Monumental Monday Musings

Ethan's first bath at 1 hour old
Well, Leechie finally made HIS debut...as you read in my last post. Ethan Samuel joined his big sister Emily Susanne and big brother Edward Stuart (see a pattern here?) to make our family complete. (Whew! And it's a good thing God takes away our memory of labor, huh, ladies?)

Happy Monday to you! Greetings to you on the "Ides of September." Is it really the middle of the month already??

We had a fairly busy weekend...as you might imagine.

A bit of the story...

What started on Friday as some crampiness ended up turning into very irregular labor pains on Saturday around 6 a.m. I kept thinking I must be in labor, but "real" labor only happens at night, right? *wink*

But the pains stopped mid-morning, and only happened again every so often until later in the night...when they were coming somewhat more regularly...but still in no real pattern. (I guess I wanted an exact pattern. You know every 5 minutes, lasting for 65 seconds each...like you read about in the books.) Somehow that changed everytime I stood up. So that by the time we called our midwife at midnight they were coming pretty much every 5 minutes. I guess that saying about labor is true. *grin*

Our poor midwife was 40 minutes away delivering her second baby for the night (she had two more babies to deliver after ours) and said she would get to us as quickly as she could. Once she did get to us, everything seemed have stalled again...until I stood up.

So walking around for about an hour (cursing breathing through each pain) got stuff going. I had a shot of a painkiller called Stadol an hour before pushing, and it really helped me keep going -- as did swearing praying through each pain!! Stuart said at one point I was even snoring between contractions. *giggle*

After three (maybe more?) giant pushes, Ethan Samuel made his debut and was flopped up on my chest. The first thing I noticed was his wide-opened screaming mouth and then his big hands. He was amazing!

Everything about having a baby is surreal. You go through 9 months of having a little person growing inside of you and then 5+ hours of labor (sorry, Mom and Shelly, who suffered much, much longer than that!) to bring that little being into the world.

And life changes forever.

Surreal and wonderful...