Benjamin's Birth

I know it's already been over a week, but I thought I would share the story of birthing Benjamin :)

On Tuesday March 11th, after staying up until 2am painting my bathroom, I woke up at 6:30 with contractions every 5 minutes. I told Alex he should probably stay home from work that day, and we decided to go ahead and send Josh and Jeremiah to school, and see how things went. Mom and Dad came over to take Jeremiah to school about 9am, and Matthew went along for the ride, then over to play at their house for a while. I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and jump in the tub so the contractions wouldn't hurt so bad :)

Alex gave me a Naked smoothie to drink, but I couldn't stomach very much of it. So Alex and I watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail for about an hour. Such a funny movie!! The tub was making me hot so I said I wanted to get up and walk around a bit. It took us 30 minutes to walk around the block! LOL and we got some pretty funny looks as I would lean on Alex during a contraction! Since we hadn't been good about timing the contractions we came home and used a stop watch. Turned out they were still 5 minutes apart and lasting about a minute. After each contraction I felt so sick to my stomach, I really didn't want anything to eat or drink, not even water or ice. After another hour of this we decided to call the midwife over, and they didn't take very long, Angela was there in 5 minutes and Christy showed up about 12:30!

After they checked my blood pressure and all that I asked Christy to see how much progress I had made. Yeah! I was at a 7 :) Unfortunately as soon as I sat back up I threw up what little I had eaten! Since Josh had said he wanted to be around when we had the baby we asked mom and dad to get him and Jeremiah from school. Then I got back in the tub.

Unfortunately the hot water made me sleepy, but thankfully my contractions were far enough apart I could fall asleep between them. About two hours of that was enough for me, I was getting way too hot, and felt like I wasn't making much progress. So I got out and Christy checked me again, this time I was almost completely dilated just a little lip hanging on the right side. I tried to stand during contractions to speed things up....but my legs were so shaky- and all I wanted to do was lay down! But then when I did it actually hurt a little more, so Christy suggested a hands and knees position, which was great except I didn't feel like I had the strength to support myself, so Alex grabbed my exercise ball. I guess little sleep, no food and a hot tub is a bad combination for labor :) All the midwifes were great though, they kept massaging my lower back-it was so awesome!!

So about 3:15 Christy checks me again, no change :( But she said during the next contraction she would try and slip the lip over, as soon as she did my bag of water broke... but I felt like I had just popped his head out! LOL Since my contractions were still 5 minutes apart it felt like forever that I was pushing till his head came out another huge push latter at 3:53 there he was! I was shaking so much I felt like I couldn't hold him, so she had me lay back and try to nurse him while Alex went and made me a sandwich. The little guy was a pro at nursing, and was upset when I took him off so Alex could show him off to the family.

Alex thought it would be great to tell everyone we were naming him Christoph Robert Antonio Powell, a few people got the joke, some said it was a nice name. I had to tell my mom to put the initials together :) But we really named him Benjamin Michael-George Powell.

Then Benjamin and I went to take a nice herbal bath, but the tub had cooled to 95 degrees and the baby needed to be at least 98. Since the tub took about 30 minutes to raise a degree Alex put on big pots of water to boil. While we waited for hot water the midwifes did his exam... 21 1/4 inches, and 9lbs 7oz!!! BIG BABY!!! Then Ben and I enjoyed a warm bath, and he wanted to nurse again!!