Here’s the story of Henry’s birth. He arrived two weeks early.
The short, edited version
After lunch on Saturday, I awoke after a nap to discover I was losing my mucuous plug. Around 5:30 PM my water broke. We got to the hospital around 6:30 and by 7 PM I was at 1.5 cm. I labored with Dave walking around and swaying on the birthing ball until around 9:45, by which point I had dilated to 4 cm. I requested the epidural at this point, and it was administered by 10:30 PM. By 11 PM I was dilated to 9 cm. By 11:30 PM I started pushing.
I pushed for about an hour and a half and I was in a lot of pain. The baby was facing sideways, not face-down, so he was very difficult to maneuver. After one and a half hours of pushing, we opted for the vacuum extraction, which unfortunately required an episiotomy. It took another hour of pushing to get him out. It hurt a whole lot. Pushing sucks.
Regardless of all that, our precious little Henry was born at 1:34 AM on Sunday morning, March 2nd. He was placed on my chest and I just couldn’t believe my eyes. Dave got to cut the cord and then went with Henry to the nursery where he got cleaned up while I recovered. We got to our hospital room around 3:30 AM and finally got to sleep around 4 AM. We began our busy day around 7 AM.
Now, here is a more detailed, more graphic version. Read at your own risk.
