sleeping through the night...

He's sleeping through the night! And when I say "sleeping through the night," I mean sleeping more than 7 hours. Last night was 9 hours; tonight, we'll see. I haven't shared a lot on this blog about my mother issues and thought at this point to open up a bit about it. Another mother-to-be may want to read from me the experience I've had.

I tried really hard to have a medication free childbirth. Things were complicated when my water broke at 36 weeks (4 weeks early). When your water breaks, the rule is to get the baby out within 24 hours to avoid infection. It's a debatable topic, but the ole pharmacist came out in me and I went on in to the hospital about 4 hours after my water broke.

Another complication was that my water broke at 2am. I had just watched David Letterman prior to falling asleep a measley 3 hours. Water breaks. Go to hospital. Labor for 22 hours.

They wanted to start oxytocin (pitocin) on me, and I declined. I got labor started (let's get this party started!) by walking all over the hospital. By 6pm, I was into heavy labor (16 hours later). No food and no drink are allowed. I finally crashed and burned at 7-8cm and asked for the epidural.

Right after the epidural the nurse checked me. I was 10 cm.

Figures. But it was wonderful (epidural) and glad now that I did it that way... I would have been ill to go through such pain as I was enduring to only have him whisked away to the NICU. At least with the epidural, I actually went to sleep for 2 hours prior to pushing. I pushed 6 times - 2 contractions. Easy peasy.

I can't wait to have one more ;)