Welcome to the Family, Matthew!

 I thought I'd write a little bit about Matthew's birth.  First, many of you know that I switched doctors at the very end of my pregnancy.  I was hoping to have a very calm birth with the ability to walk around if I needed or wanted.  My first doctor wouldn't allow it, so I decided to switch.  My new doctor is Dr. Eldad Vered.  He's an older gentleman and very nice.  The thing I like most is his comment to me that as long as what I wanted wasn't dangerous, he was ok with it.  Yay!  That's just what I wanted to hear.

Now on to Matthew's birth.  As you know, his due date was January 22, but he wasn't having any of that.  We finally induced labor a week later on Tuesday, January 29.  Anna went to the Rick's home Monday night and spent the night.  She stayed with them all day on Tuesday.

Steve and I arrived at the hospital at 6am.  It was very quiet.  There were a few other moms there, but we never saw or heard from them.  I got my first dose of antibiotics and was introduced to our nurse, Barbara.  Dr. Vered came at 8 to break my water.  Even then, labor was slow in getting under way.  Dr. Vered said he'd give me 4 hours.  So, during the next 4 hours I walked the halls.  I walked and walked and walked.  Mom walked with me and Steve walked with me.  We got to know those short halls really well.  I just started having the contractions 5 minutes apart by the deadline.  Phew!

Labor progressed well for the next couple of hours.  However, once I hit 8cm dilated, I stalled.  I stayed at an 8 for almost 4 hours.  The hypnobirthing breathing and Steve helped a ton with getting through the contractions, but I was getting tired.  By that time, Dr Vered said we had to start pitocin.  At that point, I asked for an epidural.  I could have finished with the contractions as they were, but not any more intense than that.  Funny thing, though, when I got the epidural I almost immediately went to a 10.  I actually had very little pitocin.  I had the epidural at 5:30 and Matthew was born at 6:30.





One nice thing that Dr Vered let me do was pull Matthew out myself.  It was a great experience.  The nurses took Matthew very soon after he was delivered because he was a little blue, but gave him back as soon as possible.  He ate right away and is such a cute little man.