At 41 weeks + 2 days, my baby finally made his way into the world. At some point my doctor scheduled an induction, but I never thought I’d make it all the way until that day. But sure enough I did and the hospital told us they would call us that morning to tell us what time to come in. I was purposely sleeping in, but at 9am I got a phone call from the hospital that woke me up. It went something like this, “Hello, I’m calling to schedule your induction for today. How far away from the hospital do you live?” To which I replied, “About 15 minutes.” Then she said, “Okay, I’ll see you in 15 minutes.” Umm… we were not even close to being ready!! So we were rushing to the hospital even though I wasn’t in spontaneous labor and was being induced😂 Definitely not the “rushing to the hospital” experience I was expecting.
Before giving birth I got very interested in the whole process and was open and prepared for either an epidural or an unmedicated birth. However I didn’t think I would want to do it unmedicated if I was induced with Pitocin because I’ve heard labor with Pitocin is more intense. But my doctor explained to me that’s not necessarily the case and my nurse said she had done it before. So that gave me a boost of confidence to try.
When I got to the hospital I was dilated 5cm. At 11:30am my doctor broke my water. I was having contractions before but I couldn’t feel them. After he broke my water I started feeling them but they were still pretty mild. At 12:30pm, I started pitocin and things ramped up really quick! I immediately wanted to work through the contractions on a birthing ball and Dave pushed on my hips to relieve some of the pain. My contractions were 2-3 minutes apart, which was surprising to me that I was already at that point. Around 1:00pm my mom showed up. And around 1:20pm my doctor said he would come back at 2:00pm to check on me. So we decided Dave should go and grab some lunch before then. After Dave left it ramped up even more and I started shaking—a sign I was in transition but I couldn’t believe I was already there. I just kept asking, “Where’s Dave?!?” He left his dang phone, so I was really trying not to freak out! My mom said, “He’s only been gone for 8 minutes.” But I knew I had really progressed in those 8 minutes. He was only gone for like 20-30 minutes but it felt like forever. He later told me that when he was walking back the nurse said, “She’s gonna be glad to see you, she’s transitioning!”
The next half hour I dilated to a 10 and then pushed for a half hour. It was definitely the most intense hour of my life. At one point I wanted to cry so bad, but I knew it would be easier to stay under control than regain control. At 3:05pm, my baby was born! The first thing I said was, “He looks like Dave!” They put him on my chest and I finally got to see him and hold him and I fell in love! He has long fingers and toes, a little bit of hair, and the cutest little butt chin! He was 8 lbs 8 oz and was 20.5 inches long (even though they originally told us he was 22 inches long – a huge difference in a newborn).
Later that evening we named him Simon with the middle name David. Dave always liked the name Simon and even asked me if I liked it when we were dating. I always assumed we would have a little boy named Simon but after I got pregnant I asked Dave, “So if it’s a boy, it’s Simon right?” At that point Dave was like, “I don’t really know anymore, maybe not.” So then it felt like it was off the table but towards the end we circled back around to it and now it feels so right!
It was such a special day getting to know our little Simon and soaking up those special moments in the hospital.
Somehow between me, Dave, and our moms we were able to capture some photos and videos💙
