Labor, Delivery and Our Precious Benson

There have been many of you who have asked to hear my birth story. So really quick as my cute little boy takes a nap I will share with how it all went down. Many of you knew I had a plan of how I wanted things to go. Lets just say things did NOT go as planned. However, I can still say that it was an amazing experience and I couldn't be happier with the ending:)

These pictures were taken the DAY BEFORE I went into labor. I had just hit the 38 week mark and up until this point I had had no signs that labor was coming. Besides just feeling huge I would never have expected that it would come so soon. Everyone continued to tell me that it was my first, so I would surely make it to my due date and probably even go past it......WRONG!. Sunday morning at 5 am I lost my mucous plug. I was kind of excited however I felt no pain or contractions and thought surely it would still be a week or two until I actually went into labor. I went to Adrian to share with him the good news and the next thing I know my water starts to break! I wasn't leaking much fluid at first, I thought maybe it was just more of the mucous plug. So I went back to sleep. It was the Sunday before the primary program and I am the primary chorister. Though I was still unsure if it was my water breaking or not, I went to church. Halfway through leading the music I notice much more liquid leaking (luckily I was wearing a pad). I went up to a few friends who I thought could tell me what this was and they did! They said "Katrina you should go, and call the doctor!". So thats what I did I called the doctor they told me I needed to come in and be checked. Adrian was at work that morning and I called him to tell him we needed to go the hospital. I still was feeling no pain, no kind of contractions so I thought it would be a while until the baby got here. I told Adrian they were just going to check me and send me home, I almost didn't even bring my hospital bag I was so sure they would send me right home.......I was WRONG! They said "nope your here to stay!"....Shortly after I started to feel contractions about 4-5 min apart and not too intense. They told me if it took too long they wanted to give me pitocin to speed things up. I wanted a natural birth very much so I insisted that I try for a few hours on my own.

So they allowed me a few hours on my on, but later that evening they convinced me to go on the lowest dose of pitocin. Before the pitocin started I began throwing through a lot of the contractions. I continued for about an hour on pitocin and also continued to throw during contractions. Finally it got to be too much. After about the sixth or seventh time I threw up I knew I wanted the epidural. I couldn't continue the way things were going especially if they were going to get worse. I was scared but the nurses assured me that I was far enough along that my labor would continue to progress. And they were right. The pain was gone I could still feel when the contractions were happening but it wasn't painful. Getting the epidural was the right decision for me. They had to turn off the pitocin because my contractions actually got to be too close together. The next thing I knew they said "your at a 10 and ready to start pushing". AMAZING!!!!! I couldn't believe it! I was ready! I pushed for about an hour...which seemed much longer. And though I had the epidural I felt almost everything in this last hour. Adrian held my hand and motivated me so much to keep going. I did, and finally at 4:13 am they placed the most beautiful baby boy i had ever seen on my chest. No experience can compare to this. As my mom calls it, there is an "eternal connection" that takes place. I felt it and I will never forget it. I'm so grateful to my sweet husband for being there with me every step of the way through not only labor and delivery but my entire pregnancy. We are so excited for the journey ahead of us! Now here are a few pictures BENSON!!

I will be posting way more pictures of this cute little guy later but there are a few for now.