The Story

Well, after everything is said and done, we have an adorable little baby boy. Fresh from Heaven. And he came the day before his due date, which is a bonus. He is so tiny; a head covered in soft blond hair, a round Hymas face, deep blue eyes with blonde lashes, a pronounced Hymas nose, and long fingers and toes.
I love everything about this new baby. I loved holding him in the hospital and watching him open and close his eyes to take in the bright lights. Loved cradling him against my neck, juggling his tiny body with my hands. Loved his little squeaks and grunts. Loved sending him away to that magic place called the nursery where magic nurse fairies burped him and changed his diaper so I could sleep, take baths, and enjoy some peace and quiet.

This time around the experience was so much more real to me. With Analyn I just couldn’t take everything in; it was too surreal. Not to mention I was thrown for a loop when she came out with black hair, and not the blonde head I had envisioned. No, with Benjamin, I already knew the outline of the routine and because of that, it has been so much fun taking care of a newborn again (Besides the SERIOUS soreness and constipation; I’ll spare you those miserable details. TMI?)

So to give a not-so-brief summary of his arrival, sometime around 5 a.m. last Sunday I started contracting regularly enough that it kept me awake. By 9 a.m. they were every 5-7 minutes, and by noon they were every 3-5 minutes. Thad and I stayed home from church while my mom took Ana. I won’t mention that Thad broke the Sabbath even more by assembling his new flat screen that we had finally gotten home from my sister’s the night before. It was like Christmas all over again. But back to the babe, so by 1 my mom was home with Ana and Thad and I kissed her goodbye (Ana, not my mom) and headed to the hospital.

Not wanting to check in only to find that I was dilated to a 2, we decided to walk around the bottom floor of Mtn. View for a while to speed things up, before going up to Labor and Delivery. For about an hour and a half we walked and rested, and my contractions got closer and closer. I kept thinking, “these can’t be painful enough to be close to delivery, can they?” So we’d walk more. This one male nurse kept passing us on his way up and down the hallway, and he knew exactly what we were doing. Once he passed us while I was bent over having a contraction, and he offered me a wheelchair. We declined and every time he passed us after that he just smiled and laughed a little to himself.

A little after 3 I got bored with walking and my contractions were coming every 2-and-a-half minutes. So So walked up to the counter and all the nurses were waiting for us because I had called a few hours earlier to alert them that I’d be coming in soon. Thad and I were the only ones there! I was already dilated to a 6, so the nurses hurried a little more than usual because they thought the baby might come quickly. The anesthesiologist came right in and we all just talked while he set up my epidural. While he was getting set up I got the urge to push and I think I freaked everyone out a little, although they didn’t admit it. The epidural guy started pumping me full of drugs so they’d kick in quickly if the baby came, and the nurses even called the on-call dr. thinking we might need him sooner than my dr. could make it.

All those drugs actually backfired because they slowed down my contractions and it took three more hours for the baby to come. He actually could have come sooner but we had to wait for my dr., who took FOREVER to get to the hospital. Don’t get me started on that. She was “out of town” and every time we called she was only “an hour away.” And the baby pooped in the process because he was under stress.) Anyway, my doc finally arrived at 7:30 p.m. and by 7:35 Benjamin was out, and wailing while shooting everything in sight with hot pee.