Taggart Morley Naylor

I can't believe that my baby is two weeks and 3 days old!!! So, in the midst of a move and semi-caring (lots of help from mom, mother-in-law, Brian and my brother Mike) for 7 children one of which is a newborn I have had little time to write a post about his birth. Many of our things are still in boxes which makes my brain incapable of blogging but I'll give it a whirl.

I had a couple of those once in a lifetime things I wanted to make my cameo for before he was born. I crossed my fingers that we'd make it, he was cooperative and waited. I think this was the first time I was hoping my baby wouldn't come yet. Abby had her first day of Kindergarten on the 5th and my niece was baptized on the 7th. During that last week I kept getting teased by harder contractions but nothing regular. Around midnight on the 7th I felt like they were starting to get regular and started timing them. Every four minutes one would come but they still weren't too strong, not labor-worthy, or so I thought. At 12:44 I had a contraction and felt a strange little pop and then a gush. I said "Oh!" and Brian said, "what?" but mid word the gush hit him (it was 12:44 so we were in bed) and he knew what.

This was a completely different experience than when my water broke with Abby. With her it was a slow leak and I didn't dilate on my own. This time around I had been dilated to a 3 for two weeks. (Much better than with Ginny, dilated to a 4 for almost a month, Ughhh). We took our time getting to the hospital. The strange calm of being in labor had come over me and I really needed to clean up the mess that baby and I had made before we left. It felt much better to walk than to sit in the car. My deepening track helped tons with the car ride. For those of you who don't know I did a home study course with "hypnobabies". I think I would have done much better taking the class but I had no choice. It still helped a ton. I really wanted to go natural with this one since my blood pressure dropped to 70/30 with Abby and 60/30 with Ginny (blood pressure drops are common with an epidural). I also had a scary experience with the anesthesiologist during Ginny's birth.

Anyway... we arrived at the hospital around 1:30. I suffered through sitting on the bed to find out that I was dilated to a 6. I quickly moved to a birthing ball and Brian stood in front of me rubbing my shoulders and back. Sometimes there were variations on this but this is what I remember most because it was the most comfortable. I could rest my head on his belly during a contraction (for you hypno-mom's I just can't get used to the term "birthing wave" even after listening to it several times a day for a month and a half. While I was in labor, yet another "scary" term, I'm pretty sure I thought of them as waves but now that I'm not pregnant I have to revert to the old familiar lingo).

I started feeling a strong urge to push. We hadn't been in the hospital too long so I thought maybe I just had to "go". We called the nurse back into the room. She didn't seem too concerned (presumably since I wasn't screaming and writhing in pain) but said maybe I was ready and suggested I climb back into bed so that she could check my progress. I stood up and moved to the bed, placed my elbows on it and a contraction started. When I was sitting on the ball I couldn't feel where he was but once I was leaning across the bed I could tell that he was right there. I managed to get the words "be there" out to Brian. Luckily Brian understood because his head was crowning. He called the nurse over and once she saw what was going on she started shouting "don't push". But COME ON, in that situation how do you not push? Everything in me was shouting "Push, Push" I couldn't stop my body from doing what it HAD to do. Between the two of them they caught him before he hit the floor. In my version I could feel each part of his little body as he came out so it didn't seem like he came out that fast. In Brian's version he came shooting out cannon-launching style. As you can read on the announcement above he came at 3:12 am. 2 hours and 28 min. after my water broke and after being at the hospital for about an hour and a half.

Due to the fact that he came so quickly we had nurses running around like headless chickens. Everyone kept apologizing to me and I didn't understand why. I was so excited that he was here that I didn't really get that a Dr. wasn't there and that that would bother them. The general consensus was next time run don't walk to the hospital ( I would have preferred either of those options to riding. BUT... considering that it would have placed me somewhere along the side of the road when he came I'm ever so grateful for modern transportation).

We love him so much! He is the perfect baby especially in our current situation. Although I can't deny being pretty tired it doesn't seem as bad as the first 2 weeks with the girls. Let's hope it continues! For those of you who like to know who he looks like.... To me he looks like my brother Eric and a pretty good mix between Abby and Ginny's baby pictures. But really he just looks like himself, time will tell. Maybe I'll get some comparison photos up, maybe.