A Quick Birth Story on the Feast of St. Francis

I'm pretty sure this is the first baby I delivered before their due date, and also the first to not be born in the middle of the night.  Full of surprises this one.

I probably should have known that I'd deliver him on Tuesday being that I was both still completely mentally unprepared for having another child and that I spent Monday in a frenzied compulsion to accomplish and clean ALL THE THINGS--as best as a someone who can't actually bend down can accomplish and clean things anyway.  By evening I was coming to terms with the fact that the baby was on his way and I was up all night waiting for it to be time to head in to the hospital.  After all, my babies are always born in the middle of the night so clearly Christopher would be too.  Well by six in the morning I had had about thirty minutes of sleep but it was time to head in, if only just to make sure that we didn't get stuck in traffic trying to wait any longer.

An accidental home birth is one thing, an accidental side-of-the-road-birth is something else entirely.

We made it to the hospital and had a fairly quick and uneventful time of things, aside from the obligatory me telling the doctors that I was ready to push followed by them not listening, causing a bit of chaos as someone was forced to dive, gloveless and not suited up, to catch the baby.  This time when I tried to give ample warning that the baby was coming the doctor responded that actually she thought my labor had slowed and offered me some Pitocin to get things going again--literally five minutes before they all had to come running back in for the delivery.  They also had the gall to tell me not to push.  Now, I've delivered with epidurals and without and you can certainly tell someone with an epidural not to push and they can probably comply, but if someone does not have an epidural they certainly will not.  Christopher was making his entrance and I was laughing maniacally at the thought of trying to stop him. Probably not out loud, but on the inside--on the inside there was total maniacal laughter.  The doctors said that it was one of the fastest deliveries they'd ever seen.

That's probably true, it was pretty darn fast.

Chris scooted home after everything settled down to take care of the children and I was released twenty-four hours later.  I debated staying the extra allotted day but the beds in this hospital are apparently all designed to prevent bedsores by randomly and continuously inflating and deflating so that you feel like you're rolling around on a water bed.  And you can't turn it off.

I thought, all things considered, I'd rather be home resting on a non-vibrating mattress with my newborn than in the hospital, even with their excellent room service menu and the promise of relative quiet.  

Here everyone's doing well and the kids just love their new little brother.  The little ones love him a little too hard sometimes, but I suppose that's to be expected.  Chris will be home to take care of us for most of the month and I'm trying to fight the urge to clean things and just sit around and snuggle this precious little baby instead while I can.

Everything happened so quickly that I still haven't quite wrapped my mind around the fact that he's actually here.