Dane's Birth Story

First of all, thank you so much to all who have called, emailed and facebooked all the kind words for our little man. We promise to get back to you as soon as possible if you haven't heard from us yet. Secondly, a round of applause for my hubby who did a great job with all the updates over the past few days. He is obviously a bit more technically sound than I am with the photo montages and slideshows. Also I want to publicly thank him for being so wonderful over the past few days...he gave me a beautiful charm bracelet for my "push" present with a little "d" charm. He's also helped me out a lot at home since walking is kind of a chore right now. Also - a huge thank you to my mom who has been staying with us and Cameron's parents for all their help this week. Some of my family is coming next week and weekend as well, so we'll have lots of help!

Now, onto Dane's birth story (this could take a while)...
Sunday, February 15th we checked into the hospital at 7pm for a fun filled night of me hooked up to monitors and very little sleep. Monday morning I was woken at 5am to start my IV. They started the pitosin at 7am and contractions had started very mildly before they started the pitosin drip. Each time they came into check on me, they upped the pitosin to try to get me contracting harder before noon. Contractions were getting a little more intense around 10am and Cameron was holding my hand through all of it. 11am rolled around and they checked me - 2 cm dilated and they decided to break my water to get things moving. Well...it definitely did! By noon, I was 3 centimeters dilated and in pain so bad I wanted to crawl out of my own skin! So...bring on that epidural! Once the epidural kicked in almost immediately I fell asleep! I slept until 3:30 and they came in to check my progress again and it was already time to push! So...I pushed for an hour and a half and out came our little Dane man at 5:08!

Of course, growing up a tough farm girl I had to talk to my nurse to make sure I wasn't a big ol' wimp. I said to her "am I such a wimp for not being able to handle the contractions at only 3 cm dilated?" Maybe everything she explained to me was a lie so I felt like less of a wimp but I am choosing to believe her. She said that with a medical induction it's almost like double time because they're forcing the progression so much faster than your body would do it naturally. So, she said at 3 cm dilated I was actually contracting like I was 6 or 7 cm dilated. Whew...I was a bit worried I was becoming a softie!