Jonah's Arrival

Warning: This is a long post - it took me a week to write - in brief sessions - due to the hard nature of this chair I'm sitting on...

It’s been a week and my arm is still sporting a bruise from where they first tried to put my IV in, my tummy is quite jiggly, my bruised tailbone is still sore (especially now that my meds have run out…), and for lack of a better word, my crotch, well, it has seen better days. But, I have a beautiful new little baby boy, with ten adorable fingers, and ten tiny toes, and the sweetest lips you’ve ever seen.

So, here it is, the birth story while it’s fresh – they say you forget about it later on, but you don’t, or I don’t. You just tell yourself, “Okay, I can do it again…” Temporary insanity, I think.

As we got in the car to drop off the kids, before heading to the hospital, I did feel a little insane, as my neighbor calls jokingly from his yard, “and this is something you women choose to do?”

We get to the hospital, I change into one of those adorable hospital gowns, hook me up to the monitors (and of course I was already registering regular contractions on my own, surprise, surprise…), and endure my first “checking” of the evening. We get the paper work filled out, and all that business, and I get my first little pill inserted in my cervix (which was very uncomfortable, might I add), and settle in for the evening.

I slept off and on all night while my contractions continued. At two in the morning they checked me again, and there was no change in my cervix, so they put another little pill “up there.” I think the first nurse was just mean, because the pill experience didn’t hurt this time. I go back to sleep, a little frustrated that all these contractions I’d been having for the past months weren’t doing anything to help my labor along…

I wake up at 7am feeling a little uncomfortable, I wake John up to help me go to the bathroom, and when we get out of the bathroom, my new labor and delivery nurse was there, and she asked how I was, and said she was going to tell the doctor that she didn’t think I was going to need pitocin. She told me, “Your contractions are looking good, and just by looking at you, I can tell you aren’t going to need it.” I thought to myself, “Okay then, let’s get this show on the road.” And, literally at 7:30 my contractions decided to kick it up another notch, that’s when my nurse considered my actual active labor had begun.

At 8 or 8:30 the Doctor came in checked me, broke my water, and probably wished he had built an ark. Talk about a flood! I never had that much water with my other two. It just kept coming, and coming, and coming. I created a lake on the floor. I was soaked, the bed was completely soaked, and they had to go get more towels to mop up the mess. It felt like someone turned a faucet on inside me and left it running, or gushing really.

The Doctor had the talk with us. “You know you’re having a large baby… You know there is another risk of shoulder dystocia… You know that if you can’t push him out on your own, we can’t use anything to assist you… You know if that happens we push him back inside and we’ll take you in to have a c-section.” Blah, blah, blah. Yes, we know.
Not long after, I was really ready for an epidural. I had told the nurse I would most likely want one. She left the room, and probably not even five minutes later I made John push the button for the nurse to say my wife needs an epidural. STAT! That came about 9 o’clock I think. My contractions were really crazy then with a lot of pressure, and I almost suffocated myself in a pillow I was holding during one of them while getting my epidural.

It took about five HARD contractions for the epidural to start to take effect, and then that was it… it took the edge off… that was it…

This was me:

“Ummm, I can still feel my legs.”

“Uh, how come I can move my legs?”

“I can still feel my legs…”

To which the nurse would reply, “That’s good.” To which I would be thinking, “What part of that is good?????”

Needless to say, I could move my legs the whole entire time, that’s how strong of an epidural I had – NOT STRONG! Fun for me…

After the epidural made me comfortable enough to carry on conversations, I remember telling John, “Now, here comes the scary part.” Not knowing if you’re baby is going to come out without any complications makes one a little anxious.

I held on (with my death grip/squeeze) to two of John’s fingers for most of my labor. Some time after I got my epidural I got the shakes. John states the obvious, “You’re shaking.” I told him I had no control over it, and to imagine what they would be like if I didn’t have the epidural.

John made a bet that the baby would be born by 9:30; I remember looking at the clock at 9:30 and everyone in the room was prepping for the delivery. Because my delivery was higher risk, they brought in more nurses, and everyone was getting their game face on. I figured it must be go time. (SIDE STORY: I remembered noticing a very young nurse person, and I found out later she was doing a high school mentorship. Well, she passed out during my delivery and no one noticed. One nurse finally noticed and carried her out. My labor and delivery nurse told us the story later, and then said, “That’s one less teenage pregnancy we have to worry about.” To which I replied, “Maybe I should make a video and send it to all the high schools…” Pretty funny.)

It was soon time to push.

I push through one contraction, and all of a sudden the nurse spreads the stirrups REALLY far apart, and they stretch my legs to go in them. It was highly uncomfortable, and not part of my previous deliveries. All I could think about between pushes was how much I wanted to bring my legs closer together. I remember asking about it, or commenting about it, not sure what I said, but the nurse replied it would be helpful with pushing out a large baby.

Well, it worked, that, and I could FEEL quite nicely (maybe ‘nicely’ isn’t the word…) where I needed to be pushing. Our baby was born at 9:44 AM.

Oh my, the pressure, the pain, the everything… He came out with a scream; actually two screams - one from me, and one from him. My last push turned into a grunt, moan, yell, and scream combo.

“It’s a man child,” my labor and delivery nurse, Melissa, exclaimed. (The nurses had decided they wouldn’t find out the sex of the baby until it was born because John still didn’t know, and they were afraid they would slip up if they knew.)

I didn’t see John’s face, because I was too tired to turn my head, or open my eyes, I don’t really remember, but I could picture it, and his smile, as he gave his joyful laugh, and said, “It’s a boy!” He was totally surprised. It was a sweet moment. He honestly thought we were having a girl.

Our baby was put on my belly to admire, and I’m still thinking I would love to bring my legs closer together. John cut the cord; they took the baby for his first bath, and the Doctor finished stitching me up. After the nurse cleaned me up some I was FINALLY able to bring my legs out of the stirrups and closer together.

Though that gave me a little bit of relief, I was still in a lot of pain. Pain I had never felt before. Though, similar to the pressure you feel during labor, but it was not going away. It kept hurting. I tried to be tough, but that didn’t last very long. The tears started rolling, and kept on coming. I was shaking and eventually to the point of sobbing.

The Doctor came back in to check on me because of my pain, and when he checked me he pushed on a spot and asked if it hurt, though he didn’t need to ask because my response was immediate. He told me I had probably cracked or bruised my tailbone. Now, I know I probably just bruised it. It still hurts, in case you were wondering. They gave me a shot of some drug that took the edge off pretty quickly, thank goodness. That whole pain episode took almost an hour by the time they gave me that shot. It was pretty miserable.

They kept me in the delivery room for longer than normal to keep an eye on me for various reasons. I guess when you have a larger baby there seems to be other complications that can arise. I was given a series of pills throughout my stay to help control my bleeding which was more than normal, I guess, due to having a large baby.

My nurse finally came in with a stretcher and said she was doing her good deed for the day. She said she wasn’t going to make me get in a wheel chair and would take me to the recovery room on the stretcher. (Little did she know, that I have always been taken to my recovery room on a stretcher with my other labors due to various reasons.) As she pushed me down the hall, to the other nurses that passed, my nurse would say, “Here’s the rock star,” or “She’s a rock star.” She was pretty funny.

I didn’t move from my bed for well over 24 hours. When I finally did, it was pretty bad, and the nurse called for one of those things you can stand on, and she pushed me back to my bed. They left my IV and Epidural port in just in case of something (not sure what) but eventually they came out. They had to call for someone from labor and delivery to take my Epidural thing out of my back, and when she came and was working on it, she asked why I still had it in. I told her it was something to do with having a ten-pound baby, and she goes, “10 lbs 7oz? We all know about you. You’re a rock star.” Too funny.

I enjoyed lots of yummy sugar cookies during my stay at the hospital. Honestly, I had been looking forward to those cookies for nine months! (and may have made John stop in the hospital cafeteria to “buy all they have” since I’ve been home from the hospital…) I enjoyed the quiet time with John and Jonah in the hospital. I think this baby was the first baby that we never sent to the nursery to be watched while I rested, or when John left.

We eventually bought “little” Jonah home. He’s so adorable, and we smother him with kisses. I’ll be holding Jonah, and John will offer to take him and lay him down, but I tell him, “No. We’re snuggling.” Or, John will come downstairs where I’m laying down holding Jonah on the couch and ask, “Are you going to share him?” Or, he’ll say, “It’s my turn.” We just can’t get enough.

Every day my belly shrinks a little more, and my heart grows a little bigger. I’ve fallen in love once again.

Our first meeting

Our second meeting

Because I had been in so much pain, after they took him to get his bath I didn't see him for a few hours because they were waiting for me to get more comfortable to be able to hold him. Usually John was in with all of our other babies while they got their bath and such, but I didn't want him to leave me this time. I needed his fingers to squeeze. For a while there I wasn't sure how I would even nurse him when they bought him to me because of my tailbone. We figured it out.


Poor Jonah was totally scratched up all over his body. He had fun inside of me clawing himself with his sharp talons. There were totally scratch patches all over his body.

Jonah has a cleft in his chin (I mostly refer to it as a butt chin) just like his mommy. It comes from my mom's side of the family, and is definitely a feature that is more attractive in a man.