The birth story

He arrived! Our Bookworm #4 is finally out here with the rest of us. He arrived May 10 at 11:50am. He is twenty inches and much to our surprise, weighs only seven pounds, nine ounces. (After one that was nine pounds, that was a bit of a shock - but a whole lot easier to push out).

But, getting to pushing was the hard part. We entered the hospital at 10pm in a decent labor pattern and my OB broke my water at midnight when I hit four centimeters. And the contractions got lighter instead of heavier. For hours. At 7am, I was still four centimeters. I had a bit of a nap during those early morning hours and so did my husband - and so did the OB, who had also had a long day. At 8am, they started some Pitocin trying to get things going again - which worked, but ummm... OW. About 10:30am, my OB was scratching her head. My other deliveries have been pretty quick, and she couldn’t figure out why this little guy wouldn’t come down. Then the lightbulb came on. “I bet he’s sunny-side up,” she declared. So, they had me turn over for a few contractions and do a couple of silly things - and then there was great movement in my belly and loud noises from the baby monitor. #4 had turned over.

After that, things happened pretty quick. He finally got to zero station and I finally hit 10 centimeters. Pushing itself was comparatively easy to last time. He was out in about eight contractions or so of pushing. I was so tired by that time (After all, I’d been contracting for 36 hours) that I had to have help to hold my legs up.

We were in the hospital for another 50 hours after that because I was positive for group B strep, but we got home this afternoon.

ComfyDenim said that that last picture didn’t do him justice. This one is better. :)