Henry Reed Watt

My sweet son is here. Praise the Lord.

Here is how the whole deal went down.

This whole last week I've been pretty on edge with wanting Henry to be born. Since we are moving while he is so young, I wanted plenty of time to have help and for everyone to really get to know him. My big fear was him not arriving before his due date and having to be induced again. I know my dr wouldn't induce before 40 weeks like I was with Mae so it felt pretty tough sometimes. This week has been a huge test of trust and by the end of the week I had pretty much come to terms with trusting the Lord's timing and knowing that it is perfect.

So... Friday morning we took Mae in for her 2 year check up. She was 20th percentile for weight, 40th percentile for height, and 77th percentile for head size. haha She did great and we told the dr that hopefully we'd be seeing her very soon with Henry. My mom decided to spend the night on Friday since we were expecting a big ice storm. I said she didn't have to cause I didn't think anything was gonna happen but she wanted to so that was fine with me. The nasty weather started in the afternoon and Shawn, Mae and I all got a good nap in. For dinner I made broccoli cheddar soup and then after Mae went down we watched Twister on tv. I was feeling a lot of pressure at around 7pm. I was walking back and forth around the house with what seemed like a constant braxton hicks contraction. My whole belly was hard the whole time I walked and I kept saying he is so low. I had several inches below my chest where there was just empty room because he was so far down in my pelvis. I decided to take some castor oil at 8pm. It didn't do anything last time I had taken it on Wednesday so I figured it couldn't hurt and probably wouldn't do anything. (I'm still not sure if I think it did) I sat down and watched Twister which is such a tense movie. I had forgotten! We went to bed at 11pm and I was feeling a little bummed that I didn't feel any labor signs.

At midnight, I woke up to some strong low abdomen pain. I laid in bed with them for half an hour and decided to see if they went away with walking. I got up and walked around the house and started timing them. They were coming every two minutes but weren't super strong. I thought that it couldn't possibly be labor because they were so short and so close together. I started to have every other one be fairly painful and decided to call the dr and get their opinion. I called the dr's office and didn't realize that they woke the dr  on call to ask. I figured it was nothing and told them not to wake the dr and I would just wait and see. Right when I thought it was getting serious, I would have a really short one without a lot of pain so figured it was false labor cause by maybe the castor oil. Ten minutes later I went into my mom's room and told her I was gonna call the dr. They alerted Dr Cannon and she called me and said I should go in to at least get checked out. I woke Shawn up and he tried to give me a high five. I didn't want to get my hopes up. We carefully drove to the hospital. Our car was covered in a thick coating of ice and the roads were kind of slippery. I told my mom to wait with Mae and if I was gonna be admitted then she could call my dad and then they'd swap.

I had consistent contractions all the way to the hospital and if there was ever a little bit longer in between I got all stressed thinking that it was gonna stop. Looking back, they were so consistent and fairly painful that I realize it was pretty obvious this was the real deal. We got up to labor and delivery at 1:45am and my nurse asked a ton of questions, letting me just breath through any contractions I had. She checked me at 2:15 and I was 4cm dilated and 50% effaced which was a change from being almost 2cm and 0% effaced on Tuesday. She called Dr Cannon and they said this was happening. She said his head was low but still moving when she pushed it so said I needed to sit up or stand. I started to get a little worried now. I was kind of mad/jealous of Shawn because he got the excitement of knowing he was going to get to meet his son soon without any of the pain. I told Shawn I wanted to go home but really, we both knew we were so ready for this. My mom arrived at 3am and things were getting very painful. I was having contraction every 2-4 minutes and was thinking about an epidural a bit. The only other pain option was morphine and that didn't sound appealing. I asked when I was going to be checked again and she said 4:15. I told Shawn if I was less than 6cm then I was getting an epidural. I was standing the almost the whole time and asked if we could wait on the IV so luckily I wasn't really tied down. The pain was really bad but only for about 30 seconds at a time. As we got closer to 4am they were getting really strong and there was almost no spacing in between them. I was about to say I couldn't do it any longer but at my next contraction I said I felt push-y. This was at 3:50. She checked me and said I was 9cm but we had to wait since my water hadn't broken. I was semi pushing through each contraction which was the only relief. About 5 min after she checked me, my water broke.

Now my body was ready to push. Unfortunately no one else was. They called the Dr and made it seem like she was just walking over from somewhere else in the hospital. My contractions are now like every minute and I had the most uncontrolable urge to push. The nurse was telling me to blow out like I was blowing a candle cause then I couldn't push. In between contractions I was trying to persuade them to let me have this baby. I said "Can't you guys just deliver the baby?" "Is there any way you can call Dr cannon again?" "Does she know I don't have an epidural?" I was SO upset and frustrated. Well then at 4:14, my body pushed on it's own and I said "I think his head is out" I was on my side and they were trying to get me on my back. Another second later and I pushed his head out. The nurse caught him and said to stop to see if the cord was   around his neck (it wasn't) and a second later his body slipped out and he was on put on my chest. I was so out of it when they put him on me. It happened so fast. Dr Cannon came in about 30 seconds after Henry came out. There was no way I could have had him in a second longer. I was shocked to see a head full of dark curly hair. With Mae, the anticipating of counting through the pushing helped me realize it was time and allowed me to prepare myself. With Henry practically falling out, it took me awhile to get with it. I remember just feeling dazed for a little bit. They took Henry away and proceeded with getting me all situated which was painful. That part seemed more intense than it did with Mae and it seemed to take longer. Luckily I only had a very small tear which is surprising since he was almost a pound bigger than Mae.

All in all, it was about 4 hours start to finish. It felt like longer. The hour of 3 to 4 seemed like an eternity. I've never been super adamant about natural birth. Honestly the only reason I didn't want an epidural with both kids is because I was scared of complications with it. With this birth I labored almost the whole time standing, and I wasn't hooked up to an IV, and got no help with getting labor going. Last time I was on my back almost the whole time, was very hooked up with wires and had pitocen and my water broken. If  my labor had been longer I would've opted for drugs but Praise the Lord, it was nice and short.

Henry is a great eater and my recovery has been about a million times easier than with Mae. Everytime the nurses came in to ask my pain level it was a zero.... well, except for right after I gave birth and was saying I seriously need something. They gave me IV nubain which helped immediately. The only place I feel sore is where they gave me the Dtap vaccine in my arm.

Mae LOVES Henry. She holds him and just laughs. She can hardly believe he is real. She is fairly gentle with him and seems to be adjusting well.

We got discharged from the hospital early which was really nice. We were told we would stay till Monday morning but Dr Cannon came in and asked if we wanted to go home Sunday night. We said yes and it was a good decision. Henry was up every 1.5hrs but it was nice to be in our own bed again.

We are so blessed that the Lord let us have Henry 9 days early and that he is a healthy strong boy!

Some negative news is that about 1 hour after arriving home from the hospital, we learned that our contract fell through on our house. Please pray that we get another offer soon. It's gonna suck to have to show a house and keep it clean with a newborn.