A Bit of a Birth Story

We are happy to announce that little John Michael finally made his appearance in the world early Saturday morning!

Like 3:22 am early :)

I ended up not doing the epidural this go round and it really wasn't that bad at all...until I hit eight centimeters that is, at which point I wanted to die.  Luckily for me my body knew exactly how much pain I can actually tolerate--which apparently is not too terribly much--and it was only fifteen minutes and five contractions from wanting to die to holding my precious little bundle in my arms.  I informed the doctors that I needed to push, they told me to wait, I disregarded their wishes and calmly let them know that I would be delivering my baby right then regardless of whether or not they were ready....or I screamed at them to "get.him.out!".....it's hard to remember exactly.........

Really the whole delivery was perfect and everything went according to plan until I heard the words that no mom who has just delivered a baby without the benefits of an epidural in place wants to hear......"wow, these pieces of your placenta are really adhered to the top of your uterus...."  I'm not sure if I'll be brave enough to risk another delivery without an epidural just to ensure that I never have to experience the joys of another manual placental extraction ever, ever, ever again.

He was worth it though.

Everyone wants to know if he looks more like David or more like Henry.  This is clearly a trick question since they were pretty much indistinguishable from each other at birth aside from their hair.  I think little John is following in his big brothers' footsteps and joined their club of look-a-like babies.