William's Birth Story

Darrell and I loved the OB/GYN that we used throughout my pregnancy. He was very laid back, gave us straightforward answers to questions, and had an awesome sense of humor (at least it was to us--I do know people who might have been put off by some of his joking around, but not us). He was also never one to make predictions or promises to us about the pregnancy/labor (the exception to this being that once April 1st rolled around he promised us we'd have a baby sometime that month--with my due date being the 13th he wouldn't have let me go until May before inducing me). However, there were a few things he said that he ended up being way off on.

--At an appointment toward the end of March, he casually commented that we should be "in the clear" with not having to worry about inclement weather getting in the way of us making it to the hospital for delivery. The reality? This is what we drove in on our way to the hospital:

And although you can't see it in the picture, the sleet/freezing rain is still falling.

--A week or two before my due date, our doctor was asking how we were doing, and I made a comment about starting to get impatient. Darrell echoed my sentiments, saying that we were both ready for "the floodgates to open". Our doctor jumped at Darrell's choice of words, reminding him that 80% of labors begin without the water breaking and that we should not count on that as our indicator that labor has begun. The reality? My water broke, completely unexpectedly, after dinner one night. I'd felt perfectly fine all day, even did 50 minutes of pilates in the afternoon, and then out of the blue when I stood up to put away dinner--whoosh. Fluid everywhere. I think I laughed for the next fifteen minutes, especially because Darrell had just gotten done telling the baby that he needed to wait at least twenty-four hours for the storm to pass. Joke was on us!

--The day before my water broke, Darrell and I were at an appointment and after doing the cervical check, my doctor let us know that I hadn't thinned very much and still had a ways to go. He did throw out the caveat that things could progress quickly, but it seemed evident to us that he wasn't expecting anything to happen in the near future. The reality? I delivered William less than forty hours later.

The rest of the details about my labor and delivery are pretty unremarkable: once we made it to the hospital (earlier than we were originally planning to go in since contractions hadn't gotten too intense yet, but we didn't want to labor at home and risk the weather getting worse) I labored in the jacuzzi for a few hours before deciding that it was time to get the epidural (also not part of my original "plan", but I was having labor solely in my back which was incredibly painful, plus it was already close to midnight and I knew we had a long night ahead of us so I decided that with the epidural we'd at least be able to get some much needed R&R). Around 4:30 I started pushing, and at 7:05 William made his appearance!

While there are definitely things that I hope go differently the next time around (no tearing, less pushing, less back labor), one thing we definitely will not change is our decision to not find out the sex of the baby. Having Darrell tell me "It's a boy! It's really a boy!" while choking back tears was by far one of the best moments of my life. The next ninety minutes were pretty awesome as well; since everything had gone smoothly and everyone was healthy Darrell and I got to spend a good bit of time cuddling and bonding with William on my chest. It totally made all the pain and discomfort of the twelve hours of labor (and nine months of pregnancy) worth it.

I've got a few more William posts to get caught up on, but then I promise to get back into posting recipes and other non-baby related content. Hopefully. I'm going to try to make sure this blog doesn't become overrun by all things William, but I don't make any promises. He's just so cute I can't not talk about him!