Jack Has Arrived!

Jack Alexander Becksvoort is here! He made his entrance at 5:55 AM on Tuesday, January 27. He weighed 7 lbs. 13 oz. and he was 21 inches long. It all started on Sunday evening...I knew I was starting to go into labor, but I didn't know how long things would last. So I took the day off school on Monday, and I tried really hard to focus on other things. I washed about a million baby washcloths and burp rags and onesies, and I tried organizing the nursery (an utter failure, I might add).

By the time Dave got home from work, I was having contractions about every five minutes, but they weren't very strong. I thought to myself, "Boy, if this is what labor is like, I don't know what everyone is complaining about!" We went to the hospital at about 6:00 PM, and as soon as I got hooked up to the monitor, the contractions stopped! I was SO mad. They sent us home to wait it out some more.

As soon as we got back in the car to go home, the contractions got much, much stronger. To Dave's credit, he asked if we should just turn around and go back to the hospital. But I was NOT going to be sent away again, so we just went home (with a little pit stop at the Taco Bell drive-thru. For the record, I did not have an appetite at this point). We sat it out at home for another two hours--and by "sat it out," I mean rolled around on the floor and yelled a lot.

We went back to the hospital at about 10:00 PM, and the staff was happy to inform me that I was definitely in active labor at that point. And the anesthesiologist happened to by close by, so they gave me my epidural right away. SWEET RELIEF!!! I was even able to sleep for a couple of hours.

By 3:30 AM, it was already time to push! I was so excited--from all the stories I had heard, the baby is usually born fairly shortly after the pushing phase starts. And I was eager...things were really starting to hurt again. I pushed for 30 minutes and...nothing. Then I pushed for another 30 minutes and...still nothing. At this point, the doctor said that he wanted me to try to push for another 30 minutes before he would introduce any sort of interventions. Well, I didn't like the sound of interventions, so I tried really hard. But it didn't make any difference. :-(

He came back with a vacuum contraption to sort of suction poor Jack outta there. He also mentioned that there's only a certain amount of time they can use it before they have to resort to other interventions. He yanked and I pushed as hard as I could for another 45 minutes. He called the same anesthesiologist in to "prep the room"...well, I knew that could only mean one thing. And there was NO WAY I was going to have a c-section after over two hours of extremely hard work. It must have been just the thing I needed to hear, because two or three pushes later, and JACK ARRIVED!! :-)