The long and short of it

If you just want the short story and the pictures here you go....

We had a fairly long labor, then 2-3 hours of pushing and topped it off with a c-section.
Recovery has been a blast.

Sorry to the rest of you mothers,
but there never was a cuter creature on the face of the planet!

His dad is an expert swaddler.

He IS rad like dad.
EVERYTHING about him is just like his dad.

His first trip in the stroller.
I don't think he was as excited as I was.

If you are interested in a few more details....
I came home from my appointment Wednesday night in tears. I had a pretty intense cervical exam that left me in a lot of pain, my doctor said he wanted to induce me the next day because he was going out of town, (which just scared the crap out of me) and he also told me that my pubic bone has a weird angle, so there was about a 10% chance I'd need a c-section. Yippee skippee.

I started having contractions around midnight that continued all through the day. They weren't close enough together or regular enough to go to the hospital. Just bad enough to be painful and obnoxious. I also had some back labor pains, which should have been my first clue that this whole thing was going to go badly. The hospital was supposed to call at any moment so I could go in to be induced. I was already dilated to 3cm and I figured the contractions had done some more work, so I was praying for the hospital to just call already so I could get my epidural and breeze through the rest of this delivery!

The blessed call came around 3:30 in the afternoon which was perfect because Li had just finished his training at work. I went in and they said I was at 5 cm. My doctor came in to break my water and apparently it had already broken, which means I could have and should have come in earlier. I got my epidural and found it rather hysterical. I could still feel stuff, just no pain. I had some pretty bad shakes, but thought that was a rather small price to pay.

I continued to dilate, not as quickly as I would have liked, (I was hoping he'd be born the 18th) but I didn't really care because I wasn't in pain. The baby's head was facing posterior so I had to lay with my leg on a table for a few hours to try and turn it. I think it was around midnight when the nurses said I could start pushing. Which we did for an hour or more. Again, I thought this was HYSTERICAL!! I couldn't feel anything, but here I am pushing my brains out and I can't tell if I'm doing any good, except that Li and my mom keep getting all excited that they can see his head. (It was hysterical except for the part where I threw up.)

At this point I'm thinking, "Yea I made it to 10cm and we are pushing...no c-section for me!" Then they determined that his head was still facing posterior. So we stop pushing and my leg goes back up on a table. Then on the other side. Then back to the first side. And so it goes for hours. My doctor also turned the epidural down so that maybe I could feel better where I was pushing. Around 5am my parents had gone home, Li was asleep, no one had checked me for awhile, nothing was on TV except infomercials and fake gospel, and I just laid there staring at monitors that weren't doing ANYTHING!! I was incredibly frustrated.

I finally got Li to wake up and shortly after that my doctor came in and suggested we start pushing again. I was really hoping that this could work and we could end this misery. But it was looking doubtful. We pushed for another hour or so and this time it wasn't so funny. The nurses were not nearly as fun as the night before and one kept shaking her head like, "This is never going to work." Which makes pushing a lot of fun. My doctor came back in and said it was up to me, but basically it wasn't going to happen and I needed to get a c-section. At which point I had been through so much I did NOT want to go through major abdominal surgery as well. So I asked to push for a little while longer. Am I stupid? The nurses left with the doctor (I think he basically told them to convince me to give it up) and returned for about 15 more minutes of pushing. Nothing. So I agreed to a c-section.

They got me all prepped and Li gave me a blessing. I threw up again on the way down the hall. I felt like I was on ER when they wheeled me into the operating room, all these people in scrubs and bright lights in my face. They hung a curtain, pumped some more drugs into me and cut me open. I heard a baby cry and they said they wanted to present my son to me....what I saw was a yucky mess of something that didn't really resemble a baby and if it did it belonged to a Samoan and not to me. I might have been more enthused about seeing him, except that at the very moment he came out I started having a really intense pain around my belly button. I asked if it was supposed to hurt but no one could hear me except Li. So here they are showing me my son and I'm thinking in my head, "I'm going to die right here on this operating table. I am actually going to die in childbirth." Finally someone heard me and they pumped me full of something that they said would make me sleepy. That was a ginormous understatement! I immediately felt my whole body go limp and I could not keep my eyes open. It was a little freaky; I couldn't really tell if I was falling asleep or passing out. Plus I was super dizzy. When they moved me from one bed to another I thought the room was rocking and I grabbed the doctor's arm to keep from falling off.

But some time later (NO idea how much later) the nurses and Li brought him into the recovery room so I could feed him. I was still shaky and afraid to hold him. But he was ADORABLE!!!

We spent the next few days in the hospital. It was pretty frustrating to have this precious little new baby and not really be able to do anything for him. But it was amazing to watch Li step up and take care of everything. He even got excited about poopy diapers! I'm so glad Carter was born on the weekend so that Li could stay with me in the hospital.

It's been great staying at my parent's house too. Recovery is happening MUCH slower than I would like and it is nice to have so many people always anxious for a turn to take care of him.

Okay, so that was a quite a lot of details. The important part is that he is here and we LOVE him!!!!!!!!