Tristan's Birthday

Tristan just turned 5 weeks old yesterday. I can't believe how the time has flown-he is hardly a newborn anymore! He's already weighing in at just over ten pounds, and now smiles when I go and pick him up. That, of course, melts my heart and makes me want to just keep him that little forever. He is so precious!

I finally clipped together a few moments of the day that he was born and made it into a video. I thought since I finally did that now would be a good time to share the story of his birth. Here we go!

I woke up the morning he was born at 3:30am, went to the bathroom, and realized I was leaking. Every time I stood up or laid down something was coming out. I knew it was my water, but I didn't want to get excited over nothing, so I changed and went back to bed. It was but 45 minutes later I had a painful contraction, but I knew it'd still be a while before anything would happen so I went back to sleep. Half an hour later I had another one, and by then I couldn't contain my excitement. I was 10 days over due and was so tired of being pregnant! I woke Jeff up, and the 2 of us couldn't stop smiling. We repacked our hospital bag, cleaned the house a little, and then as we realized how tired we were, went back to bed til I finally couldn't sleep because of the contractions. By about 8am, they were 30 minutes apart, but not so painful I couldn't talk through them. After calling my amazing sister, we decided we'd head to the hospital later that morning. We eventually met Tiffany at the hospital a couple hours later, and that's when the party started!

The hard contractions started at about 11am. I knew to expect some pain, but it still surprised me how bad it hurt. I was so relieved to have Jeff and my sister there, although there wasn't much to do to make the pain stop. Since my doctor was on call, he said to start some pitocin to get things going, and by noon I was hooked up to the pitocin and couldn't believe how much it hurt. The natural contractions gave you a break in between to collect yourself, but the pitocin contractions were one right after the other. I had a goal to make it as long as I could before I got an epidural. I made it til just after 1pm. The epidural was A W E S O M E. Almost immediately the pain was gone, although it did make my blood pressure drop quite a bit. Thankfully, that didn't last long. With the epidural in place, I was walking on clouds. Jeff got to eat lunch, Tiffany got to skype and blog, and I took a nap.

At about 4pm, the nurses had me start pushing. Tristan had decided to be a star gazer-meaning instead of being face down, he was face up. Normally, babies fix this on their own. Or you can roll from side to side. Or the doctor can reach up, grab the babies head and twist him the right way. You can also labor on your hands and knees, or on your side. I tried all of that for several hours...he was just really stubborn and refused to budge. At all. I was still feeling great-until about 6pm, when my doctor finally said he was going to have to get the forceps. My heart sunk. Then the room filled up with nurses, Jeff had a very worried look on his face (he told me later it was because I was about 2 minutes away from an emergency C-section), and we got ready to have the baby. The first set of forceps he tried caused so much pain I couldn't even see straight, let alone push when everyone was yelling at me too. So Doctor Williams yelled for the smaller set of forceps. In my head I was screaming, "WHAT?! You started with the larger pair!?!" But I was in the middle of having a baby, so I kept that to myself. The smaller set wasn't much better, but I was able to push enough that he could, as Jeff described it, have Doctor Williams "rip the baby out." And let me tell you, it's been 5 weeks and I'm still feeling the effects of that. But anyway, once he was out I was in a daze, I couldn't believe that was my baby-and although it was really only moments, it seemed like an eternity for Jeff to cut the cord and then for me to finally get to see and hold him. It only lasted a moment, and then they whisked him away to clean him up a little. But, about ten minutes later he was back, and Jeff and I got to hold our little angel. And, it's just like every mother says, no matter how much pain you are in, you'd do it again in a heartbeat for that little baby. Shoot-I'd do anything for that little baby, he is such a doll.

So there you have it. Our little baby's birth story, and the best day of our lives.