What a beautiful baby Gabe is!! He's two weeks old already, and he must just know that he's the 4th child and that he needs to be easy-going. He has been an angel!! He wakes up to eat about every 3-4 hours, which if I time it just right means that I feed him at about 11pm, he wakes up around 3, and then not again until 7ish when the boys are getting up and I would be up anyways!!! That really only counts as one feeding in the night!! If I don't time it right, I've got to get up twice, which is still amazing, right?!
My labor with him was terrible and wonderful at the same time. I'm not sure which feeling outweighs the other quite yet. I was Strep-B positive with this pregnancy, again, and I wanted to be in more control of how my hospital experience went after the treacherous experience we had with Will. So, at my appointment that morning, my midwife Jennifer stripped my membranes at about 11am to see if that would get things going. It did, and about a half an hour later I was having some good contractions every few minutes. I didn't want to go rushing back to the hospital if they were just going to stop, but I didn't want to go in too late to get the 4 hours of Penicillin they wanted me to have either. I decided to come back home (Jared and I went to lunch after the appointment) and at least pack my own hospital bag and see if they kept going or not.
I came home, packed my bag, got Evan to school, arranged for everybody to be taken care of after school, and went back to the hospital. We got checked in and all hooked up to the monitors, and got the Penicillin going at about 2:15. We watched a movie while we waited, and the contractions kept coming nice and steady the whole time.
This ended up being my longest labor as far as total time goes, but from the very beginning until she broke my water at 6pm, so 7 whole hours, whenever I was distracted I could hardly tell they were there. As a matter of fact, while we were watching the movie, I kept on looking over at the monitor to make sure I was still having them, and sure enough I was, but they were pretty dang mild!!
After she broke my water, things really picked up from there, and pretty soon after that I was really breathing through my contractions and focusing and getting back rubs and all that fun stuff. Every so often, they would kick up a notch, and I would hope it was almost over. I progressed quickly, as far as birthing a baby is concerned, but it sure didn't seem very fast while I was in the middle of it!!
Its hard to describe the pain that I felt, but at the same time this finally turned out to be the kind of birthing experience with Jared that I'd always wanted to have. The 2 times I had an epidural, he was there of course, but I didn't really NEED him. With Will, there was so much distraction going on through Active Labor, waking up, taking a while to decide this was for real, waking up Jared, packing a bag, calling my mom, waiting for her, driving to the hospital, getting inside, getting checked in and checked on, peeing in a cup, etc etc etc that it all seemed to go by a lot faster with him. With this delivery, sitting in the same room anticipating the next contraction, and then just getting through each one made it seem harder. But I really relied on Jared and he was an amazing support to me and I really don't know if I could have done this one without him. For him, this was his favorite birth because he finally really did feel a part of it. It was an intense and personal experience for the two of us, and that part of it I actually really loved.
At 8:40pm I was finally complete, I pushed for about 4-5 minutes and out he came!!! Oh, I would rather push than go through those last 20 minutes of transition again!!!! Pushing is hard work, but for me the pain of the contractions went away and it was super intense, but not so painful. Is that weird? Oh well. . .
Anyhow, we had warned the nurses that he would probably be grunty with his breathing, like ALL of our children have been. . .and he was. So, a NICU nurse came in to monitor him for a while, but like we told them he would be, he was fine, just like all his brothers were. Since I had been Strep-B positive, and after our experience with Will, I knew that even with the Penicillin they would be on a bit of a higher alert in monitoring him than normal, so I didn't let the nurses take him from me at all. I made sure that he stayed right on my chest and made them do all of their listening and watching from there. It was so much better than letting them take him after a few minutes over to that warming table. It was easy, and such a better experience. With my previous births, I just thought thats how things were done so I let them do it. I had to learn that this really was MY experience, and that they were all there to serve me and my needs, and not the other way around. What a better hospital experience!!! They don't get offended by my demands, I just didn't know any better before!! I will be pounding this knowledge into my sisters heads when they get pregnant with their first babies!!!!
The boys love him, and will sit and hold him for 20-30 minutes at a time. Will is having a bit of a time adjusting, but I think things are starting to settle in for him too. He just loves babies so much, but he has been very possessive of me lately, even before the baby was born. If Cohen or Evan needed a hug, he would get mad and try to push them off of my lap screaming "Thats my mom!!! Get off!!" Ha! So, he does a bit of the same thing with the baby. When I'm nursing Gabe he'll either want to hold the baby, or hold me. He'll say things like "He doesn't like you mom! Get him off!!" or demand that its his turn to hold him. Sometimes its cute, and sometimes I want to punch him, but we're getting it worked out!!
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