The Big Day

Wednesday, January 13th. I had a few contractions throughout the morning that were painful. They were more in my lower abdomen and painful and felt more "cramping" than "contraction" so I wasn't sure that they were contractions. But they did hurt and I complained to Kyle about them. I had a doctors appointment at 2:15 that day so I wasn't too concerned about them because I knew I'd be able to ask my doctor about them and he could tell me if they were contractions or not. On the drive to the doctors my contractions picked up and seemed to become more regular and I'd decided that they really were contractions. I didn't begin timing them since I was driving. I continued having them and by the time I saw Dr. Shanbour I told him I was ready to go next door and have the baby and get an epidural. However, since I hadn't been timing them he said that meant they weren't regular and I had to go home. So I started timing when I left. I went to target to get a few things and by the time I got home, my contractions were 4 minutes apart and had been for the required hour. So we called our neighbor and she came down to stay with Luke and Kyle and I turned around and went back to the hospital.

By the time we got to the hospital I was ready to tell all the nurses about how I was ready for the epidural and that they should go fine the anesthesiologist. I did get some sort of pain meds while I was waiting for the epidural that made me feel like I weighed a million pounds and feel very sleepy.

We got to the hospital around 5:30 and I progressed pretty rapidly, but then when I got dilated to a 9 I stalled out there for a while so it was 10:40 before I delivered.

I was bleeding a little bit so the nurses called the doctor a little sooner than normal (usually he likes to show up and take over after the baby has crowned). So he arrived and Leta hadn't crowned yet so he came in and sat on the couch and was messing around on his phone, so I teased him that all he does is catch and here I am pushing and working hard and the nurses were working hard and there he sat texting on his phone...turns out it was worse. He was playing Solitaire. So that's why he was holding up his phone in the picture with Leta. He was pretty disappointed that you couldn't tell that it was Solitaire on his phone.

Leta was turned wrong so he did have to turn her. She did well and I got to hold her right away and Kyle got to cut the cord.

Since Luke had been sick and were weren't completely sure he was over it, Kyle went home at night, just in case he got sick again. I checked out Friday morning and we were home by Friday noon. Luke was very excited to meet Leta. He sure does love his little sister. He gives her lots of kisses and whenever she cries in her pack-n-play, he runs over and tells her, "It's okay, Leta."

Luke had a very hard time adjusting to being a family of 4. He was very cranky and fussy and threw lots of fits and didn't sleep well. I am just now feeling like we are over that hump, although naps aren't quite back to what they should be, but we're still working on it!