Perfect Timing

Well, our new little sloth is officially one week old today. As I said before, he's quite delightful. A super sleeper and really easy going. He's really good at blocking out his sister including her high pitch screams of joy right next to his ear.

So, since I know you're wondering I'll share his birth story...at least a good part of it.

Thursday morning I had Bible Study and my small group prayed over me at the end of class, I really think it made a difference. Natural induction if you ask me. I had my doctors appointment in the afternoon and she was confident I'd have the baby before the weekend. Maybe it was what my doctor said or maybe the 1,000 people praying for me, or both, but a sense of peace came over me Thursday night. I knew baby was coming and it would be in God's perfect timing. I ate good food and had a lovely night watching "Arrested Development". We all got a full nights rest and woke up at 7:30am.

At 8am I started having what I can only describe as menstrual cramps. At that point I was 90% sure baby would be born that day. However, not wanting to get excited I proceeded with plans to head to the mall with a friend and Demand's friends. We were supposed to leave the mall at 11:30am but at 11am contractions had picked up enough that I thought we should head home "just in case". The best part about my entire labor by the way is that it was never too painful. Nothing got worse than 'really bad' menstral cramps. When I was in labor with Demand I needed to walk, rock, anything but sit and I needed Mr. Sloth's help a lot. With this labor I just went into my own quiet world for each contraction. In fact, Mr. Sloth worked until around 2pm when I started timing the contractions.

So I headed home from the mall and we all had lunch and then I went down for a nap. I woke up around 1:45pm and realized the contractions were 15 minutes apart pretty regularly. Between 2pm and 3pm we started making phone calls and lining up babysitters. At 3pm "the godfather" came into town. Mr. Sloth and I ordered pizza since we were a) hungry and b) had people coming over to our house. Tiger was coming over to spend the night with Demand. When we spoke to Tiger around 3pm she said she could be at our house by 4pm, at that point I thought it was plenty of time, but it ended up being close. It started snowing at 3:30pm, near rush hour on a Friday. Traffic was horrible. After dinner I went upstairs to labor by myself in the bathtub. I should have realized that it was a warning sign, but luckily Mr. Sloth was on the case.

He called my doula and they both agreed it was time to head to the hospital, I agreed since my contractions were now 4-6 minutes apart. I hated getting out of the tub though. While I finished getting ready Mr. Sloth dropped Demand off at my friends house until Tiger could pick her up (Tiger was stuck in the snowy traffic).

We got the hospital and had a flashback of our first birth. The nurse had to get a second opinion when checking how dilated I was because I didn't' seem to be in much pain. I was 6-7cm so they called the doctor. Unlike my first birth I was quite content sitting in bed. In between contractions Mr. Sloth, the doula, and I just talked and told stories. The doctor got to the hospital around 6:45pm. Honestly, I think I was waiting for her. I couldn't get into the tub until she got there and I wanted a waterbirth. The last few contractions before she got there I felt such a pressure that I swore if I got out of bed I would just start pushing. As soon as she arrived I jumped in the tub and like I thought, I started pushing. After ten minutes or so I had to get out of the tub. My water broke during a contraction and it showed meconium and hospital rules said I had to get out.

Again, I was at peace with it. I really didn't mind. I had heard that if you don't get into the tub before transition (a stage in labor) that the mother can't adjust to the change in atmosphere. I pushed for a half an hour and baby was born. And that's when things went downhill.

For me labor and delivery is the easy part. The hard part is what comes next. I have the joy of being a rare 'bleeder'. That mixed with low blood pressure and some other complications led to a miserable night. You name it and I was hooked up to it or had it running through my veins. There was talk of a transfusion at one point, but I think I hovered just out of range of needing one. Between 7:25pm and 11pm I honestly had my doubts that I could do this again. But before heading to bed that night, I was ready for my third child.

Honestly for as much as I wanted baby out earlier I couldn't have asked for a better delivery. Everything detail fell into place and it all seemed to happen under my control, it was great.

My doctor said later that she was just arriving at her weekend retreat when she got the call so I then had all the people at the retreat praying for me, not to mention friends, family and various prayer circles. Mr. Sloth got his weekend delivery and we had our little boy just in time to be out of the hospital for the Baptism on Sunday.

Ok, that's all I have time for now, next time I'll talk about Demand meeting her brother, the Baptism and our first week with "the kids".