At least the blog has made it to 2019 so we can document Thomas joining our family.
Thomas
was scheduled to be induced on January 19th, a week before his due
date. I didn’t want another 9 lb baby and I also wanted to have his birthday on
a different day than Claire’s (January 24th). Teddy and I left the
kids home with Grandma and Grandpa to eat at Cava before going to the
induction. We showed up at the induction all ready to have a baby at 7 pm.
They started with Pitocin around 8 pm and then the waiting
game begun. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get the epidural or not, but I was
hoping that it would be as quick as most of my last pregnancies so I wouldn’t
need it. They said that I was only at 2 cm in the beginning, but I still had
hopes for a quick delivery. My body started contracting with the Pitocin and
slowly made it up to about 4 cm and then the contractions started becoming more
painful. My body wasn’t in active labor, but we were making progress.
By now it was the next day, January 20th. I had
hoped that he would have been born already!
They broke my water at 5 cm and we hoped that would
jumpstart my body into being serious about getting Thomas out. It did make my
contractions much stronger and my body got the idea. The contractions continued
to be really painful for an hour and then they checked me again. I was only at
6 cm. That was pretty depressing. We decided to wait one more hour to see if
things would take off. The next hour was really painful and I only progressed
another half a cm!! I decided to get the epidural and life was great after
that. We were waiting for another couple hours before I went up another one or
two centimeters. I was happy with my decision to get an epidural. The epidural
was the best I had ever had done. The guy was able to get the epidural in between
contractions which were only about 2 minutes apart.
Once we finally got up to around 10 cm, we were more than
ready to meet Thomas. I was thinking that he would also just pop out after a
couple pushes like the previous kids, but he had to be stubborn on that as
well. After pushing for about 20 minutes, we finally met Thomas! He was worth
the effort and the wait. He weighed in at 7 lbs 11.8 oz and was born at 2pm on
January 20th. I also didn’t have the issue of any bleeding
afterwards which I had with several of the last pregnancies. It was another
great delivery, but it just took a little longer than I would have liked. Ft.
Belvoir only keeps you there for a day, so we didn’t even have to try to
persuade them to let us go home early. Welcome to our family little Thomas
Russell Shillig!
We're so excited to bring him home to the rest of the family!
