Birth!

It's the moment you've all been waiting for - the story of our latest addition!

After being on bedrest for 25 days, my body refused to go into labor. Not only that, my water wouldn't break (which it has all 3 other times), and an induction attempt failed! I kept thinking it was close/starting, but 20 days after bedrest ended I was still pregnant. We scheduled an elective induction for 39 weeks (the earliest doctors will do an elective induction), and crossed our fingers that this induction would work!

We got to the hospital a little after 8:00 pm the night before 39 weeks so we could start the "miso" (Misoprostol, a cervical ripening pill). They had to monitor me for a while to make sure I met the criteria for miso - basically, not very dilated and not having very many contractions. Both applied to me, and around 10:00 (things sure take a while in hospitals...) we got that started. The order was to repeat miso doses every 3 hours until I no longer qualified, then switch to pitocin. I'd had a dose of miso at my failed induction, and it definitely worked to give me contractions, so I was hopeful it would work again!

Well, I took a nap, read some, watched tv some...no contractions. Finally around 1:00, right before my 2nd dose of miso, I had a contraction! Yay! Then a few minutes later I had another! The nurse said "Let's hurry and give you your next dose before you don't qualify anymore!" She did, and the contractions kept going.

We watched The Blind Side (the hospital had some cool movie channels), then went to sleep. I had very regular, very wimpy contractions for the rest of the night. So at 4:00 am, I definitely didn't qualify for another dose of miso. I did not qualify for pitocin either, though. I was having too many contractions. They just weren't doing anything - I was still around a 1 and pretty thick. We were starting to think we'd be sent home again with the baby still cozy in my belly.

Well, at some point later in the morning I was able to start pitocin. We continued to watch tv and doze off and on. The contractions started to get a little worse, and when they checked me around 11:00 am I was finally dilated to a 3! Yay! We started to think we might finally have this baby!

Around 1:00 pm (12 hours since my first contraction), Dr. David stopped by. He gave me the go ahead to get an epidural. I was a little nervous that it would stop my labor (which seemed so fragile to me after trying so hard to get it started), but he said we'd just turn up the pitocin as needed. In the time between ordering the epidural and getting the epidural, the contractions started to get a lot more painful, so I was very glad it was already coming!

I just have to say here that I love epidurals. There are plenty of things in life that I can at least kind of see why people make different choices than I do. This is NOT one of them! To go from in a lot of pain to really comfortable is just wonderful. It makes the rest of labor so much more pleasant. I don't see anything about doing it natural that makes it worth it. It just seems stupid.

At 3:00 pm I was checked again, and I'd made it to a 4. Interestingly, my water still hadn't broken (again, every single other labor has started with my water breaking), so Dr. David came back and broke it for me. I've always been pretty fast from 4 to 10, so we knew the end was in sight!

Dan and I both dozed off for a little while then (thank you, epidural!). Shortly after 5:00 pm I woke up feeling nauseous and a little weird down there, so I had the nurse check me. I was a 7. Within about 10 minutes or so I was feeling some definite pressure with contractions, so I asked to be checked again, and I was complete! I texted my mom that it was "go time!" at 5:21 according to my phone.

Dr. David & the nurse busied themselves getting ready, while I threw up a couple times, as is my history. Then it was pushing time! I pushed through about 4 or 5 contractions, and the baby was born at 5:33 pm! Somehow my epidural didn't totally numb me for that, and it was really, really painful! Dr. David kept saying things to the effect of "Wow, this baby is NOT helping you at all!" His little head came out cute and round...a little coning would have been appreciated!

Baby's first picture, fresh from my tummy. :-)

He grabbed my finger right away

SO HAPPY to be done being pregnant! Oh yeah, and happy to have a sweet baby boy (name undetermined at that point) to snuggle.

When Baby came out, everyone's first response was to the effect of "He's huge!" I'd been saying that he was going to be my biggest baby, for multiple reasons: bedrest increases baby size, I was farther along than I'd been with everyone but David, and I'd gained 44 lbs this time around (35 with David and high 20s with Ryan & Katy), surely it wasn't all my fault! I was guessing he'd be a low nine pounder. Wrong! This BIG little baby was 10 lb 4 oz! Holy cow! No wonder I'd been so uncomfortable!

When Dan & I were first expecting our first baby, my 2 favorite names were Nathan and Kathryn. Dan vetoed Nathan at that point, and Kathryn didn't get used thanks to that baby being a boy. When we were expecting baby #2, those were still my favorite names, and Dan went along with Nathan until near the end when we changed to Ryan. When we were expecting baby #3 the names were John (the first half of that pregnancy was the football season John Beck did amazing things, so we really liked that name) and Kathryn, and we finally got to use Kathryn. Well, this time we started out with the names being William (probably calling him Liam) or Ellie (possibly short for something). As soon as we found out it was a boy, I changed my mind and read through lots and lots of baby names. I went back to Nathan as my first choice. We asked the kids their opinions, and they all wanted Nathan (I want to say that Ryan came up with it on his own, but I must have mentioned it at some point, maybe even just that it was almost his name). Dan didn't love it, but was okay with it. A few nights before this baby was born, I started questioning if I wanted to use Nathan after all. I considered going with William (still Dan's first choice), and also kind of considered using James (yes, after Jimmer Fredette, who Dan has a huge man crush on). Then the baby was born, and I still hadn't decided that I loved anything else. So since I've loved the name Nathan for a long time (at least 9 years, since that's when we were first pregnant with David), we decided to go with that.

Nathan Daniel Morrill

Born March 14th, 2011 at 5:33 pm

10 lb 4 oz, 21 1/2 inches long