They say eating spicy food is a sure-fire way to kickstart a labor. Well, at 40 weeks and 2 days, I decided to have Greek food for lunch with my sister. Saganaki and falafels will forever have new meaning for me. Not spicy in the hot sense, but full of flavor spicy- I guess it worked.
At around 3 p.m. I texted Andrew that he should think about coming home from work. At 5:30 we arrived at the hospital and were promptly sent home again. "Come back when they're more intense and closer together." To which I responded "They get worse?!"
Andrew was an awesome coach and the hours of prenatal classes paid off. Every time I said, "Ok, I'm serious- I want to go to the hospital NOW" he calmly said, "Ok, how about we wait just another half hour." We didn't want to be sent away again.
He gave in to my pleadings around 9:30 p.m. Amazingly, I STILL hadn't progressed- at all. The nurse let us wait it out an hour in the triage room, and thankfully during that hour I went from 2.5 to 5. Good thing because I was NOT going home again; I would have made Andrew circle the block before going home again.
Now for the gory details (skip to the next paragraph if you're not interested): our son was O.P. which means he was facing up, not down. This makes labor and pushing longer and more painful. I hadn't planned on getting an epidural, though I was prepared to deviate if necessary. For me, it was necessary. I started pushing at around 1 a.m. and never would have had the endurance to make it to 5:19 a.m. without my "little friend". It was a bit of a disappointment but soooooo worth it.
Ross Willis was born at 5:19 a.m. May 22nd, weighed 7 pounds 2 ounces, and measured 20" long. He was healthy and sleepy after a long night. Andrew and I were officially parents and so in love with our boy.
Now, a week later, everyone is still tired but happy. Our cats have adjusted well- they go from ambivalent to mildly concerned when he cries and back to ambivalent again once he stops. They just know they get a little less attention now, though we do our best to remember to pet and feed them every once in a while.
The names we chose are both paternal family names- Ross is Andrew's biological father's middle name and also his great grandfather's name. Willis is my paternal grandfather's name. Simple, classic, short (with a last name as long as ours we thought we'd do him that favor). We just really hope he doesn't have a lisp.
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| My sister and I had some fun doing a little photo shoot :) |
