Jason Matthew is HERE!

We're home!!! After a total of 4 days in the hospital, I'm happy to be home with my family. I returned to 96 emails and tons of questions about the delivery, so I'll give you all of the highlights without going into no-one-wants-to-hear-your-birth-story type of detail.
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We were called into the hospital at 7:25am on Thursday to be induced, just as Mike was walking out the door to go to work and a few minutes before walking Ryan to the bus stop, so it was PERFECT timing. I had been having contractions all night, but they had stopped around 2am, so I was glad to be getting induced.
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Around noon, my doctor came to break my water and when he checked me, couldn't feel the baby's head. He did an ultrasound and discovered that the baby had turned around and was BREACH. I know many of you are very pro-C-section, but I was crushed. After progressing along all morning, already numb and ready to have a normal delivery, my mind raced with the 6 weeks of post-surgery: recovering, pain, no driving, no lifting...I was willing to do it, but not excited about it. My doctor gave me the option to go home and see if the baby would rotate back on his own, to get a version (where he would manipulate my stomach and try to "encourage" the baby to shift head-down, which presented the risk of potentially breaking my water, internal bleeding and rapid drop in the baby's heart rate - all of which would send me into a C-section right away) or I could just get the C-section. I decided to have him try a version, then get a C-section if it was unsuccessful. But HALLELUJAH - after much prayer, pushing, rotating and manipulation, my doctor was able to get the baby to face head-down. When he did the ultrasound to confirm, I was so relieved I burst into tears. Hormonal much?

So that put a glitch in things for a while, but after they put a corset-like thing around me to keep the baby's wiggle-room restricted so he would stay put, we were back on track. He was quite comfy and in no rush to come out, because it took me hours to progress. I was 2cm all day (and had been for a week) then went to 4cm when they broke my water, then stayed at 4cm most of the evening. Jason was finally born at 12:27am.

I had the perfect epidural because I didn't feel a single contraction, yet I could move and partially feel my legs and felt much of the delivery experience. It didn't feel good, necessarily, but it was a crazy sensation to be able to, for the first time, feel my baby coming into the world. It was all a little surreal at the time and I almost felt kind of disconnected from the experience for a bit. While they were cleaning Jason up, weighing him and my mom and Mike were taking pictures, I was fascinated with the Discovery Health Channel-like stuff I was seeing my doctor do to my body. It was almost like I was more interested in that than bonding with Jason. (Am I not supposed to admit that kind of stuff???) It didn't last long, though. I connected back to the new-mom experience in no time.

Early Saturday, they tested Jason's jaundice levels and they were too high, so they took him away from me and put him under biliruben lights all day and all night, except during feedings. As selfish as this sounds, I was relieved to be able to sleep after being up most of Thursday night and awoken every hour on Friday with people taking my blood pressure, reminding me to nurse, shift change introductions, changing the trash can liners at 4am, taking my blood at 5:15am...you know, all of the "necessary" hospital middle-of-the-night interruptions.

But by Saturday afternoon, I was really missing my baby. Badly. They'd bring him to me to nurse and I'd conveniently snuggle him for 30 minutes before feeding him so I wasn't "done" when they came to pick him up. It was a lonely afternoon without my baby boy! They kept him all of last night and gave him formula (per my request) so I could get ONE LAST good night's sleep and today I'm a new woman. I slept from 9pm to 8am, with the exception of nursing and snuggle time at 4:30am. It was...divine.

We got the green light to go home around 10am today. I had psyched myself up for the possibility of having to stay with Jason one more night until his jaundice was gone, but they tested him and all was fine! The kids were BEYOND excited to meet their brother. I didn't tell anyone we were going to be home when they returned from church, so it was a fun surprise. I'm so glad to be home and ready to incorporate the little peanut into our family and our lives.