At 10pm I was induced, by 1 am I could feel the contractions, but not enough to bother me. Chris enjoyed watching the monitor to see 'how high I could go' with the intensity of the contractions. The next morning I was given more "induction stuff" (it's been 2 months I forgot what the drug was called). Around noon my water broke, which it didnt "GUSH" like everyone told me, it trickled. My contractions got stronger and by 1 pm I had back labor. No-one told me about back labor, NO ONE! I tried everything! Walking around, laying on my sides, the ball (which was the best), I was in AGONY! Then around 6 pm magic happened, "Your at 4 cm, you can have your epidural". 2 hours LATER I was one happy lady! After that it sort of runs together. I remember at 11pm they put an oxygen mask on me, and I was OUT. Then at midnight I was at 10cm.
At 12:15 they took away my mask and told me to push. It was really weird how low James was in my belly, it made it all seem very real that it was 'time'. I was really groggy and not awake enough to push like they wanted, so it took a while to get the process going. Chris felt pretty worthless standing there holding up my leg while I was clearly in pain, but I'm very happy he was there. At 1:30 I had enough of pushing, they kept telling me I was doing great and they could see lots of hair, but it just wasnt enough. So I dug down deep and pushed with everything I had. At 1:43 James Michael Gray entered the world, covered in white stuff, cone headed, and screaming.
Chris cut the cord (although he REALLY didn't want to), mentioned him not making the "9lb mark", and watched the nurse take all the vitals. James latched on to breast feeding right away, which was a HUGE worry for me. Chris fell asleep once everything calmed down, meanwhile I was wide awake holding our son. What an amazing feeling!
We wanted to go home that afternoon, but the hospital had a rule about '24 hours', so we waited till Sunday afternoon. I was told later that all the nurses thought I had other children because of how I handled James. I think it was because of the hundreds of hours of baby TV shows I watched while pregnant, and they say you don't learn anything watching TV!
