living the freeman life

Wow- what a day! Thanks so much to everyone that supported us through this journey!! We had a great day yesterday- although some parts were hard. He is such a great baby…when he cries, he is usually hungry. He is a champ at nursing (caught on really fast), and only dropped a little bit of weight. Here’s the story of what happened THAT day…

Well, as you know, I was scheduled to go in at 7am on Tuesday morning to be induced. Adam was 10 days overdue, and they were beginning to get concerned about his size. (Little did I know how on target they were!) However, at 1:30am Tuesday morning, I woke up with contractions that were 7 minutes apart, and were ones I actually had to breathe through. These were definitely different from the false alarm contractions I had on Sunday morning. We called Mom, (they thankfully had Caleb at their house already), and told her we’d meet her at the hospital at 6am. We got there, got checked in, and put into a room. They checked me at told me that was about 4 cm. You probably know some of the story if you followed the blog but basically, after I got checked, Dr. Keppler broke my water (a natural inducer of labor) to see if that would bring contractions on even stronger. I never wound up needing Pitocin. This was a HUGE praise!! I had two of the best nurses by my side (normally only one is assigned). Dr. Keppler and the nurses were all very supportive of my desire to have this baby naturally. They weren’t freaked out or intimidated by it at all, but would make suggestions about what I could do. I got to rock in a rocking chair and watch TV (funny thing: I actually wound up asking mom and Eric to turn OFF Food Network because it was making me nauseous) and go walking. Right before the transition phase of labor started, they filled a huge garden tub with warm water and let me soak in it for awhile with the jets on. It was GLORIOUS! By the time contractions started coming in doubles, so I asked to get back out. It didn’t take long to reach the pushing phase, maybe only an hour or so (that I can remember). They let me work with my body and only push when I felt like my body was telling me to. This was a big difference from last time because last time, Dr. Chandler checked me, said, “You’re at 10cm, start pushing”. It doesn’t do much good to push before you feel the need to. Anyway, so I pushed and pushed and made some headway (no pun intended), but after 45 minutes, it was obvious that this baby was going to need some help. Dr. Keppler pulled out the vacuum (Caleb had to be “Hoover-ed” out as well), and gave me some assistance. At the very end, I could tell that this baby was not the 8 pounder I was hoping for! She managed to extract him, and when he came out, she said “Wow! He’s at least 10 pounds!!”. I could not believe it! I just started crying as they placed him on my chest (that is such a surreal feeling to actually meet this little critter that’s been living inside me for 9 1/2 months!). I was SO glad labor was over and now I could relax! (ha ha) We took a lot of pictures, and will continue to add them as we take more! Thank you to everyone for all of the prayers! I got to labor exactly as I had wanted to! :)

View Full Album