Surprise Arrival!

Last time I posted, I was 36 weeks along, and one would think that I would be making an update about the last 3 weeks of my pregnancy and our plan for week 39 and 40. Well, that was apparently not to be so since Mr. Grayson decided that 1 day short of week 38 was time to come into this world. So here is my record of his birth.

I had made progress with finishing cleaning the house, and on the night of the 12th, I got a call from coordinator for ELA for the district I work for. She asked if I would be willing to work on curriculum for the new school year since a situation had come up with the people working on the 9th grade curriculum. Being asked to work on curriculum is a pretty big honor, and we could use the extra cash. So I ended up answering yes, and I worked on curriculum Wednesday and Thursday of that week and Monday-Thursday the following week. It was fairly interesting, but I won't bore you with the details.
Monday, the 18th, was my 37th week. This meant I had made it to full term, and I was definitely feeling it. I had been luckily enough to have a fairly easy pregnancy minus a few hiccups, and I hadn't gotten that I am done feeling. However, by Tuesday of that week, I had started getting that done and finished feeling. I had told my mom that I didn't think Grayson would make it to July. I felt horrible on Friday, and everything I was doing took double or triple times to do. Saturday, I felt much better, and we got the house ready for our friends, the Martins, to come over for dinner. We had a great time visiting with them and their four kids. Of course, we talked about Grayson coming early for them see him before they were going on their cruise.

At about 6:50 in the morning, I got up because I felt like I had to go to the bathroom. This wasn't abnormal since I normally got up at this time to do this activity. This time was different because I didn't make it before having what I thought was an accident. I started cleaning up and noticed things were clear rather than yellow. Something flicked on in my brain, and then I was like "nah, it can't be my water." I hadn't had any contractions at this point. I cleaned up and got ready to get back into bed. On the way to bed, it happened again, and I figured that this must be my water. I woke Brett up to let him know that my water broke, and we got ready to go to the hospital still not 100% sure it was my water.

Since it was so early Sunday morning, we headed to the ER entrance of the hospital. When we arrived at labor and delivery, we were taken to a room, and I was asked to change into a hospital gown. At this point, we were still thinking it might be a false alarm. As I was putting my gown on, there was a huge gush of water, and there was no denying what it was at that point. All I could do was stand there and laugh, and then I started trying to clean the mess up. Brett convinced me that being in the bed was a better idea instead thankfully.

Once in the bed, the nurse gave me a test to make sure it was my water and check to see how far along I was, which wasn't much. The test did turn fairly quickly to assure the nurse and us that indeed my water had broken. They hooked me up to the monitors, and we started calling people to let them know that Grayson would be arriving sometime today. We told people not to rush since we figured we were in for a long haul. I was having contractions, but they weren't very bad. We were kinda left alone because there was a c-section going on along with another woman who came in 9 centimeters dilated.

When two nurses came rushing in, I knew something was up. They check the monitors and got me to put an oxygen mask on. They tried to put a monitor inside, but Grayson was too far up to do that. I also noticed that my contractions were getting strong. After things settled a bit, the nurses let us know that Grayson had gone into distress with my major contraction, and his heart beat had gone down to 80 beats for 8 minutes. If it had continued, they would have had to knock me out and take me in for an emergency c-section. I hadn't had an epidural because I had hoped to go as natural as possible. The main nurse let us know that most likely my doctor would be performing a c-section especially if he went into distress again, and if I didn't have an epidural, they would have knock me out. That meant Brett wouldn't be able to join me. So I got the epidural-not a fun experience. Shortly after speaking to my doctor's partner and getting the epidural, Grayson went into distress again. They came in to give me something to stop the contractions and prep me for the surgery.

Things in the operating room are a little fussy due to the medication. I do remember I got to pick the pandora radio station, which was Glee of course, but I couldn't hear it. Everything happened so quickly it seemed. Within a few minutes, we heard Grayson come out crying. They showed him to us over the curtain, and then they took him over to the side of the room to get weighed while I got stitched up. He came out weighing 5 lb 7 oz, and he measure at 17 inches. Plus he came out with a full head of dark hair-so I had at least one prediction right. After a little bit, they did let me hold him for a bit before they took him to our labor and delivery room. I followed shortly. When I got back, they let me begin breastfeeding, and it was amazing to finally get a chance to hold what I had been cooking in my tummy for almost 9 1/2 months! He was perfect in every way.

Hard to believe it has already been 1 week since we brought him home. We are already have seen so many changes in just one week. That update will have to come later sine I am going to attempt to get some shut eye before dinner and the next feeding.