Thank heaven for epidurals...oh and little boys too.

It's official! I am a mommy. Dominic Charles DelBarone was born on June 10, 2008 at 6:07pm weighing in at 6lbs 7oz and is 19 inches long. I currently have no pictures to post. Not for lack of taking them, but because Dennis can't find the cord to hook the camera to the computer. So we can't take any of our pictures off yet. If he doesn't find it this morning, I am sending him to purchase a new one.



So let's talk labor. If you refer back to some previous posts, you will recall how I was in denial about labor. I never really came up with a "plan". My plan - get an epidural, have a baby, hold him. That is almost exactly what happened too!



So Tuesday morning, as I was writing my blog entry, Women and Infants called and said they were ready for me. So I finish the entry and Dennis and I head over. At this point, I am a bit nervous, but about trivial things - will the epidural hurt? I didn't shave for 2 days, will the nurses and doctors be grossed out? What if I poop during labor? - not serious things like, will everything be ok with Dominic. At that point, I had pretty much convinced myself that the doctors were being overly cautious and that Dominic was actually bigger and more normal than they predicted (I was right...as usual ). Anywho, we got to the hospital without incident...



So they take us to our room for Labor and Delivery. It was very weird walking into it, all I could think about was how that was the place that I would finally get to hold Dominic and see his little cheeks and kiss them. They have the little baby warmer thing all set up and ready for him from the moment you walk in. I stared at it from the bed for probably the first 2 hours, picturing what it would be like to see him in it. After about 45 minutes of paperwork talk and discussing with the doc and nurse what our plan was vs what their plan was (it was the same...healthy baby, healthy mom, how we got there didn't matter to me), we started the induction medicine.



So I was already 5 cm when they started the medicine. My doc thought that would mean this would go fast. It didn't. It took me almost all day to go from 5cm to 7cm. We were a little frustrated. More because we were so excited to meet Dominic, and the longer you take to dilate on the medicine, the more likely they are to give you a c-section, which honestly, I didn't want to recover from. I was definitely not in any pain. Fortunately, going from 7 to 10 took about an hour and we were all ready!! Yay!

I'll spare you the graphic details of what happened next. But let me tell you, I will never think of a vagina the same way again. Or a uterus. That is quite the organ.

It was the best feeling in the world when they held Dominic up and I heard him cry. It's one of the only times that hearing someone cry makes you happy. Unless you are a jerk. Anyway, I can honestly say that all this crap for the last 9 months was worth it. Every second. I still hated being pregnant. And do not ever want to do it again. But I am glad I did it once.