The Big Day

Late Monday evening we spent a super fun time exploring the Berlin Zoo. We walked around and explored the heck out of that place. We were exhausted when it came time to go home. Jeremy didn't even grab a late dinner; he went straight upstairs and crashed. With Abby in bed, Denna and I read and played on the internet until about 9.

I had just said goodnight and was walking upstairs when my water broke. UGH. I couldn't believe it. I was induced with Abby and never got the joy of the unexpected slash. At first I thought I had peed my pants, but I've managed to get that under control in the past 31 years so I was pretty certain something was up.

I knew Jeremy needed some serious sleep so I went about my business and waited for the contractions to come. I finished up all my packing, read the final chapters in my birthing book and notified all the appropriate people. Then it got pretty boring. Eventually I woke up Jeremy and we went to the hospital to check things out.

The nurse could see I was having contractions, but wasn't so sure my water broke since I wasn't dilated at all. Luckily, I managed to convince her and we were sent to this super awesome birthing room.

It looks like we were having fun, but we showed up about 15 minutes before the lady next door delivered her child naturally. Let's just say there were thin walls and it was a little traumatizing. It reconfirmed my original plan to get an epidural as SOON as possible.

Flash forward to six in the morning. My contractions were coming super close together, I could no longer Facebook and I was shouting loudly for the anesthesiologist. Unfortunately, I wasn't even half way dilated and no where near pushing Ollie out. They took pity on me and started the numbing process.

They tried, and tried, and tried, and TRIED to put the epidural in but couldn't find the spot. HOW CAN YOU NOT FIND THE SPOT? Do I need to draw you an X somewhere? They second epidural lady didn't have a much better go at it. At this point I was pretty upset and in a ton of pain. Not only was I having a ton of super painful contractions super close together but now my back is seriously jacked up and NOTHING is numb. Nothing except my ability to think clearly and/or the ability to control my bad attitude.

That's when the real fun started. All of a sudden nurses were coming in letting us know that something was up and they had called in the doctor to talk to us. This was all in German, of course. Jeremy was getting a super quick lesson in German birthing vocab 1o1 and I was looking around like a lost dog trying to find some relief and comfort.

The doctor tried to explain that the baby was stressed out and they needed to do a C-Section to get him out. They didn't know why Ollie was having problems but having him naturally was going to be a no go.

So Jeremy went to go get his super sexy scrubs on while I went for my spinal block. I was way more nervous to get the spinal block than I was for the C-section. It's pretty much an epidural and we all know how awesome and easy getting one of those can be....

I don't remember too much at this point. Jeremy let me know later that they made a small incision but since Ollie was wrapped around his body, neck and head with the umbilical cord they had to do some unraveling of the cord on the inside of my uterus in order to pull him out. It took longer than expected and they ended up ripping my incision quite a bit longer on both sides.

This is what they found inside:

The German midwives dress, change and bath your baby while you are in the hospital. I love the cute little outfits they bring him back in.

I love his hair crusties....

Being in the hospital with Ollie is fun, but I sure miss the spunk and excitement that comes with my Abby. I was so happy to see her.

She immediately jumped into the big sister role and began to pamper and primp her little brother.

The first hug...
Ollie pretended to be asleep the whole time, but he let us know how he really felt about the whole situation...

One proud papa...

Having a boy is so much fun. I couldn't stop snuggling him.

Welcome, Oliver Thomas.