Joel's Birth Story

For those of you who are curious, here's how everything went down...

I went into the hospital Tuesday morning for my scheduled ultrasound. The ultrasound revealed that my fluid level had dropped to 5cm. The tech called my OB and she said "okay, time to head down to Labor & Delivery." I was really surprised! I called Ed and told him I was heading down to check myself in. We decided he would stay home with Samuel until my parents could get to our house from Indiana (about a three hour drive). I got checked in at 10:15. At that point I was 1 1/2 - 2 cm dialated, but only a -2 station (You have to go down to 0 and then back up to +5 or something like that). They started me on Pitocin at 11:00am and my contractions got going pretty steady about 30 minutes later. Ed, my parents & Samuel showed up around 3:30pm. I visited with them for awhile and Ed and I went back to the room. The resident broke my water at 4:00pm and checked me - I was still just at 2cm dialated and -2. I went through contractions as they got stronger and stronger. I got an epidural at 8:30pm. It wasn't too bad, although it didn't take at first. It numbed the backs of my legs, but nothing on the front. I was still feeling all of my contractions. The resident checked me to see where I was at, and I was dialated 5cm. The doc came back to put a boost in my epidural and I finally got relief from the contractions about 9:30pm. Ed and I decided to get some rest. My OB came in at 10:45pm to check me and said "okay, you're complete, time to push". Wow! It seemed to go really fast! I pushed for 16 minutes (the exact same amount of time it took to push out Samuel) and Joel was born! As soon as his head came out, Ed and I both said it had to be a boy because it looked EXACTLY like Samuel. He came out smoothly and received a 9 and a 9 for APGAR scores (Ed is really proud of this fact). Overall, everything went so well. Joel nursed right away and we got to spend some really sweet time with him in his super-awake phase. A complete blessing start to finish!!