He's here!!!!

It has taken me a week to get around to getting on the computer but Zachary Lee is here! He was born last Wednesday, 7/20/2011 at 7:33pm. He weighed 6lbs, 5oz and was 19.5in long. He is absolutely perfect... I am so incredibly in love with this little man! We got to come home on Friday and he has done wonderfully since we've been home, other than he won't latch so we are exclusively pumping now but I'm just glad he can still get breast milk for as long as possible.

The birth story:

On Tuesday (7/19), I started having contractions around 6pm. They were pretty consistent (about 6-7 minutes apart) and kept getting stronger and closer together as the night went on. About 11pm, Curtis and I decided to head to L&D to see what was going on. They hooked me up to the machine and monitored me for about an hour... I was definitely having regular contractions but my cervix still wasn't making any progress. The nurse called my dr and he said since I was already 5 days over due, to go ahead and keep me, give me some pain meds and he would be in the next morning to start an induction.

The pain meds didn't do anything... I was up all night have contractions that just got stronger and stronger but my cervix still didn't budge from 1cm. The OB came in at about 9:30am and inserted a Foley bulb catheter (for those that don't know, its a catheter that goes into your cervix. The balloon is blown up with saline and sits on top of the cervix. A bag of fluid was attached to the other end of the cath with a rubber band and basically anytime I moved it would pull the balloon a little further down, dilating my cervix.) He said once the cath came out, I would be dilated between 3&4cm and they would break my water and start pitocin.

The catheter lasted 2 hours. Once it came out, I was checked and was dilated to 4cm. The dr came in about 12:30 and broke my water and said they would wait an hour or so to start the pitocin. By 1, my contractions were so intense, I could barely breathe and was begging for an epidural. As soon as the epidural was in, I started to feel relief and told the anesthesiologist I loved him (lol). After that, I was able to just relax and enjoy my company (I had a room full of people already) and never really felt anymore contractions, other than some slight pressure now and then and I couldn't feel my legs at all.

I made good progress from there and by 5pm, I was dilated to 8cm. Only problem was, we were still waiting on my dad to make it in from TX and he was about 1.5 hours away still. They checked me again at 6 and I was fully dilated and ready to push... The nurse said we would wait until 6:30 to start pushing to give my dad a chance to make it. At 6:15, my dad was in a wreck (he is fine, thankfully) so we knew we were going to have to start pushing. At 7pm, I started pushing. By 7:15, his head was almost out and we were waiting on the dr. While we waited, I was able to reach down and feel Zachary's head as it was coming out. The OB finally came in and I pushed a couple more times and delivered by sweet baby boy at 7:33pm.

I only had a couple very small tears, which I am recovering from well. I never imagined delivery would be so easy... only problem was, after delivery, they took away my epi immediately and I could've used it while they pumped me full of 2 more bags of pitocin since I had some pretty bad gushing afterwards... that was painful.

Zachary was a little jaundiced when we left the hospital but it's almost completely gone now. I took him to the pedi yesterday and he weighed 6lbs, 8oz and was 20in long. I can't believe he is a week old already!

More pics are here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.818788274958.2281169.38705820&l=05be84fff4&type=1