Welcome, Nathan!

What an exciting long weekend! On Sunday morning at 1:21 (gotta be exact according to when Peter looked at the clock) my water broke and there was no mistaking that it was time to head to the hospital. Thankfully I went into labour on my own, with contractions starting around 2 a.m. on the way there. Before leaving I hopped in the shower and threw the last few items in our hospital bags. I had packed a whole bag for labour and delivery ... I used nothing from it. lol.

When we got to the hospital they checked to make sure my water broke but didn't check to see how dilated I was to reduce the risk of infection. They kept me hooked up to the monitors for about an hour (until 3:30?) to make sure the baby was doing ok and to ensure that I was going into labour on my own. Since I had made it to 37 weeks, 1 day, the doctor assured me my labour was considered full term and low risk. She also said since I was a first-time mom I should expect to have the baby sometime Sunday evening. At that point we decided we could wait a few hours to call our parents, since sitting around in a waiting room all day didn't sound like much fun.

After the monitoring was done they gave me a sleeping pill and set Peter and I up in a small room in L&D to get a few hours of sleep. Unfortunately the contractions kept getting stronger. About 30 minutes later (4:00 a.m.) I called for the nurse and she gave me a shot of morphine. She held the needle up before injecting me, looked at the amount, and said, "Oh yes, this should make you feel better." Well ... unfortunately I just kept feeling more and more pain through the contractions. They were getting unbearable and I thought I was the biggest wimp on the planet. I told Peter there was no way I could handle another 12 hours of this. After an hour with the morphine (5:00 a.m.) Peter went to find the nurse and told her it hadn't helped with the pain at all. She decided we would head back to the main L&D room and check the monitors and my cervix (for the first time). She was very surprised when she told me that I was almost 6 cm! I was so glad to hear that, since it meant I was over halfway there! I was progressing much faster than they had expected and Peter asked when we should call our families. She said now would be a good time so he made the phone calls.

At that point I asked for some pain medications and they made the executive decision to give me IV narcotics (fentanyl) and I didn't have the energy to push for an epidural even though I had mentioned I would want one when I first arrived. In the end, though, I'm glad I had the fentanyl. The hours from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. went by in a blur once I got the IV. I remember contractions, but they weren't bad and I was able to breathe through them easily. At 8 they checked me again and I was almost to 10. They had me lay on my left side to finish and gave me some nitrous oxide (laughing gas) to help me not push. hehe. I didn't find the laughing gas helped at all, and in fact it made it more difficult to breathe normally. By 8:30 a.m. it was time to push. I didn't really like this part ;) The first half was fairly easy, although it was very tiring. The fentanyl didn't really help much at this point. I was ready to give up by about 9, but Peter and the nurse convinced me that wasn't an option!

Nathan James was born at 9:25 a.m. on Sunday, May 20th. He weighed 7 lbs, 15 oz at 37 weeks, 1 day, so I'm glad we didn't go to 40 weeks! He's 21.5" long and in our opinion he's pretty cute :)

Here's Peter and Nathan our first morning at home.