My Son’s Birth Story.

His story begins the evening of Thursday, July 2. As I prepared for bed, I began to feel very uncomfortable – baby pushing on my cervix kind of uncomfortable. Baby boy was extremely active, and as he bore down I could also feel his legs squirming all around my side. In an effort to decrease the discomfort, I laid myself down on the couch with a pillow elevating my pelvis – in hopes that baby boy would slide himself towards my ribs instead. And for a while it worked!

Around 4:00 Friday morning, I woke up to use the bathroom. Almost immediately, baby boy woke up and was at it again – kicking around and bearing down. This time though, I knew the cramps I was beginning to feel were contractions. At 4:30 AM I made the decision to call my husband home from work. My parents were alerted, and I started to make sure my hospital bag was fully packed {more details on that later}.

While I still felt decent, I fixed my hair, brushed my teeth, put on makeup – made sure that everything was in order so that as soon as my parents were told to make their way to our house, everything would be set.

By 6:30, baby girl was awake and my parents were at our house. By this time my contractions had progressed from being 7-10 minutes apart {at 4:30} to 5 minutes apart. We took one last picture together as a family of three, and off we went to the hospital.

There, I was examined and measured 4 cm dilated. My contractions were coming steadily, and most of my pain circulated through my legs. I knew most likely baby boy was not laying sunnyside up like his sister, whose labor pain centered in my lower back. The leg pain was quite a bit worse.

Around 8:00 AM I was finally admitted to the hospital. I walked myself to a good 5 cm dilated, and off we went to our labor and delivery room. I labored, waiting for my water to break now that my mucus plug was gone, but to no avail. After an epidural and at 7 cm dilated, the doctors had me start pushing.

We made the decision to start pushing while baby boy was still in the water bag. As it started to appear, my doctors broke my water, and at 11:06 AM baby Wesson was born!

Thanks to our amazing doctors {and my body’s knowledge of how to handle delivery} I suffered minor scraping and did not require any stitches. That was an absolute answered prayer! My first delivery required several stitches, which greatly increased my recovery time. After three months I still didn’t feel like myself. I can’t say enough just how amazing it is that I did not have to leave the hospital sitting on a donut!

At 37 weeks and 6 days pregnant, Wesson Edmund Anthony was born weighing 6 pounds 3 ounces, and measured 19 inches long. He is a happy, healthy sweet boy! Though slightly jaundiced, he is extremely peaceful, a great sleeper {so far} and brings so much joy to our lives already!

I don’t want to boast, but I feel amazing after this birth compared to my first. After the epidural wore off my legs, I could walk, sit, bend over, and carry my daughter almost effortlessly. I almost felt ashamed for how good I was feeling, but I paid my dues the first time around.

I am still recovering; I am not completely back to feeling normal just yet. But let me just say, most of what other moms told me this time was true: giving birth to your second is so much quicker and easier than the first {generally}.

Now that I’m home and we are adjusting to a new life as a family of four, I feel blessed that God has allowed me the ability to move around somewhat effortlessly – He knows I need it to keep up with baby girl! Despite my answered prayers through this delivery, I will say this: I do not hope to be pregnant again next year!