He's here! It took me awhile to post this. We have been slowly adjusting to life as a family of 4. Brendan, although over the moon about his little brother, has had the most adjusting of us all and has needed quite a bit of extra patience and love these days.
Here goes the story of Nicholas' arrival. I got my full-term, natural birth, I wanted.
Mothers' Day weekend (38 weeks) I was having quite a bit of contractions - starting Saturday at about noon. They were painless but a lot of pressure and were coming every few minutes. I decided to call the midwives just to have them check it out. I had experienced these contractions earlier on and they turned out to be nothing more than braxton hicks. She came to check me out and determined that I was about 3.5cm which was up from 1cm when I was checked at the clinic a couple days prior. She did a quick stretch and sweep (which wasn't as painful as I had thought it would be). However, when she returned a couple hours later there was no further progress. The contractions petered off at night and I was able to sleep. Brendan had a sleepover at Grandma's just incase labour picked up in the night.
All day Sunday I had sporadic painless contractions, again just a whole lot of pressure. About 4pm I noticed a bit of "show" but nothing to shake a stick at. Around 8:30pm I started getting some crampy contractions. I tried to lay down, in hopes they might settle. They didn't. At 10pm I paged my midwife who suggested that I should take some tylenol or gravol and have a warm bath since I seemed to have an irritable uterus. I didn't take the meds but decided to try the bath. After 10 mins in the bath I got out and things seemed to really pick up. I woke DH at about 10:45 and paged the midwife again. She said she'd meet us at the hospital at midnight. I called my mother to come over and watch Brendan since he was sleeping. Once she arrived we left immediately for the hospital since I was getting pretty uncomfortable. We arrived at the hospital at 11:30pm and checked in. The nurses checked my blood pressure, had the lab come to take some blood, and hooked me up to the monitors so that the midwife would have something to look at once she arrived. Sitting down so that the monitor could track my contractions and the baby's heartbeat made the contractions feel a million times worse. The midwife arrived at midnight and checked my progress immediately. We were 10cm and ready to push. She told me I had to hold off for 15 minutes until the other midwife arrived for the baby. At that point, 15 minutes seemed like an eternity.
Once the midwife arrived for the baby they broke my water and we began pushing. Nicholas Christopher was born at 1:40am and weighed 7lbs3oz. I didn't have any tearing and the proud papa was able to cut the cord for the second son like he did 3 years ago for the first. We were able to go home right afterwards but chose to stick around until about 10am to get a little rest afterwards.
Nicholas is such a gentle spirit. He sleeps right through all the commotion of the day and rarely fusses. He has been having longer quiet alert periods now which is just amazing. He is nursing like a champ. The past couple of nights he has slept 4-5 hour stretches which has allowed me to get some extra shut eye. He did have some jaundice but his levels are finally dropping and he didn't need any light therapy which was nice. We just love him!
