Oliver is 9 days old... Finally a birth story.

3/20
2:20am water broke!!
In triage now so they can confirm that I didn't pee myself. Contractions are not consistent but feel very different. It's 4am now and I am still at 70% but 1cm dialated.
Feelings: surreal but confident. I know I may have to use an intervention b/c there is an increased risk of infection once it's been 24 hours since the water breaks. I have 22 hours left :)
Kristi is in the waiting room. She can't come back while I'm in triage but she'll be able to once I'm in l&d.
Pain meds around noon 30
Epidural at 2:45

3/29/14
That was written the night we went into the hospital.
Filling in some blanks:
I got the epi when I was 7cm dilated. It was the worst most indescribable pain. I had read that most woman can't do natural birth with pitocin contractions. I was wanting to crawl out of my skin. Chad was amazing through it. He rocked with me, pushed when I'd pull, pull when I pushed. He didn't say too much or too little. We were locked on each other from head to toe to soul. That kind of flow you don't see all the time. I was in labor for 17 hours and he and I were in the flow from the 1st to last millisecond.
I got "stuck" at 9 1/2 cm for about 2-3 hours. The epi started to wear off. I eventually could feel everything once again but only on my left side. Doc came in to see if I could push through and after assessing we started pushing. Kristi was let back and she stayed uber quiet and to the back while we pushed for about 2 hours. Dr. Hopper delivered Oliver and was the perfect person to do it. Shocking I realize as my love for Dr. Garas runs deep but Hopper and I also found a flow. He was encouraging but in a militant way. I knew when he was being genuine about a good push and when he was just trying to encourage me. Kristi took an amazing photo of him and I can't wait to take it to him at my follow up.
Holly was my l & d nurse for the entire day minus the last hour. She stayed late but couldn't stay til the end. Earlier when she'd check for dilation I'd asked if he had hair and as soon as she could tell she said "he has hair". This for some reason struck an emotional chord for me and I went into mega tears. Chad breathed with me. Chad pushed with me. He did perfect. He couldn't have been more perfect to partner up with for this.
The doc confirmed that baby indeed had hair and at this point they'd lowered a mirror for me to see. He pulled the hair gently to sort of measure and we have a really cool picture of that (no I will not post it). Once I could see that the pushing we'd been doing for so long was yielding results he came out fairly quickly. I say fairly b/c nothing went quickly that day!!
So Oliver did come out the old fashioned way at 8:23pm and they flopped him up on my chest. I won't forget that ever. He laid there a sec the. The crying came. It wasn't loud or obnoxious just a good cry. I remember his legs and his head and the vernix on him. He was warm and sticky and all sorts of wonderful. Ohhhh the tears. They took him to weigh (7.1) , measure (20) and do the apgar test. His lungs were junky so the baby nurse really rubbed him down vigorously to make him scream. Which he did. Not long after he came back to me and we tried to breast feed. He latched for a second but I started feeling really light headed. I had wondered what was going on as I knew the last stage of labor the dr delivers the placenta. He was taking a really long time and still deeply massaging the uterus. I asked what was going on and had some one give the baby to chad because i was really starting to feel dizzy. This was such a neat moment to witness. The baby locked eyes with his dad and did not move. They were instantly bonded. I have a great photo of that moment as well. So back to my placenta. Well only half delivered. The other was still connected and causing me to bleed like a stuck pig (hence the light headedness). The doctor said he may have to reach in and grab it. The thought of that made me freak a bit so I asked if I could just push. The doc said go for it and a  couple of pushes later it came right out. Thankfully he said that because I had really high hemoglobin I didn't need a blood transfusion. Hooray for healthy me!

Once all was happy and healthy and I got some juice in me we had the moms and Chads step-father come back to meet him. Side note: you can't eat once your admitted. I was on ice chips for 17 hours. So my cocktail of choice was Sierra mist mixed with apple juice. It was the most delicious thing ever. Any hoo we had them come back to the L & D suite b/c they didn't have a room ready yet In the mother baby unit. Annie was the 1st non parent to hold sweet Oliver and it was so wonderful to pass him to her. What a cool feeling. Look mom, here's my kid we've worked so hard for. She held him for a couple minutes and passed him to Chad's mom. I didn't think she'd give him up so easily but she did a good job of being selfless and focusing on Oliver being priority one not just in that moment but throughout the entire day. She would have had a different birth plan but she respected ours and later told me she understood exactly why we chose to do it the way we did. I've got some good photos of the grandmothers holding the baby for the first time.
After they left we did get a room in mother baby. They took Oliver for his bath around 12:30am and I slept a hair. When the nurse came back she said that he enjoyed his bath immensely until she got to his feet. He has the most sensitive feet and did not like that they were getting wet! Feeling started coming back and with that lots of pain. I won't describe it but it was awful and I'm thankful for pain meds. I'm off them now thankfully. They were making me dream crazy but they were vital to my sanity. I'm still very sore but better every day.
Lots happened at the hospital. There were some amazingly Beautiful moments. There were also some awful no good moments. Barely nothing I had planned happened. My water breaking and my system not progressing screwed up my natural plan. I feel no guilt I feel absolutely elated that the one thing I had planned for did happen... Go have a baby. I totally got the baby. He is an absolute dream come true.
This blog won't let me update pictures any more so I have to figure something out.
I'll write more later. Today Oliver is 9 days old and after a big halt in breastfeeding Sunday we are back at it and he's eating like the champ he is. Last night I was only up twice to feed. He takes his time and dines. Hopefully he gets faster but for now I'm happy staring at him. He's the best baby.