Birth story...finally!

Well, for anyone who is still reading this blog... bless your heart :) This is very overdue, but somehow the past five weeks have slipped by too quickly! Most of you already know the birth story, so I'll make it brief and throw in some pictures. And I promise to be better about updating the blog now! I'm learning the art of multi-tasking while Noah naps...

We went into the hospital for our scheduled induction on Tuesday, Aug. 11.

We checked in that evening and I was given some medicine to get my body ready for the official induction the next day. At 6 am, the nurse started the Pitocin, which makes a woman's body have contractions and begin labor. The contraction meter showed that my contractions were strong and regular (less than five minutes apart), but I wasn't feeling anything at all and I wasn't dilating in response. The medicine was gradually increased throughout the day until it reached a maximum dosage a little after lunchtime. Unfortunately, I was still only dilated 2-3 cm at that point, but fortunately I still wasn't feeling much pain. My doctor came in at that point and said he was going to break my water at 4 pm, and he suggested that I go ahead and get an epidural beforehand because he predicted the pain would get much more intense after that. I followed his recommendation, and over the next four hours my body dilated to a 10. At around 8:30 pm, it was time to push!

After about 45 minutes of pushing, my doctor came in to see how things were progressing. He had warned us earlier in the day that he was a little concerned about how large Noah's head looked in the last ultrasound we'd received, and he mentioned that there was a possibility of having to do a c-section to deliver him safely. Sure enough, we did several sets of pushes with the doctor there, and he could tell right away that Noah was not coming out. He patted my leg, said, "Well, we gave it a good try!" and told the nurses we were heading to the operating room to do a c-section. At that point, we were just ready to meet our baby! After a surprisingly uneventful c-section, Noah arrived in the world at 9:57 pm on August 12. He weighed 8 lbs 6.7 oz and was 20.5 inches long. We were so thrilled to finally meet the little guy!