Seth is here

Seth was born January 27th at 5:57 pm. He was 7 lbs. 8 oz. and 20 inches. He was 13 days early. I started having some regular contractions four days earlier at night and they went all night, but by the morning when I got up and got ready to go to the hospital, they stopped. So after that I was really ready for Seth to come. This pregnancy was harder than the other ones either because I'm over 30 now or because it's my 4th. I was a lot sicker at the beginning. And then at the end he was so much lower than the other ones. By the last few weeks he was hitting nerves all over my legs pretty much constantly. I remember I got that a little in the last week or so with Danny, but this one was every hour and much stronger and for the last month.

Anyway, two days before Seth came, on Sunday, we went on a family power walk to try to bring on contractions. We even tried jumping on the trampoline a little. Then Monday I pushed Aaron in the stroller over to pick up Rachel at Jaclyn's house. The next morning, Tuesday, I woke up to contractions about every 5 minutes at 7:00. I got the kids ready for school and called Bob to come back from work. We got to the hospital around 10:00 and they started monitoring my contractions. They were regular but not very strong. They called them "irritabilities" not contractions. I explained that this is how my labor always started and that they never hurt or got really hard until my water was broken. The nurse wanted to send me home until I told her the baby would come in two hours if they broke my water and if they sent me home, I'd just come back in a couple of hours.

So then they admitted me, but my doctor had surgeries all day, so they started me on pitocin, but didn't break my water until 3:00. I was dilated to 4 cm when I got to the hospital, but then was to 10 cm by about 5:00. The doctor had to hurry in at the end. I pushed 4 times and Seth was here. His arm was up by his chest when he came out so I tore just a little bit, but she stitched it up and I haven't had any problems from it.

Bob went home and picked up the kids from their friends' houses and brought them to meet Seth. They were all very excited. Then our great neighbor, May, came over and stayed with the kids so Bob could come stay with me. That was so nice. Bob was never able to stay with me in GA when we had Rachel and Aaron. We stayed at the hospital all that day and then we were able to go home that night. Sandy and May brought pizza over and stayed with the kids so Bob could come check me out. Overall, things went really smoothly and Seth came to us perfect and healthy.

Bob stayed home from work for almost 2 weeks to help me. That was so wonderful to be all together for so long. Then my parents came for almost a week.