Aedan’s Birth Story

I wish I had bet on when Aedan would arrive! When I found out I was dilated to 3cm  just before 37 weeks, I began to think he was going to come early. Then at my next appointment I hadn’t made much progress so I began to wonder just how early he could come. For some reason I kept telling myself that he would be here either the 13th or the 14th, and it turns out I was pretty dead on (he was born at exactly 11:56pm on the 13th).

On Saturday Jon and I slept in. We let Hiro up on the bed and the three of us enjoyed a lazy morning together. Once we got up and had breakfast we cleaned up the house and Jon went to run some errands (I was about to join him when I started having contractions and decided to stay home). When he came home around 2pm I was have contractions pretty regularly but they weren’t very painful. Around 3pm we decided to start timing them and found out they were about 3-4 minutes apart. We called the nurse at 4pm and she said we could go ahead and head to the hospital. I was afraid it was false labor so we decided to wait another 30 or 40 minutes. Since the contractions were just getting stronger we headed for the hospital around 4:40ish. We got checked in and I was hooked up to the monitors by 5:30pm and my contractions were 2-3 minutes apart and I had dilated to a 5. The nurse let us know that this was the real deal and we wouldn’t be going home for a few days. :)

While Jon made calls to our parents I got my epidural (best thing ever!). My doctor came in a broke my water and by 9pm I was 10 cm dilated and ready to push. Everyone thought it would be no time before Aedan arrived.

(feeling great after getting my epidural)

Unfortunately while everything else had happened super fast, pushing did not go the same way. I pushed for about 2.5 hours and Aedan made some good progress but once we got to certain point he just wasn’t moving and I was exhausted! We made the decision to use forceps around 11:40 and from then on everything went really fast. Once the forceps were in place it only took 1 contraction and he was out.

Jon really wanted him to come on the 13th since its his favorite number and his soccer number. I didn’t think we made it, but apparently we did by 4 minutes. :)

(Our tired but happy little family)

I’ll post more about our hospital stay in another post (along with more pictures).

-Lauren-