Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Caden James Arrives

On Tuesday morning, July 5th, I woke up at about 1 am with cramps. I decided to go back to sleep thinking they would just go away. About 5:45am, I woke up realizing that these cramps had started to feel like contractions and I was feeling them about every 10 minutes or so. I woke up Andrew and told him that I had been feeling these cramps now since 1 am. I had a Dr's appointment scheduled for that morning at 8:45 so I thought maybe we could just wait until we saw the Dr. to tell her about my pains. About 10 minutes later, I noticed they were getting more and more intense. I was definitely in labor. We scrambled to pack our hospital bag (it wasn't packed because I didn't think he would come a week early) and get our stuff together. I called my Dad right away because I knew he was about to step on a plane for a week long business trip. Sure enough, when I called, he was boarding the plane. He didn't know what to do since he thought maybe I was having false labor pains (my mom had them with me). I told him to go ahead and go to Seattle and to call us when he landed and we would update him as to what was going on. Since its a short flight, we figured he could jump on the next flight back home if I was in fact going into labor.

Andrew and I jumped in the car and headed to the hospital and arrived at about 7:45am. I was getting more and more uncomfortable as the contractions got closer together and became more and more painful. When we got to the hospital, they were about 4 minutes apart. We checked into our room and the nurse came in to see if I was dialated at all. I was at 5cm already!! I couldn't believe it. I was definitely in labor and going to meet our little man sooner than later. Around 9:45am, I decided to go ahead and have the epidural before the contractions got any more painful. It wasn't the most enjoyable experience but definitely worth it - as soon as the medicine started flowing, I felt a 100 times better. Poor Andrew almost fainted while watching me get the epidural - those needles are so long! After some crackers and water, he felt much better! In the meantime, my mom, brother Jason, Cristina and Andrew's mom arrived at the hospital to see how I was doing. We waited another couple of hours and around 2pm, the nurse said I was dialated to 10cm and could start pushing in about an hour. My dad called Andrew when he landed in Seattle to see how it was going. When he found out I was definitely in labor, he said he would do everything he could to jump on the next plane back to try to get to the hospital before Caden was born.

At 3pm, everyone cleared the room except for the nurse and Andrew and I started pushing. Through all the contractions and pushing, Andrew was amazing. He helped me to relax and kept telling me how great I was doing. I pushed for about 1 hour 45 minutes when the baby's head started to crown. The nurse called my Dr., who thankfully was across the street. As soon as she got there, I pushed a few more times and at 5:35 pm Caden made his entrance into the word. He weighed 6 lbs, 4 ounces and measured 19 inches long. They immediately cleaned him off and laid him on my chest. I can't even describe the feeling I had when I saw him for the first time. He was perfect! We got to enjoy the first 45 minutes with just the three of us - our new family. Andrew and I were overwhelmed with the love we felt for our little guy. After 9 months of patiently waiting, we couldn't have more blessed! We are so thankful that Caden was born healthy and that I didn't experience any complications during the delivery.

After we had our bonding time with Caden, our family came into the room to meet him. The last person to enter the room was my dad. I was emotional when I saw him because I was so thankful he made it back in time to be there when he was born. It was so neat to watch everyone hold Caden and see him for the first time. We are so blessed to be surrounded by such amazing friends and family who love us and baby Caden so much. The rest of the stay in the hospital was pretty good. All the nurses were awesome and it helped that our room had an ocean view :) We got to go home on Thursday morning and we couldn't have been more excited to start our new life at home with Caden.

Caden is now a little over 2 weeks old and we love him so much! He has been such a great baby so far. We are just in awe of the miracle that God blessed us with and absolutely love being a mommy and daddy.



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