided to bear it a little longer, even though I started to feel the contractions radiating down my thighs. The second time that I called to ask they came in with another pain killer and I quickly told them no again, but asked in a really pitiful way if they could turn down the pitocin until I got the epidural. Thank the Lord that they did! I went from a 6 to a 4 on the machine and my contractions weren't on top of each other anymore. About 15 minutes later my hero came in, the anesthesiologist. He gave me an awesome epidural that only felt like an IV prick and I was in heaven. I kept telling him that he was my favorite person. The nurse checked me and said that I was already a 7 by the time I got the epidural, WOW! I would have never thought that I could have made it that long without an epidural.

My legs started to tingle and my skin started to itch a little. I laid on my back and took a 2 hour nap before the nurse came in to check me. She came in and checked me (which I didn't feel at all this time, thank you very much) and she said, "You were just going to let that baby slide out of you weren't you?? You are a 10 and fully effaced! It's time to push!"

"I have to call my photographer!" I called Amanda Watson and within 15 minutes she was there ready to photograph in the wee hours of the night. The nurses started to have me push and it wasn't really working, and so they go a towel and had me pull on the towel as hard as I could while they pulled back and this did the trick! Within 45 minutes my baby slid right out with one big push. I didn't even know what had happened when he came out. I was in a fog a little bit.

They put him on me and then he started to cough up some stuff and they took him to the table and suctioned him and then off to the nursery for some oxygen. I was just laying there cool as a cucumber, it wasn't at all how I thought I would react after giving birth. I felt guilty that I didn't cry, but I guess that was ok. Billy, his parents and Josh's parents came in shortly after that and then they brought Solomon back to me about an hour later. I passed him around and then sent everyone home,  I was pooped and remembered that I needed to try and breastfeed pretty quickly after he was born.

Well he had other plans and just didn't know what to do and so we sent him to the nursery for the night and we slept until about 6.  This is when the 6 days of visitors started. My friend Aimee came into town to help me since my mom couldn't come early and she was my nurse! It was so nice to have her there to help me so much.

Solomon came back into the room and just couldn't figure out the breastfeeding stuff, I asked about talking to the lactation consultant and they put me on her schedule. They assured me that the first day of life the baby is pretty lethargic and probably won't eat at all, and for boys who are circumcised they will probably not eat the second day either. This made me a little anxious, but I knew that he would eventually eat.

I tried to feed him every few hours in between visitors, but he would just put his hands up to his mouth and start SCREAMING bloody murder. I probably buzzed a nurse to help me try to feed him 10 times while I was there and they all just said that he would figure it our eventually.

I was starting to get really tired of being in that tiny hospital room locked in there with a visitor every second, but knew that the time would shortly come when we could get out of there and go home.  I felt like I had to hand off Solomon to everyone the entire time that people were in the room (which was the entire time) and didn't feel like I had time to connect with him until finally someone told me that he was my baby and that I didn't have to give him up if I didn't want to.  Thank you! I wanted to hold my baby! That night was rough, Aimee sent Josh home to sleep and she stayed with me in the hospital as two really awesome nurses came in every 2 hours to help me breastfeed. It took 6 hands to restrain my son and get him to calm down enough to latch on correctly. It was exhausting and really stressed me out that it was that hard. The nurse said that he was impatient and liked instant gratification (I wonder where he got that from??:). It was so painful and made my uterus feel like I had a wave of electricity running over it. I was going to bear it though for the health of my baby and because it was my only weight loss plan after he was born!

We were discharged that next afternoon and I was so weepy. My poor doctor came in at the wrong time and I was just sobbing about him not breastfeeding and how he was starving. She assured me that everything would be ok and sent me home.

We went to Wendy's and got a chocolate frosty (the BEST chocolate frosty that I've EVER had) and it made me relax and my body started producing if you know what I mean! We got home and I just needed the whole night to myself. My in-laws brought dinner and then left us alone because they saw how emotional and crazed I looked. I just needed some time away from people, because I hadn't had any time to myself in the last 48 hours. The night was a little rough and Solomon still didn't eat unless I pumped and feed him through a bottle, but I knew that the lactation specialist was coming the next morning to help. Solomon's little mouth and lips were cracked and dried and I just couldn't handle seeing him like that. I felt like a failure of a mom.

The next morning the nurse came over and witnessed Solomon's fit and was very surprised and said that he had quite the personality. She gave me an SNS system with some formula and then a nipple shield, which all worked! He got his first belly full of food and the anxiety I had just melted away.

I knew that he would be ok.

My mom came in that afternoon and that made everything better. She cooked, cleaned and organized for us while we got adjusted to being parents. Solomon started eating and has put back on a ton of weight (he got down to 6 pounds 10 ounces by the second day). I can even see little dimples on his thighs now.

He is 6 days old and I can't believe that it was a week ago today that we went into the hospital!

He loves to chew on his hands and has a terrible habit of having to suck on everything (we gave in and let him have a pacifier which he LOVES), he is SUPER strong and already lifts his head on his own, grips your fingers until they are tingly and smiles in his sleep.  He hates to have his diaper changed or lay on his back, but he is just so adorable.

I am curious to see how the next week will go with Josh and I being here all by ourselves with him. I only had to get up to feed him at  11, 2 and 6 this morning! We had some nice sleep in between feedings!

One weird thing that I want to remember is that my left thigh is completely numb. My doctor said that it was from a pinched nerve when I pushed him out, but I sure hope it comes back! Every once in a while I'll feel a nerve shock go down my leg if I turn my back a certain way, which is really strange!