Sullivan's Birth Day

It took four weeks for me to write a post about Cecelia's birth day. It's taken more than double almost three times as long to finally recap Sullivan's. I looked back at the post about my first birth experience and I have to tell you, even I only managed to read a few paragraphs of it. This one will be much briefer, kind of appropriate as Sully came into this world much sooner and much faster than his big sister.

My second birth experience started late in the night of Thursday, November 13th. I hadn't officially started my maternity leave so I had worked a full day, picked Cece up at school and completed our evening routine. After putting Cece to bed around 8 PM, I snapped a belly pic that ended up being my last, ever. Then I sat down on the couch and turned on the TV. I had been so tired that I was going to bed most nights just after Cece did. But on this particular evening, I stayed up to watch two of my favorite shows, Scandal and Parenthood. Silly me, I didn't make an attempt to go to bed until after 11 pm that night. And of course, that was the night I went into labor.

After about 30 minutes of sleep, I woke abruptly to the feeling I was wetting the bed. Lovely, right? It took me a second to realize my water had broke. I yelled to James to get up and get me a towel and I waddled my way into the bathroom to see what was up. My water didn't break with Cece until the very end, right before she was born so I hadn't experience this before. For me, my water breaking was more like a slow moving stream than a gushing waterfall (TMI? Sorry, but this is a birth story. You can stop reading now if that makes you uncomfortable!). At the time my water broke, I wasn't having contractions. I had felt crampy and tired at work all day but never experienced what I would call a contraction. Interestingly though, three different people had commented at three separate times that I "looked different" that day. Maybe they knew what was up. In any case, I sent James back to bed while I scurried about the house doing last minute pre-baby tasks like scrubbing cabinets and folding clothes. Within an hour or so, I started feeling regular but still mild contractions. One every 8-10 minutes. It was probably about 1:30 AM by that point.

Eventually, I started getting uncomfortable enough that I needed to sit down. I got out my handy iPhone App and started tracking the contractions. One every 6 minutes...one every 3 minutes...one every...oh, crap, we needed to get to the hospital, like now! We called my mom and told her to come as soon as possible. The contractions went from literally nothing to hard and fast, well, FAST! Truth is (please don't report us to DCF) we actually had to leave about 10 minutes before my parents arrived. Before anyone freaks, Cece was fast asleep, we could watch her on the video monitor the whole way (not that I did are you kidding) and my brother and sister-in-law were right next door. She was just fine.

By the time we got to the ER I was in a lot of pain. I had already made up my mind that I wanted an epidural this time. I went the "all natural" route with Cece and it was a horribly painful experience that was burned into my memory. I was exhausted after a long day of work and no rest and after being told that the baby was big, I mentally wasn't in a place to take on the pain of childbirth on my own. I wanted the drugs!

I was wheeled up to the maternity floor and checked. I was already dilated 8 cm (out of 10) and was well on my way to babyland. No wonder it hurt so bad. I still made them give me the epidural, which in retrospect probably wasn't necessary (easy to sat AFTER the fact) because things were moving along so quickly. A half hour later, the nurse checked me again and sure enough, it was time to push! The problem was i literally couldn't feel a thing from the waist down. Turns out it was a good thing I didn't have drugs the first time around because I needed to tap into that experience in order to remember what it felt like to push a baby out (the "right" way). It took three stress free pushes and then, at 7:03 AM on November 14th, little baby Sullivan was here!

My birth experiences were so different simply because I had an epidural the second time around. I mean we were laughing and joking and so relaxed that it was a pretty surreal experience. I have to say though, I'll always hold tight to my memories of my first birth, as tough as it was. And while I definitely could have done it again the second time around, I was happy to experience a less stressful method of birthing. I think James was happy too.

One of the best moments of Sully's first day with us was introducing him to his big sister. Cece feel in love with him from the moment she laid eyes on him. Even now, almost three months later, she's still obsessed with him. I hope these two know how important they are to each other and how much we love them both. Welcome to the family, baby Sully. It's like you've always been here.