At 4:57am, I woke up to my first contraction. Convinced it was probably nothing but unable to go back to sleep, I decided to take a bath. No more contractions during that time. But once I got out and went into the bedroom they picked up again and slightly more intense. Mike woke up and saw me leaning over the side of the bed and asked me what was going on. I told him I thought I was in labor finally and he jumped into the shower 'lickety split'! I got dressed and went into the living room. I was going to try and have some water and just "labor at home" for as long as possible. Reagan woke up and wanted some chocolate milk and cartoons. That's when the contractions became almost unbearable. I felt very ill and went into Reagan's bathroom and made her go wake Mom up. Reagan kept telling me that I couldn't get sick in her bathroom. Haha! Mom came in and got me a washcloth and called the Birthing Center for me. At that time, my contractions were anywhere from 3 - 5 minutes apart and extremely intense.

I did very well on the way to the hospital, listening to my Hypnobabies, and breathing through my contractions. When we got to the hospital and made our way up to L&D, they put me right into a room and skipped triage completely when they saw me have a contraction. When my midwife finally made it in to check me, I was 5cm. A couple hours later, I was still at a 5 and in complete agony. According to my midwife and nurse, the way my pelvic bones and hipbones are rotated, the baby's head was resting on my bone and every contraction was pushing him into the bone. I opted for the epidural at that point, which turned out to be a good idea. I had them put it on the lowest dosage so that I could still feel my contractions but was able to relax during them as I had been taught in my Hypnobabies. At that point, I began to make progress again. 1 centimeter an hour.

At one point, the nurse decided to have me flip to my other side to see if it would help me progress. When they did this, Caleb's heartbeat dipped significantly. The room filled with nurses and they had me flip back over and they had to place the internal monitor on Caleb's head. I began crying because the same exact thing happened with Reagan 5 years earlier. Once they got him and me stable again, things were better for a little while. The next time they checked me, I was at 9cm and I asked them to turn off the epidural so that I could push. The nurse wanted to flip me again. The same thing happened again except much worse because the next thing we knew, there were about 7 nurses and doctors in the room with us and everyone was in a panic. They gave me a shot of something to stop my contractions because they thought it was distressing the baby. The shot made me feel terrible and they got me back on the side that Caleb seemed to prefer and eventually things settled down and we were both stable again.

When the nurse came back in, I asked her for some water and she told me that they weren't going to give me anything until the doctor had been in to see me. She indicated that everyone thought the baby wouldn't tolerate me pushing since he didn't tolerate the contractions and that they would probably be prepping me for a c-section. When she left the room, I began to cry uncontrollably. I was very scared and upset that she had brought it up to me before the doctor had even been in. (Mike snuck me some sips of water, too. He was my hero!)

The shot began to wear off and my contractions returned and were intense and regular again. The nurse came in and thought they should turn my epidural back on since I was having to breathe through contractions again. My midwife, Lisa, came in and checked me before turning my epidural back on and determined I was a 10. She got my other midwife, Susan, and we decided to do a "test push" to see how well Caleb would tolerate it and also to see if he would descend since he was pretty high up still. Blessedly, he tolerated me pushing VERY well and came down beautifully!! 25 minutes later, I had my beautiful son on my chest and in my arms!! It was the most amazing experience of my whole life. I have never been so happy to see anyone.

Then things got scary. My placenta wouldn't detach and they were having to do some really horrible and painful massage to try to deliver it. When an hour had passed and they had made no progress, they made Mike leave the room and took the baby to the nursery. There were nurses and doctors everywhere again. My epidural got turned back on at a very high dosage and the anesthetist put some medicine into my IV and I was OUT. They had to manually remove my placenta. When I spoke with my midwife later, she said that a 'retained placenta' was a very rare occurence but once someone has it happen, it is very likely that it will happen again. With Reagan, I had a very small chunk that was retained. This time it was the whole placenta. I, apparently, lost tons of blood, and they were monitoring me to determine if I would need a transfusion.

They finally allowed Mom and Reagan to come in and see me and they brought Caleb back in as well. I began feeling better pretty quickly and they said I stabilized very nicely. Saturday morning, my midwife said that they wouldn't be doing the transfusion and Mike and I were allowed to take Caleb home on Saturday. I am supposed to be taking it very easy for another week due to the blood loss I had but I feel good most days and am doing very well.

Mom extended her stay and went back home on Monday. We were sad to see her go and wish we could have spent more time with her while she was here. We're so grateful that she was able to come and stay to help us out with Reagan and be here for such a big event. It was a blessing that she was able to be here for it.

So far things are going very well at home. I still haven't been able to sleep in my own bed but I'm hoping for soon! Overall, he's such a good, easy baby. A few rough nights are par for the course, I suppose. We have been out with him a few times and he does so well. Last night, Mike took us to Salem Beer Works, a very cool microbrewery in Salem, MA. It was a beautiful day and we took backroads all the way and saw some gorgeous scenery. Caleb slept through our entire meal, which was delicious. I got to have my first beer since becoming pregnant and enjoyed some really great hot wings as well. We have been wanting to find a good Brewery since we left the island and I think we found it. (It still doesn't totally compare to Kona Brewery though. C'mon, it's Kona!)

It's time to go put some lunch together for all of us. Today is Mike's last day at home as he will be returning to work tomorrow. I'm a little anxious about being alone with a newborn and a 5 year old, especially for the hours the Mike has to work, but I'm sure we will be fine. Amazing how much more confidence you have the second time around. Also amazing is the amount of love that I feel for both of my kids now. I was worried during the pregnancy how I would be able to share my love or have enough for two but I found out immediately that my heart is just overflowing with more love for both of them.

Here are some photos that we have of our little Caleb Michael so far. I will try to update as often as I can, though I'm anticipating not having as much time as I did before his arrival. :o)