Lincoln's day

Lincoln's due date was March 19th. I posted that night about his decision (not ours) to not come on his due date. But as a celebration to the 40 weeks-- and maybe a hidden agenda of inducing labor-- we went to our favorite indian place and ordered us a spicy dish --one of the natural ways to induce labor according to the internet :)

 

Next morning, March 20th, at 3am sharp, I woke up with terrible stomach pains. Clueless they could actually be contractions, I blamed the indian food and tried to go back to sleep. It wasn't happening, the pain kept coming back, every 10 minutes...

 

Silly me, I was certain the contractions would go away. Ryan and I timed the contractions up until 6am when they finally got down to 5 minutes. This is it!! We drove to the hospital just in time to watch the sun rise. Awesome way to start a day of labor too, i highly recommend going into labor around sunrise to any of you who are expecting :)

I wish I could write details of everything that day, but no joke, it's all a blur. For the first 14 hours of labor I wasn't in terrible pain, but I took some Dilaudid to take the edge off and it pretty much put me in a state of complete daze. When my biff drove up from Tucson that day to be there, I couldn't even pull it together to open my eyes. That's what happens when you give a narcotic to a girl who NEVER EVER takes medication for hardly anything. I'm more of a gargle-with-salt-water and spoonful-of-raw-honey kinda girl when I'm sick. Anyway, let's just say I was out of it just from the IV meds.

 

By 5pm and not progressing since the afternoon, I was put on Pitocin. At this point, things got ugly, painfully ugly, and definitely the most painful part of the entire experience. So my loving and concerned husband helped round up the anesthesiologist to give me an epidural. After the epidural, I gave a huge sigh of relief and a big thank you to Dr. Hackit. He cracked a joke about his name afterwards saying, "It's a good thing I'm not a urologist huh?" I'm sure he uses that joke with every patient and rightfully so, it's a good one!

 

I was surprised at how quickly I progressed from that point. Next thing I know, it was time. This bundle of joy we had been anxiously waiting to meet, love, hug and kiss for the last 9 months is finally coming to us. Ryan and I had a few minutes alone to ourselves. The words we exchanged of our love for one another and our baby that Heavenly Father was blessing us with.....it had to have been one of the most precious moments of our marriage next to our wedding day & birth of our son.  And then he was here...

Our perfect baby boy!

 

 Introducing the newest member of our family

who is already showing off his guns to the nurses :)

 

Lincoln Joel Shideler

March 20, 2013

8:47pm

21 inches long

7lbs 12 oz