Labor story

I have to say that I have been extremely lucky with this pregnancy and delivery. Everything has gone well, and I feel so fortunate for that. I don't take one second of it for granted and there are truly no word to describe it.

First, I was scheduled in at 8:30am on Friday morning to be induced, so this all happened at the perfect time!

Kenny and I were watching tv on Thursday night, just hanging out. Around 9pm, I felt like my contractions were somewhat consistent. I have been having braxton hicks for months now, so they were nothing I really paid any attention to. They were about 15 minutes apart but still painless.

We headed to bed around 10:30 or so. I woke up at 2am and was unable to get back to sleep. They were still relatively painless, but just enough to keep me awake. At 4:15am, I woke Kenny up and said, "Hey. You don't need to get up or anything, but I just wanted to let you now that I am going to go downstairs and watch tv. My contractions are about 4 minutes apart and I can't really walk or talk during them." He then reminded me that that is our queue to head to the hospital. I totally spaced out on that part. I thought they needed to be a lot closer together. Thank goodness for Kenny!

We showed up to the hospital at 5am and they were surprised I made it at home that long with as strong as my contractions were. I was already 5cm as well. (Sidenote-Kenny and I had a discussion a couple of days earlier about how I could totally see myself staying home too long. I have a pretty high pain tolerance and don't like to waste people's time. I told him how I would hate to go to the hospital too early just to get sent back home. Well, it happened! Totally waited longer than I needed to.) They admitted me and I got an epidural not long after I got there. I LOVE those things. It was amazing and made my experience pain free. I am not even kidding. Totally painless. The Dr. came in at about 10am to break my water. I was progressing well, and only knew I was having contractions when I looked at the monitor that said I was. The moms visited as well as the Bingman's. Noon rolled around and they told me I could start to push-so with just Kenny and I in the room, that's exactly what I did. We chit-chatted and had fun conversations (about what song she would be born to. We had some music on and were taking bets with the nurse) in between contractions. That's why the pushing takes so long, which I never realized. Since you can only push during those, there is a lot of time (couple minutes) between to rest or chat ;) Lennon was born at 1:31pm, about 5 minutes after the Dr. came into the room.

We let our visitors come back in and visit for a bit and then Kenny went to the nursery with her for her bath and a few tests.

It was a great experience, and a pretty short labor overall. We are on day 3 of her life and it's been wonderful. We are adjusting well and I am so happy to have Kenny home with us for the first week. He has been amazing and I love our new family.