On Tuesday night, May 17th, I began having slight pains. As Matt and I were getting ready for bed, I told Matt that I think I MIGHT be in early labor so try to get as much sleep as possible. (i.e. Go to bed now and do NOT play on your phone or watch TV). Luckily he was tired so he went right to sleep. I took one Tylenol and one Tylenol PM in the hopes that I could get some sleep. I fell asleep around 11:30 that night.
Around 1:30am on May 18th I woke up with slightly more painful contractions. I got out of bed to use the bathroom and noticed that some of my mucus plug had come out. I laid back in bed and tried to relax as much as possible. For the next two hours I laid down but couldn't fall back asleep, so I decided to get up and time my contractions. I planned to time them for a bit then let Matt know what was going on later, but when I went to the bathroom, I thought there was a good chance that my water had broken slightly and thought I better wake him up and get him going.
So I woke Matt up around 3:45am and I hopped in the shower. When I got out of the shower, he was still in bed so I let him know that I was timing my contractions and that they were coming every 2 minutes lasting for about 30 - 45 seconds each. I called my parents to let them know what was going on and my dad started getting ready to come over to our house to be with the boys.
Finally Matt got out of bed and started getting ready to go while I finished packing the last minute things in my hospital bag. My dad got to our house a little before 5:00. Matt loaded the bags in the car while my dad took one last picture of my belly and we headed out around 5:15.
About 7:15 I was moved to a room and the anesthesiologist arrived to administer the epidural. Just a couple of minutes and it was in. I was anxiously awaiting the relief from the contractions when Dr. Gosser came back in the room. He decided he was going to break my water to get things rolling. So he broke the water, told me I was dilated to 7cm now and took a seat in my room. Just 2 minutes later, he checked me again and said, okay, it's time to push!
I was like, woe, wait a minute, I got an epidural. Can't we wait for it to take effect? He said it will be taking effect as we set things up. So they pulled out the stirrups and got my legs in place and he told me to push whenever I felt like I had to. I was like, wait a minute, I can still move my legs . . . this was supposed to be a pain-free birth . . . I'm not supposed to feel an urge to push. But alas, I did start to feel the pain and pressure of needing to push so I obliged. I gave it kinda a half ass attempt through the first 2 contractions in hopes that the epidural would kick in. After those two, I realized I just need to do this and gave it my all through the next 3 contractions and he was out!
It was the most relieved I had ever felt in my life to have him out and on my chest. I wiped his head off and kissed him. I was able to hold him for quite a while while Dr. Gosser stitched me up. Finally Matt cut the cord and I tried to breastfeed for a little bit. He wasn't having it with all the chaos around, so I let the nurses take him to take his vitals, weigh and measure him.
It didn't take long for the family to start filtering into the hospital room. As I mentioned in a previous post, Alex was really wanting to do a gender reveal and constantly asked what color our balloons are during the second half of my pregnancy. So we set up a little gender reveal for him as soon as he walked into the room. After that he climbed up on me, kissed Brendan and has been in love ever since.
Declan on the other hand hopped immediately onto my bed to see me, but upon seeing the baby there, he was way more excited about the balloon that just came out of the box than the baby. Luckily we caught this all on video:
The whole time I was pregnant, people would ask Alex if he thought it was a brother or a sister in mommy's belly. He said that he didn't care, he just really wanted to hold the baby. Well he finally got his chance:
The whole time we were in the hospital, whenever someone came to visit and held the baby, Alex would let them know that they had 2 more minutes left and then it was his turn again, lol!
Alex was also thrilled that the baby was born on May 18th. Anyone who knows Alex well, knows that he is REALLY into volcanos. I mean REALLY into them! He even knows the dates of when his favorite volcanos had their biggest eruptions. Well, May 18, 1980 just happens to be when Mt. St. Helen's had a big eruption and blew out the side. Alex is so excited that Brendan shares a birthday with that anniversary.
All I can say is, May 18, 1980 may have been a horrible day for the people of Washington, but May 18, 2016 was a great day for our family! We all just adore our sweet baby Brendan.
