Some Birth Statistics
Date: April 12th, 1997
Time: 3:36pm
Weight: 7 lb 6oz
Length: 20 1/2 inches
Nathan’s arrival
I wrote this a year and a half later, so some of the details might be slightly off. It all started the night before. Fridays were our usual poker night. For some reason on this night I was more tired than I normally had been. I fell deep asleep on our friends couch! I guess my body was getting ready for the next day
We went home that night at about 2:00am. I promptly went back to sleep! At about 3:30am, I woke up for the normal potty break 
Try and try as I might, I just couldn’t get comfortable enough to go back to sleep. Something about my body just didn’t feel right. Then I realized that I was feeling ’something’ about 6 minutes apart. It wasn’t really any pains, but like a pressure on my lower back. I waited a little while to make sure they were not going away and that they were getting a little closer together. Then I tried to wake up Greg. I don’t think he heard me tell him the first 2 times that it was time for him to wake up. I took a shower and made sure I had my little hospital bag all packed up.
It was about 5:00, my contractions were 5 minutes apart getting just a little closer together and still not did not bother me at all. Now it was really time to wake up Greg. The silly person asked me if he could go back to sleep. I told him no that it was time to go to the hospital. He jumped out of bed like something had bitten him. Then while he got ready, I called my mom and then my dad. They both lived a about an hour and a half away and would need time to get ready and make the drive.
Once we arrived at the hospital, we found out that I was already 6 cm dilated! My contractions were about 3 minutes apart and still not bothering me. My Dad found us at about 7am. He kept us occupied by watching some wrestling and telling us jokes. Shortly afterwards my mom arrived. Then we had 2 people to entertain us. I don’t really remember too much about what we did while we were waiting except that Greg called his parents in California to let them know that they would have a grandson sometime that day. The nurses came in from time to time to check on us and make sure everything was going alright. They were amazed that I was in such little pain. At about 9 am, I was 7 centimeters dilated and my doctor decided to break my water. Yuck, that is one of the nastiest feelings I have ever had…. laying in wetness that kept gushing out when I moved!
I got to 8 centimeters dilated and then sometime around 10am my body just decided to stop. My contractions were becoming less frequent and there was pressure then there had been. I had been doing great! No pain, just letting my body do its thing. Around 11:30am my doctor decided to get things going again with a pitocin drip. These brought back my contractions but this time they were strong and painful. Since I was already so far along I was only allowed to have something to take the edge off of the pain.
At about 1:30pm the nurses had me start pushing. Wow was that hard work. Greg was wonderful. He sat right beside me the whole time holding my hand through the contractions and helping me count. After what felt like forever, even though it had only been 2 hours, it was time to move into the delivery room.
I was pushing as hard as I could. We only had a little bit to go before we would see our baby! I was exhausted. I didn’t feel like I could push anymore and on the last real push they had to use a little vacuum extractor on him. I felt really bad about this, like I couldn’t handle the task I had been set to do. But he was here and that was all that mattered! Greg said it was amazing to watch. Did I already say how wonderful he was?
And at 3:36pm, Nathan Elliot was born. He was beautiful. He had a little bit of blonde fuzz on his head, and hardly any on him. I didn’t get to hold him right away, I think Greg said the cord might have gotten caught on his neck and they wanted to make sure he would keep breathing alright, which he did . After he was all washed up I got to hold him and we were wheeled from the Delivery room into our room where Nathan stayed with us except for his checkups.
