Jack William Parish: He's Here! The Birth Story:

Birth Story:

I woke up around 8am on Sunday morning and figured that my water had broke or I had peed my pants! It turns out, my water had broken. I called the Dr.'s office and since I wasn't having contractions they said to either call back when I'm having contractions or come to the hospital around 4 or 5pm either way. Well, a half hour or so later, contractions started and were only 3 minutes apart for a whole hour. I called the Dr. back and she said to come to the hospital.

We got to the hospital by about 9:30 or 10am and triage determined that yes my water had broken and I was already 5cm dilated and 100% effaced. They admitted me to a room by 10:30am and had the anesthesiologists already on their way. At first, I felt my contractions were that bad at the time, so I almost told them to come back later for the epidural, but better judgement took over me and I told them to just get it over with and got the epidural. I'm so glad I did!

From here, it was pretty much just me lying in the bed, and Jack's heartbeat would drop down to 80 (supposed to be around 140) here and there, so they would rush in and have me lay on a different side and give me oxygen. Then he'd go right back up to normal. I got checked again and was 6cm, again a little later and I was 9cm...then the last check was 10cm and they asked if I was ready to start pushing (this was around 3:15pm or so?) I told them I didn't feel the urge necessarily and my mom was on here way up from Boston, so I said I could hold out a little longer. Well, then my back started hurting a lot and the nurse just said, can we just start pushing? So I agreed, and we did some "practice pushing" which, as it turns out, I was productive with it and somehow was doing it right on the first try. The Dr. came and said we were ready and within a half hour, Jack was here!

15 minutes later....my mom arrives! She missed the birth by only 15 minutes!

Introducing Jack: