Harrison's Birth Story

                                                                     

Now that our little Harrison is nearing the 8 month mark, I thought it was as good a time as any to share his birth story with you all. Before having this whole experience, I never realized just how different labor can be for people and how each and every birth story is unique. I was lucky enough to have a very pleasant (if that makes any sense at all) experience, and although I've debated for quite some time now on whether I actually wanted to share this, I also thought it might be nice to document it for myself... so here it goes...

The weeks leading up to my due date, I was anxiously anticipating that first contraction, signalling that labor was starting. I waited and waited, and nothing. I didn't know what to expect, and when I asked, "what do contractions feel like?" all I kept hearing was "it's hard to explain, but you'll know what it is, you'll just know". So I kept waiting, until I finally had my last doctor's appointment on a Friday morning at 39 weeks and because I had progressed so much, and Harrison was getting so big (more on that later), my doc said the magic words, "well if it doesn't happen naturally before then, we will go ahead and schedule you to be induced on your due date" - January 17th. Hallelujah. I had a specific day, at the very latest, I knew this baby would be coming out. Get. Him. Out.  

Two more days passed until the wee hours of Monday morning on January 13th around 2:30 a.m., I was sleeping ever so UN-comfortably, and then it happened. A contraction. They started slow and weak at first, coming about every 10 minutes, but I knew, just like everyone said I would. It was happening. So after about 30 minutes, Wesley was still sleeping, so I got out of bed, woke him, told him it was time, but I wanted to get a shower before we headed to the hospital. So I showered, put on a fresh face (yes, I'm that girl) and called my mom on the way to the hospital. We got to the hospital around 3:45 a.m.; my contractions had gotten much stronger and picked up to about every 5 minutes. Wesley stayed at my side the entire time holding my hand through each one, and watching the monitor, letting me know when they were almost over. Around 5 a.m. my mom got there and shortly after, the nurse said the doctor would be by soon for my epidural. Oh thank God. 

The epidural part was a little intimidating, because the nurses made Wesley and my mom leave the room, but at that point I was ready to take on anything, as long as it would take away the pain of the contractions. All the worry was for nothing, because it went in perfectly and worked like a dream. Within a few minutes, I was numb, and happy as a clam. Then we just had to wait. The next few hours feel kind of like a blur because we were all impatiently waiting for the time to push, making jokes, and just hanging out like I wasn't about to push a watermelon sized baby out of my you know what. 

Finally around 11:45, it was push time. My mom left Wesley and I to go join my sister and mother-in-law in the waiting room, and dang it those anxious nerves started returning - not knowing what to expect. But we had the sweetest labor nurse, Megan, who talked me through the whole way and it was all very calm at first. Wesley put on some Tom Petty on his iPod, and it was go time. The pushing process went quite slow at first, but when Harrison was just about ready to make his debut, the doctor came in and joked that it wasn't every day he delivered a baby, while listening to Tom Petty. The pushing kind of felt like it was all in slow motion, until Harrison was actually born and then everything sped back up to real time. The doctor pulled him out, and immediately placed him on my chest, and all of my built up nerves and emotions just flew out of me all at once. I was overwhelmed at the sight of this little human that was growing in me for 9 months and I started balling. 

Harrison weighed in at a whopping 10 lbs even and 21 inches long. After the commotion settled with visitors, and congratulations, and it was just us with our new baby boy. It was so exciting and scary, knowing that we are parents of this new baby but have no idea what we're doing, so we just stared at him in wonder, and he's been teaching us how to be parents every day since then. 

So there's a little Labor story to kick off this Labor Day weekend. I hope you all enjoy a nice holiday, and as always, thanks for reading along!