He's here! Our second son, Jacob Thomas, arrived on September 11, 2009 at 7:07am. Here lies the story of his arrival!
September 10
I woke up early in the morning on September 10 with mild and irregular contractions. When Scott woke up to go to work, I told him to go since the contractions were irregular and still mild. By the time Logan woke up they were becoming more frequent and so I started timing them. My mom was on her way here already for a visit so I called Scott and he headed home from work around 10am.
With the contractions timing about 5 minutes apart, we headed to the hospital to find out that I was only 1cm. After not much action at the hospital they disappointingly sent us home. By the time we got home the contractions had really tapered off and were close to non-existant so we went about the rest of our day.
Around 8pm, the contractions came back and by 11pm they were getting stronger, quickly. So we called my mom to come back and be with Logan. We left for the hospital shortly after midnight.
September 11
When we arrived at the hospital, they hooked me up to a monitor to watch the baby's heartrate and the contractions. The nurse also took my blood pressure which surprisingly was 177/99!! This is very high for anybody but quite surprising for me since I had struggled with LOW blood pressure throughout this pregnancy. I was still only about 2cm dialated, but the nurse assured me that with a blood pressure that high, we WOULD be having a baby, one way or another.
A flurry of activity happened at this point. Blood work was ordered so that an epidural could be administered (to help deal with pain in order to lower my blood pressure) and an IV was started to pump me full of fluid. At this point, I'm pretty sure that they were prepping me for the c-section that everyone figured I would end up with, that frustrated me but we just went with the flow.
They transferred us to a labour room and we met our nurse who would stay with us until the baby was born. Until about 4am, labour continued and we waited for the epidural. Around 4am, the epidural was administered. Although I had been contracting for quiet some time and experiencing quite a bit of pain along with that, the epidural hurt A LOT. It seemed to take forever for them to get everything in, but once it was in, I was a lot more comfortable.
From that point until about 6am labour continued although I was unable to feel the contractions. The nurse encouraged us to sleep, however the monitor was not picking up my contractions so she had to feel them from the outside of my belly. I found it slightly awkward to sleep with someone touching my stomach the whole time, although I think I did drift in and out of sleep.
Shortly after 6am, the nurse checked and I was about 6cm dialated but the baby was still pretty far up and needed to come down. She called the doctor who came and broke my water. As soon as my water was broken (and the doctor left the room), the baby came right down and I was ready to go. I told the nurse I had to push, she told me to wait, I said I couldn't, she came over and checked and quickly called the doctor back in - suddenly I was ready to push.
The doctor came back in (along with a bunch of other people) and after some pushing, Jacob Thomas was born.
A flurry of activity happened while they checked Jacob over and cleaned me up. But shortly after his birth, the room was quiet and it was just us and our new little boy.
I was so happy to successfully deliver Jacob vaginally after the c-section that I had with Logan. There were many times during pregnancy when I thought it wouldn't happened but I did go into labour on my own (finally!) and deliver Jacob on my own. It was a great experience with an awesome outcome.
The last few days have been busy and I have many more things to post about but they'll have to wait until I can grab some time here an there. Enjoy the pictures of the little man below.
Jacob Thomas - 6lbs 5oz; 20.5in
Getting checked out - already hungry!
We think he looks like Logan did when he was born.
Happy Mommy
Proud Daddy
Jacob and Mommy
All bundled up
Brothers meet for the first time. (Logan looks a bit nervous here).
Happy big brother!
We were trying to get Logan to put his hands up so we could take a picture of his shirt, button and sticker but he kept grabbing the sticker just as the picture was taken, it was quite entertaining, but this is the best pic we got.
Proud Big Brother
Jacob's first bath (at 4am!)
Scott and Logan came back to visit us on Satruday. Here's daddy holding both his boys.
Logan was not as impressed to hold Jacob this time.
Tiny little boy ready to go home.
Grandma and her newest grandson.
A failed attempt at a picture of our family of 4. (I'm sure there will be many more to come).
This is Logan opening the Little People Garage that Jacob gave him as a gift since he's a big brother now. Logan really enjoys opening gifts - whether he gets to rip paper off or pull things out of a bag, he loves to "open"!
Cheeto and Peanut taking some quiet time out. The cats are doing ok with the new family addition...they go where ever we are not. They like the quiet places in the house.
The weather was really nice when Scott was off work so we went for quite a few walks with the boys and spent lots of time playing at the park. Here's Logan doing his favourite thing, swinging!
Jacob on his first outing to the park.
Logan asks about once a day to "hold baby". The holding only lasts a few seconds but he looks pretty happy here.
I think he looks pretty grown up here.
Getting ready for Jacob's first bath at home.
Helping mommy bathe Jacob - luckily Jacob likes a bath much more than Logan did at this point, there is much less screaming!
Another trip to the park, this time to feed the animals. Logan loves when the animals take the food out of his hand.
Jacob slept through this trip to the park too.
Just running around and having fun.
Rocking with Daddy.
Heidi stopped by for a visit one night. We got this great picture of the three of them. We've had other visitors too...but not any pictures...oops.
