Welcome Baby GR

I can't believe I am sitting down to write this with little GR on my chest, our little man made his debut to this crazy world on October 30, 2023 and his daddy got his wish of a Halloween baby to throw all the most epic birthday parties! Mama got her wish of water breaking at home with a very fast labor and even faster delivery!

October 29th we hit 38 weeks and if you have been following on instagram then you know I have had a goal of running a 5k every time we hit a new week and was successful at doing so up until he came! We got up that morning and went to the lake it was a cold sunny fall morning and I was itching to get a decent run in, on our way I told my husband, "how cool would it be if this started labor and this was one of the last runs I got in pregnant." little did I know that it would be just that! We got done with our run and went grocery shopping, during the week I had some mild contractions and during my weekly doctors appointment learned that baby boy was low, we were dilated and thinned out but nothing indicating that he would be here the very next morning.

Our goal for the weekend was to finish the last little bit of hardwoods in our house we had just some small spots left to finish up and to get little mans bassinet all set up, he thankfully let us do all this! Once we got home from the grocery store we got to work on the hardwoods I was carrying pieces upstairs and helping my husband lay them out and started to experience some contractions but nothing consistent that I couldn't talk through or continue to help him. Around 4pm I sat down and noticed them start to become more consistent and super uncomfortable to sit so I decided to start timing the contractions, cleaning the kitchen and prepping for dinner. About 5pm my husband installed the last piece of hardwood and started to clean up and I told him ok these are getting more consistent but nothing to crazy yet. We got everything cleaned up and dinner off the grill, we sat down to eat about 6:30pm and I told him I can not sit to eat this and stood up, next thing I know I felt a small gush and looked at him wide eyed with a response of, "I either just peed myself or my water broke.". I tried to eat incase it was the water (it was) but was struggling too, so we cleaned up dinner, went and took a shower and called the hospital, they advised us to come in, we packed the car up and headed in. This was harder than I thought it would be, I cried on the way in feeling guilty about how busy we had been all weekend and not giving attention to our girls (the cats) and now thier world was about to change.

We got to the hospital around 8pm and they had us go to a triage room to see if I was contracting and if my water broke, sure enough I was having contractions every 1-3 minutes and an hour after arriving we found out my water had broke and we were not leaving withouot our baby boy! We got to our room at 10pm and everything was going well, there wasn't any changes in dilation or thinning since my appointment earlier that week but the doctor and nurse weren't to worried with how close my contractions were. They encouraged both my husband and I to try to get some sleep if we could, around midnight we both laid down and got some rest, which ended up stopping all my contractions!!! So at 2am they woke us up to get me moving again to see if it would get things going, no such luck, and pitocin was set up. We got the pitocin going around 4am and holy moly did it get things going, we went from being able to breath and work through contractions to not even knowing what to do other than let my body make/ do whatever it needed and the noises that were made I didn't know I could make lol. It got to the point where they were so on top of each other that I couldn't get a break and was exhausted so we started to talk about some pain management. I asked for an epidural, at 5am the nurse and anesthesiologist came in, before he started the nurse checked to see where things were at and we were at a 5 so we asked her what was typical time to go from that to pushing and she said 5 hours, with how tired I was and how on top of each other the contractions were I knew I wouldn't be able to push, so moved forward with asking for the epidural which took a little bit to do because it was so hard to sit in the position needed.

They got the epidural in around 5:45/ 6am, and my doctor came in to see how things were going and that's when it got scary and scary fast. She said, you are a 10 he is right there and while she was doing that little mans heart rate dipped and was not coming back, they immediately started having me move from side to side as the epidural hadn't kicked in yet and I was still able to feel and move, they shut it off at that point and said its time to get this baby out now. Nothing was set up or ready and next thing I know there were 8 nurses in the room with lots of commotion and I looked at my husband dead in the eyes and just cried saying how scared I was, they said lets go, and 5 pushes and a small vacuum suck later at 6:18am little baby GR made his entrance at 5 pounds 9ounces and 18.9 inches long, and mom and dad were smitten for life.