I’m finally feeling inspired to blog again after a long hiatus.  Life has definitely seen its ups and downs in the last 7 months, and I’ve cried many tears of both sadness and joy. I won’t update you on all that has happened, but I will tell you that I gave birth to my handsome little boy, Hudson, almost 5 months ago, just 6 weeks after my dad passed away. I decided to share the story of his birth to start this blog off again.

Even though I gave birth 5 months ago, it sometimes feels like it was just yesterday (and sometimes I wonder how I’ve managed to survive the last 5 months ;)). I love that his birth story is still so fresh in my mind (minus the pain obviously), but I know I won’t always remember the small things, so I figured this would be a wonderful way to document it, so here we go!

On the Tuesday morning before Hudson’s birth, I woke up and knew he would be arriving either that day or Wednesday, so I told the husband to make sure he had his phone near him at work just in case. Since he didn’t listen to me and pack his bag when I did, he quickly threw some stuff in a bag before heading off to work. That whole day, I kept waiting for something to happen and cleaned the house just in case he really did come. That night, as we were eating dinner, I got a pretty good cramp in my lower abdomen and wondered if it was a contraction (I was hoping so because it was painful, and well, if that wasn’t a contraction, I didn’t want to know what one would actually feel like).

At about 9:00pm, I headed upstairs to take a shower. While I was showering, the cramps started becoming more consistent, so as soon as I got out, I started timing them. I didn’t call the husband upstairs because I still wasn’t sure I was having contractions (they weren’t at all like what I’d read on the internet or heard from friends).

10:00pm rolled around and the husband came upstairs to find me hunched over the bathroom sink with my timer going, and got “mad” at me for not calling him upstairs! Once he was there, he took charge and started timing the contractions. They were about 45-60 seconds every 2.5-3 minutes, and I wondered if I should be making my way to the hospital, but I was still not convinced they were true contractions.

At 11:30pm, my water broke, so we called labor and delivery and they told us to head on in. The husband ran around grabbing our bags and loading up the car. He then came upstairs to get me and help me out to the car. He didn’t even have time to tie his shoes (and I barely got mine on). The car ride to the hospital is typically 30 minutes, but I’m pretty sure we made it in 20. The pain was so intense and the bumpy back roads to get to base weren’t helping. When we got to the hospital, I didn’t want to move, let alone get out of the car. With the husband’s help, I finally got out and told him I wanted to crawl into the hospital (for some reason he didn’t let me do that). As we were walking up to the doors, a nurse saw me and ran back inside to get a wheel chair. The husband wheeled me up to labor and delivery and we found out I was already 7cm dilated! They asked me if I wanted an epidural, but I figured I’d already made it that far, so I declined.

After being given the “Okay” by triage, we were brought to our labor room and I got into the bed. During our Lamaze class, we were told about all the “comfortable” positions to labor in, but honestly, the pain was awful and laying down felt better than standing up. Throughout the contractions, the husband was so supportive and encouraging, reminding me to breathe slower and telling me I was doing a good job. I’m pretty sure I almost broke his fingers from squeezing his hand so hard (at one point he asked if he could have his hand to take his wedding ring off, even though my dad had warned him to do so beforehand). He was also a trooper for squatting and being on his knees for a few hours during the contractions and the pushing. I kept looking over thinking someone should get him a chair! He later joked that he wanted to say something about how bad it hurt (Friends reference), but decided against it (though it would have been hilarious). I was so glad he was there supporting me.

After having contractions for about another hour or so in our room, the nurse came in and asked if I wanted to be checked again. I did and she told me I was 10cm and could start pushing! After about 40-60 minutes of pushing (and only 6.5 hours of labor), our beautiful baby boy was born. The first comments to be made were about how big he was (9lbs 6 oz)! We definitely weren’t expecting him to be that big and I’m kind of glad I didn’t know how big he was going to be! They also commented on how big his head was (he gets that from my side of the family so I told them I wasn’t surprised).

As soon as he came out, they put him on me and I just couldn’t believe he was finally here! They took him away pretty quickly though because he was having trouble with his breathing. I’ll spare you the details of the rest of the night, but I will tell you that they gave me medicine after Hudson’s birth that eventually knocked me out, so the husband ended up taking care of our baby boy that first night. By the time I woke up for good, he was already a pro at swaddling and changing diapers! I’m so grateful he was there to take care of both of us throughout the whole thing.

We stayed at the hospital for the next two days and finally got released on Friday! We were lucky enough to have my mom and brother there with us to help us through the first (almost) week at home! We ended up being readmitted to the hospital a week after Hudson was born because he had pneumonia (the breathing trouble he had when he was born was due to  fluid in his lungs, which developed into pneumonia at some point after we got home). We spent the next week in the hospital while he received IV antibiotics.  Our stay in the hospital definitely made me more grateful for our time spent at home and I’m happy to say he is now a very healthy little boy!