February 12th, 2009

Gregory’s due date was on Friday June 15th. He was born six days late, on June 21st.
Layla’s due date was on Friday Sept 14th. She was born six days late, on Sept 20th.
This baby was due on Friday February 6th. Benjamin was born six days late, on Feb 12th.
How weird is that?!?!

I started having contractions early Thursday morning. I woke up Homer and we started timing them. They were 8-10minutes apart. So I decided to get up and get Gregory ready for school. I made him breakfast and packed his lunch and got him ready and the contractions started coming every 6minutes then and they were painful!! I knew it would still be awhile, but we had about a half-hour drive to the hospital. We decided that we should leave early in case the highways were bad. (And they were. They were covered with ice and snow.) It ended up taking us close to an hour to get there. By then, my contractions seemed to be easing off and only every 10-12minutes again. I was pretty upset because I really didn’t want to be sent back home. We got to the hospital at 10:30am. They put me on the monitors and it showed that I was having contractions every 5-6 minutes, but I wasn’t feeling all of them. I was having more back cramps by then. The nurse checked me and I was 4cm dilated. She called my doctor who was at the clinic. The doctor said that she would be over at lunch hour to see how I was doing. So I walked around for about an hour. My doctor showed up at 12:00pm and she checked me. I was 5cm dilated then. She said if I wanted an epidural she would put it in then. So I got prepped and the epidural was in by 1:00pm. It worked really well this time. I was able to relax for about an hour and a half. At 2:40pm my doctor came back to check me. I was 8cm dilated. She decided to break my water then. And she gave me my next round of epidural. The doctor left back for the clinic at around 3:00pm. At 3:15, I had the urge to push. I told the nurse and she thought it was too soon. So she said she wanted to see how the next contraction went. By the next contraction, I NEEDED to push! She called my doctor and she didn’t think it should be time yet either. So the nurse checked me and I was 10cm. She called my doctor back and told her. Meanwhile, I was almost screaming because I needed to push so badly. The nurses got everything set up and the doctor walked in around 3:35. Three pushes later, Benjamin was born at 3:43pm.

Afterwards, I was feeling pretty good. At 6:30pm, I needed to go to the bathroom. As I was getting up, I felt a big gush and I looked down and I was standing in a puddle of blood. The nurses came running. They laid me down and started massaging my uterus. I was hooked back up to the IV. I was given meds to make me start having contractions again. My uterus firmed up and my bleeding was back under control within a few minutes. I had a lot of pain with the contractions all night, but I was relieved that I was alright and that I hadn’t lost too much blood!

By the next morning I was feeling a lot better. I was a little weak and tired. But I was up and walking around the hospital. I begged my doctor to let us come home that afternoon. So, on Friday, we came home! I was happy to resting in my own bed.