Walt's Birth Story Part 1

**Fair warning: This is a birth post and while I'm not going to go into graphic detail, if you're not interested in birth maybe don't keep reading**

During my pregnancy I started following people on Instagram who were also pregnant and I read a lot of birth stories. I never really thought I would be one to post about birth, but it was such a special event and taught me a lot about myself, my body, my husband and his strength, and faith.

On Monday (May 18) I had my weekly Midwife appointment. I had been having fairly strong contractions on and off for about a week at this point and was at the extremely uncomfortable stage. I spent a lot of time walking that day--mostly around the house cause it was rainy and humid outside. That night the contractions got more consistent, Kyle and I went to Walmart cause I wanted to walk around some more. The contractions were about 5 minutes apart and lasting a minute, which was what everyone said was time to go to the hospital. We decided around 12:30am to head to the hospital...long story short I was not making any progress after an hour of walking around the hospital and since I wanted a natural birth we decided to head home. I'm so glad that wasn't the night, I ended up with a horrible headache and almost threw up in the car on the way home. There was no way I could've gone through labor in that condition. I took some tylenol and Benadryl (at the midwife's suggestion) and went to bed.

Tuesday was spent mostly resting, but Tuesday night the contractions picked up again. I took a Benadryl and went to bed. Wednesday is a busy day for Kyle, he came home at lunch time and took a nap (probably the best decision ever!) and I was feeling good, convinced labor wasn't going to happen for a week or so. I ended up taking a nap around 5pm, woke up and Kyle needed me to run something up to the church for him before the youth services started. I came back home and took Buddy on a walk and then sat on my exercise ball and watched TV for most of the night. I had some contractions, but that had been happening for over a week at this point and I thought nothing of them.

Wednesday, little did I know this would be my last "bump picture"

Buddy was super snuggly all day, even sat hugging my belly, think he knew Walt was coming

Kyle got home from church and we played a few rounds of Mario Kart on the Wii (yes we are super cool) and then I went into a weird "I need to clean everything right now" mode. Kyle, being super sweet, sent me to bed and said he would take care of cleaning things up. I went to bed around 10:30 and just couldn't get comfortable. I took a Benadryl but still couldn't fall asleep. My contractions had picked up and I felt like I had to pee every time I had one, so I was in the bathroom like every 10 minutes. Finally I just went out and watched some TV and Kyle came out there with me. After about 20 minutes I told him he should go to bed, thinking something might come of these contractions and he would need the rest. After he went to bed I sat on the exercise ball and tried to find something to watch that would distract me--I settled on Friends but barely made it half way through an episode before the contractions started getting a lot stronger.

I decided to go take a bath and see if that would calm things down (really not wanted to have another false labor trip to the hospital). I sat in the bath and listened to Penny & Sparrow's Struggle Pretty album. The contractions stayed pretty consistent in the bath but I still wasn't convinced I was in labor. Kyle had woken up and came in to check on me, I told him I wasn't sure if this was the real thing but I would let him know and told him to go back to sleep. (He later told me he knew I was in labor at that point and couldn't fall back asleep) Not too long after that I had three contractions back to back, maybe 10 seconds in between each one. That's when I knew this was happening. I got out of the bath and told Kyle "this is real, I'm in labor." And then I sat on the toilet which sounds strange but it was one of the only places I felt comfortable during contractions.

Kyle brought me water and helped me breath through the contractions. He put a call in to the on-call midwife to check with her what we should be looking for before we head to the hospital. She called him back and he talked to her for awhile and told her what was going on. Then she asked to talk to me, I had two contractions while I was on the phone with her. She said she would let the nurses know we would probably be in soon, but that I could stay home and labor there longer if I felt comfortable with that. I wanted to be at home still, the contractions were intense but not unbearable. I tried to move back to the exercise ball but it wasn't comfortable. I ended up leaning on it and Kyle used a scarf to lift on my stomach with each contraction. I went back to the toilet for a bit while Kyle started getting all of our bags moved close to the door. Around 5 I decided it was time to head to the hospital, the contractions were getting very intense and I wasn't looking forward to car ride and the last thing I wanted was to sit in traffic. Kyle opened the garage door to load the bags and it was POURING, he came and asked me if I wanted to wait for the storm to pass before we headed out. I think I gave him my "are you joking?" stare and said "no, we are going now."

So we headed to the hospital. I don't remember much about that drive--I stared out the window and focused on breathing through each contraction. The rain died down a little on the trip out there. We pulled up to the Labor & Delivery area and it started pouring even harder than it was before. Running while in labor isn't really an option, but I walked quickly with the umbrella and made it inside right as another contraction hit and I had to stop to make it through.

Part 2 to follow cause I have to go take care of this cutie...

Spoiler alert, he's enters the world in Part 2 and I fall in love