Welcome, Little One!

Joshua Edmon Trautman

Born September 28, 2011, 4:36 am

9 pounds, 3 ounces

22 inches long

Funny that my last post was September 27 … I went to bed that night, and by the next morning, we had a baby!  And I thought since that baby is already two weeks old, I should update the blog with some pictures and the birth story … which, actually, is surprisingly short.

Back to Tuesday, September 27 - I was getting just slightly desperate to have this baby.  My mom's days with us were numbered, my emotional endurance was waning, and I dreaded the thought of another induction.  (Though my labor with Benjamin went very smoothly after the initial induction, my desire is always to let labor take the most natural course possible.)  So Tuesday we went to the zoo in the morning, ran errands in the afternoon, and I made dinner that night - staying as busy and active as possible.  One of the errands was to the natural foods section of our grocery store, where I procured both raspberry leaf tea and evening primrose oil capsules - old midwife-standby's for inducing labor.

After dinner, I took an evening primrose oil capsule and drank three … yes, three … cups of raspberry tea.  I went to bed hopeful, as always, but honestly not expecting much.

A few minutes before 3:00 am, I woke up to  a pretty strong contraction.  About ten minutes later, another came.  I knew they were strong, but I'd been having decent contractions for a couple of weeks that would be fairly regular for an hour or so and then stop.  I somehow sensed that these were different, but was still unsure of what was really going on.  

Problem was that after those first two contractions ten minutes apart, they jumped to three minutes apart, got even more intense, and then even closer together.  I couldn't tell time or really do anything except hang on for dear life!  Will woke Mom up and she finished packing my suitcase (I had well-laid plans of doing last minute prep between contractions, but that plan quickly bit the dust).  Labor was already so intense that I was having trouble communicating to Will exactly what was going on.   He was still asking me if I was sure I was ready to go the hospital, and all I knew was if we were going to go somewhere, it had better be now, because I wasn't going to be able to move for much longer.

On the way to hospital, I was still in the midst of an internal tug-of-war on how bad this really was.  On the one hand, it had only been an hour, surely I was jumping the gun a little bit.  On the other hand, I felt this deep-seated urgency to just get there, and get there fast.

Good thing we only live about five minutes from the hospital.  By the time we got there, I could barely walk.  The poor little security guard kept insisting I get in a wheelchair as I stood breathing through a contraction in the middle of the automatic doors.

(Insert here a lot of rushing, nurses yelling and running around .. it's all a blur to me.)

Then, four minutes after we arrived at the hospital, little Joshua was born!  We didn't even make it out of triage!

The whole story, even as I type it now, still seems a little surreal … did that really happen to me?  that's like something you read on one of those crazy blogs somewhere!

But we so very grateful to God for a safe, healthy baby boy (he's already gained almost a pound!); a safe, healthy mommy, and yes, even a quick labor … grateful that he wasn't born on the side of the road or in the hospital lobby!  :)

"The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad." Ps. 126:3

seems like an understatement :)