The Nearness of You

So here's our story...

My water broke in the middle of the night at 1:35 am. Quite interesting experience...I never thought my water would break. Brad and I had gone on a 2 mile walk the night before which was my due date...I had a few good strong contractions while walking but they went away by 10 pm when I went to sleep. All of the sudden I felt like I was going to pee all over myself and jumped out of bad faster than ever before...and sure enough like a water faucet between my legs, my water had broken. Luckily enough, I got off of my new mattress fast enough not to ruin it :) Brad woke up very quickly and kept saying how awesome this was...we were going to have our baby...but I was pretty freaked out by the whole thing. About 5 minutes after I started having contractions about 4 min. apart. After ten minutes we were in the car on the way to the hospital and they were 2-3 minutes apart and HURTING BAD. They felt totally different from braxton hicks. We got to the hospital and they gave me some pain meds for the contractions and it totally knocked me out. I was dialated only 1 cm. After about 4 hours I think...the meds started wearing off and I wanted an epidural. It didn't hurt AT ALL....I always thought it would. I was 3 cm at this point and they had started me on pitocin to speed up the contractions and hopefully get me dialating quicker. After your water breaks you have an increased risk of infection if you don't deliver within 18 hours. Jack didn't like the stronger contractions the pitocin brought on. His heart rate started going down with the really strong contractions so they took me off the pitocin. They made me turn on my side and gave me oxygen to see if that would help. I wasn't progressing fast enough without the pitocin. My doc said we'd try again in about 30 min. to give Jack a break...we tried and he still didn't like the strong contractions so they took me off the pitocin and put me back on oxygen again. After another 30 min. with no progression and a fever that started to spike(a sign of infection) we decided we needed to take Jack by c-section and off we went. Within 10 minutes Jack was born. I actually started feeling some pain during the surgery so they had to load me up on meds which made me extremely drowsy and out of it...I remember a few moments, but mostly could barely keep my eyes open and focused. Words cannot touch how Brad and I felt...this little boy has completely stolen our hearts. We always said we were they happiest people in the world...with Jack in our lives now I'm in awe at how when you think you couldn't be happier you find sooooooooo much more happiness. It's beautiful...absolutely beautiful. Things have been going well...we are home now and Jack is doing great. My mom is here and my dad is stable back in Lake Charles. Every moment has been great! Thanks to all of you who have been praying and thinking about my family and I ! I have quite a few phone calls to make...sorry if I haven't gotten back to you yet. I'm quite busy :) Pretty soon things should start working themselves out into more of routine and I'll have some free time! Until then I love all of you and can't wait to catch up!