all on a friday morning

Here's Mason's story...if you aren't interested in the details, there are a few pictures below.  : )  I'm quickly realizing that there are fewer hours in the day now that we have two little teenies, so I'll get more pictures up as soon as we find some spare time.  Wherever it may be.  : )

Mason was born six days before his due date, on a Friday morning.  This particular Friday, Matt didn't have to be to the hospital for his rotation until 9ish, so he had some extra time to spend with us in the morning.

On a side note:  During the month of August, Matt did a rotation at Banner Estrella, the hospital closest to our house, with the anesthesiologist in our ward.  This rotation was quite the diabolical plan we cooked up, because not only would Matt be at the hospital we were going to deliver at, he was also going to be working with the people who give epidurals.  My plan was to have the anesthesiologist waiting for me when I got there because I felt like I wanted some drugs this time.  : )

Back to our story...Friday morning I woke up at 7, and had one seemingly painful contraction.  I had a few more over the next little while (like 20 minutes) while I did a few things around the house and while Matt made breakfast.  At about 8, we ate breakfast, which was super nice of Matt to make...we had some pancakes, and my contractions were about 7 minutes apart at that point.  After we ate, I hopped in the shower, and the contractions quickly went to 3 minutes apart.  I had one contraction right before I got in the shower, and another just a few minutes later.  I thought to myself, "that wasn't seven minutes."  It was then that I knew we had to high-tail it to the hospital.  When I was showered and dressed, we left for the hospital, and left Graham with Hannah.  We arrived at the hospital at about 9.

Banner Estrella is notorious for being quite busy, because of its location, but when we got the the labor and delivery triage, it wasn't busy at all.  We signed in, and a nurse came to get us in just a few minutes.  While we were waiting, I was joking with Matt that if our nurse was wearing a Christmas sweater, so help us.  (Our triage nurse with Graham's birth was wearing a Christmas sweater, and she wasn't very speedy.)  But our nurse in triage was great.  She was LDS, and super nice.  When she took me back, she asked how long I had been having regular contractions, and I replied, "about 40 minutes," knowing she would think I was crazy for coming in so early, but I quickly let her know that our first baby was born rather quickly and we anticipated this one would be too.  She seemed to believe me, because she got us ready pretty fast.  After a few agonizing minutes of getting our information, she checked me and said, "You are staying here to have a baby, you are an 8."  

At this point I cried.  Literally.  My fear was that we would get to the hospital too late and my epidural plan would fail.  Then the nurse opened the door to the room and shouts out, "She's an 8!"  With this, I knew she meant business.  Before we knew it, the nurse from L&D was in our room ready to pull us away.  By now the contractions were pretty painful, but I feel like I was holding it together pretty well for being at an 8. With Graham it was all I could do to not wail in pain.  

By the way, we had great nurses at Estrella.  They were awesome.  The L&D nurse called anesthesia and told them to hurry, and then started setting everything up.  The triage nurse sent a page to the doctor, who was a the office in the adjoining building with the numbers "911" at the end to tell her to hurry.  In a matter of minutes we were whisked away to L&D, and the anesthesiologist was waiting there for me.

Sing, choirs of angels.

The doctor got there in record time as well. Dr. Jaacks delivered Mason, and she is awesome.  She even had a 3rd year med student with her.   

The nurses moved me to the bed in L&D and the anesthesiologist got to work.  Two contractions later I was pain free.  Glorious.  Who knew the last two centimeters of labor could be so relaxing?  Baby was still a little high, so we waited a few more contractions for him to move down.  Then, after four contractions of pushing, Mason was born!  We love him to bits, and think he's pretty stinkin' cute.