So for those who want to hear it, here is the story of Nathan's arrival!
I was 37 weeks and 2 days along, full-term but still almost 3 weeks from my due date. And of course I was wishing he would come soon, but not getting my hopes up since it was so early. I woke up at 3 in the morning thinking to myself, "Oh boy, I'm either wetting the bed really bad or my water just broke!" Fortunately I had the presence of mind to grab one of the 5 pillows I was currently sleeping with and jam it under me to save our mattress. :) Then I started yelling at Josh to get up and help me! I hadn't packed anything for the hospital yet, and we hadn't made arrangements for Alex in case I went in the middle of the night. Our neighbors upstairs were very understanding, however, when we banged on their door and asked if they would listen for him on our monitor while we went to the hospital!
We were checked in by 3:45. I was still in complete shock all this time. I just couldn't believe it was already happening. Even though I had wanted it to, I didn't think there was any way it really would. The nurse checked me and I was dilated to about a 3. We waited to see how I would progress and called our parents. (My mom wasn't too happy with our timing, since she and my dad were flying down to Cancun that day). :)
They kept checking me every couple of hours or so, and I was slowly but steadily dilating, about another centimeter each time. Once I got to almost 6, though, things came to a standstill, so the doctor on call decided to start me on pitocin (my doctor, the one I'd been seeing this whole time, was also on vacation this week, ironically). And because pitocin does its job really well on me, I got my epidural not too long after that. :) I went from a 5 to a 7 in about an hour, and then from a 7 to a 9 in about five minutes! That last centimeter took about 20 more minutes, and very shortly after I was fully dilated I started feeling the urge to push. The nurse told me to wait if I could, since the doctor was with another patient. I wouldn't have been able to do it without my blessed epidural, but I was able to postpone it for about ten minutes until the doctor arrived.
I pushed for maybe ten minutes tops, and Nathan arrived! The official time the hospital said was 2:12, but Josh says it was 2:10 by his watch (so that Nathan could be born at 2:10 on 02/10/10). :) It was such a wonderful moment, full of happy tears from me and Josh, and loud screams from our baby!
After a couple of days of recovery time in the hospital for me (and lots of fast food runs for Josh and Alex), we came home and have been enjoying this first week of Nate's life. We did have to do the bili lights because of jaundice, but we were expecting that because Alex had it too (it's a common side effect of the mother having gestational diabetes). However, we had to do them for a lot longer with Nathan, nearly five days, and boy are we glad to be done with them! I'm still not getting a lot of sleep, but I'm getting a heck of a lot more than I was when we had to take turns sitting up with him to make sure his temperature was okay and that he didn't knock off his little eye-coverings.
Alex has been really good with his little brother so far. He hasn't seemed jealous or upset most of the time, and he loves to help me with him. When he sees him, he will say "Oh, there's baby brother! He's so handsome!" :)
Life is good. We are tired and still healing, but so in love with our little boys and happy to be a forever family!
