I'm Ba-ack!!!

It's official, I'm a mama!! Thanks to Auntie Leah who volunteered to update you all with Baby Evans news (including a pic of my sweet baby that I can't see without singing Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy for My Shirt"), as I have been otherwise occupied the last couple of days and have not had the time to blog. I swear, if the hospital hadn't blocked its wi-fi connection from internet stealing interlopers like us, I would've been on the ball and you all would have had many more updates since that initial one. Unfortunately, that was not the case, and as a result, I will have to bear the rigors of writing an extensive and thorough blog entry, and you all will have to bear the rigors of reading it. To make that process a little less tedious for both of us, I am going to break it down into sections over the next couple of days so it is more conducive to being read in parts, as time permits. If the suspense is to much, you can at least view the event in picture form at my Flick'r site, where I've uploaded ten zillion pics taken by various contributors...

Alex's birthday

As mentioned in my last entry, the plan was to check into the hospital Tuesday morning to be induced. However, my little Alex was feeling ambitious and/or impatient and decided to expedite things a bit. After an entire sleepless night of irregular and annoying-but-not-excruciating contractions that I would have qualified as "false labor", I arrived at the hospital to find that I had dilated to over 2cm with 90% effacement overnight. This was encouraging news, so instead of administering Cervadil (sp?), Mari went straight for the good stuff and hooked me up with some Pitocin (sp?) to intensify my already "annoying" contractions. Fortunately, she also hooked me up with God's gift to laboring women - aka epidural - and my contractions went from intense to undetectable. I'm normally as straight and narrow as they come, but in this case - yay for drugs.

I became a little concerned when the nurse anesthetist had to call in reinforcements to show him how to work the pump that would continuously redose the medicine, but decided not to worry about it until it became an issue. Plus my mom, who is a certified hypnotherapist, had been working with me over the past few weeks on some relaxation techniques to cope with contractions and prepare me for the unpredictable nature of childbirth, so I was comforted in knowing I had a backup plan should any unforeseen issues arise. (BTW folks, this is a little literary device I like to call "foreshadowing".)

By this time, Team Alex had begun to infiltrate the hospital, taking over the waiting room and spreading team spirit to each visitor, staff member, and patient that happened to pass through. Many of the nurses that worked with us came in and commented on how lucky we were to have such fun and loving family members and friends, and how loved (and spoiled) Alex would be. We seconded those opinions.

I spent the next several hours making up for the previous night's lost sleep and catching up on some current events (courtesy of People, US Weekly, and Star magazines), while Timothy did some work and Mom waited on me hand and foot while telling my subconscious to "1-2-3 relax".

By this time, I noticed that the feeling in my legs had started to return, along with some increased pain sensations. The N.A. returned, still couldn't figure out the pump, and had to manually redose my epidural. The drugs kicked back in, and by about 2 o'clock, I had progressed to 5+ and Mari decided it was time to break my water and move things along. By 4:00, the drugs had kicked back out and I was not a happy camper. The nurse kept hitting the button, to no avail, but I was at 9cm and moving steadily along. By that point, I became completely convinced that my epidural drip was completely malfunctioning because...well...OUCH!! I decided that I was done messing around. I had hypnosis in my arsenal and it was time for this baby to come, drugs or not. Fortunately the added "pressure" seemed to be a motivating factor, so when I reached 10cm around 5:50, I said, "Let's do this". The nurse set up the equipment, retrieved Mari, and in about 20 minutes, I had pushed that little guy right out into the world...

To Be Continued...