Our son came into the world late.
Or so everyone thought but us.
We knew he would come when he was ready.
Jackson David was born Tuesday, November 2 at 4:02pm.
He was 1 week and 6 days past his "due" date.
You would think that no baby has ever come so late.
At 40 weeks, my doctor at Kaiser talked about induction.
At 41 weeks, a different doctor said our baby would die if I wasn't induced.
Jonathan and I both knew that she was being ridiculous.
We hadn't even done any baby monitoring yet.
And of course when we did, all signs were great.
Mini was healthy, and so we again refused induction.
It is not that we are opposed to induction.
Of course, there are plenty of good reasons.
But none existed in our situation.
I was never anxious to hurry up and get the baby out.
I knew and trusted that he would come in God's time.
As i approached two weeks past due, I did begin to drink raspberry leaf tea and explore natural induction techniques.
I wasn't tired of the baby being inside... just tired of dealing with Kaiser. I didn't want another doctor's appointment at 42 weeks.
On Monday, November 1st I finally felt a different kind of contraction. So i went to happy hour with the girls!
And that night contractions really got going.
As Jonathan rested up, I timed them.
8-10 minutes apart.
Sometimes 6 minutes.
Hard for me to tell the pattern.
I took an incredibly long shower.
Mercifully, I then got a couple hours of sleep.
By morning, they were closer and we called our doula, Kristen, and Jonathan took Sabine to the kennel.
By the time Kristen arrived and Jonathan returned, I started to really need help.
Kristen started to talk about going to the hospital.
She told me that the contractions were under 4 minutes apart.
I was losing track.
I had wanted to stay at home as long as possible but the hospital was a good 45 minute drive.
Better to go sooner rather than later.
Although when Jonathan called Kaiser, they made it sound like it was no big deal. Go figure.
Definitely a good idea that we went when we did because when we got to the hospital around 1pm, I was already at 7cm.
I couldn't deal with the nurses.
Or questions.
Or anything.
My complete focus was on each contraction.
I remember at some point going into the bathroom.
They told me not to have the baby in the toilet.
Seriously??
I don't know, maybe that's happened before.
After being in the shower for a bit, it was more and more painful to move around.
Everything was more painful.
I think someone offered pain meds but i was too focused to even consider it. I figured it was too late anyway and things were moving so fast.
Jonathan and Kristen tried to help me focus as best they could.
They were amazing.
It came time to push, and so I was back on the bed with the squatting bar. I had heard that pushing was better than transition. I think not.
Horribly painful.
And i remember wanting things to slow down.
Not being ready even though they kept telling me the baby was close.
I might have cursed.
And then he came.
In His time.
It was messy and beautiful and like all moms giving birth, I was flooded with emotion looking at my beautiful son.
We were amazed.
We were in love.
Jackson David weighed 7 lbs, 11 oz.
He was 20 inches long.
Here is a pic of our new family, soon after Jackson was born:
Unfortunately, the pain didn't end for me right away.
I had torn and so they needed to work on me.
It felt like they were mauling me.
Not cool.
I said curse words.
I meant them.
I wanted them to leave me alone.
I just wanted to focus on my sweet son on my chest.
They used my IV to deliver some pain meds.
I had gone through a natural childbirth only to have meds after the delivery?
I have to be okay with that.
But they didn't help.
They talked about repairing me in the OR but I guess they decided against it. And they finally stopped.
Jackson was cleaned up, measured, and ready to be bundled:
And they took us from the labor room to a recovery room.
We got to just be there with our son.
Just the three of us.
And we were incredibly happy.
We will never forget that day.
A picture of Kristen with Jackson before she left:
