Birth Story...Finally

Now that it's been so long, I have to wrack my mommy brain and try to remember even giving birth to my handsome boy. I suppose I should have written everything down while it was fresh in my memory, but things have been a teensy bit busy around these parts.

(Just a few weeks shy of Lyon's birthday)

So, on Tuesday, April 15th, I had a doctors appointment in the morning and being 38 weeks, my cervix was checked and I was told that I was dilated to 3cm. I had been having contractions every now and again for the past two weeks. I went home and around two or three pm, contractions started coming pretty regularly. By five, they were getting really painful. When I was in labor with Isla and went into the hospital, I was seven and a half centimeters dilated and I felt great. So, I was pretty certain that the nurses were going to say something like, "wow, you are almost nine cm and that baby is ready to come out." Yeah, not quite what happened.

3. Just 3 lousy centimeters, still. Even after several hours at home crouching in pain. I was given the choice of walking around for an hour and getting checked again to see if progress was happening. I chose to walk around. I walked and walked and prayed that I would show some sort of progress. An hour or so later the nurse checked me and let me know that i was a whooping 3.5 centimeters. As horrible as that was to hear, I was at least happy that I was showing some progress. I did not want to be sent home.

I was admitted and brought to a room. Even though the pain was intense, they wanted to wait til I was 4 or 5 centimeters before administering an epidural. I had originally wanted to do it natural, but back labor changed things. Within the next couple hours of crying, moaning, and trying hard to breath through the pain, I was finally at 4.5 centimeters. I was given the epidural and immediately felt so much better! I was able to get a little bit of rest until the baby's heart rate dropped. The nurses had me turn on my side to see if it would help, and sure enough, it did. His heart rate went back up to the normal range. But, within a half hour, it dropped again. They turned me to my other side and his heart rate went back to normal. This happened for the rest of the night. As soon as I would drift off, I would have to turn. I was given oxygen multiple times to help his heart rate.

Finally, a little after 7am on Wednesday morning, I was a full ten centimeters and able to begin pushing. I had a great group of nurses, a wonderful doctor, Ja and my mom in the room when we welcomed little Lyon into the world at 7:38. He was 19 1/2 inches long and weighed 6 pounds 15 ounces.

He is much loved by his sisters and parents :)

First photo of the five of us :)