Story

On December 27th, after celebrating my Dad’s birthday with my family, I went to bed like most other nights.  I had been having some contractions that day, but that was nothing too out of the ordinary.  I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions for months as my body got ready to birth our little boy.  I woke up at 2:30 A.M. with some stronger contractions. They weren’t painful at this point, just more intense than the ones I       had been having.  I started timing them on my phone and was getting excited that maybe this was the real         thing.  After about an hour of very rhythmic contractions, I woke Austin up and told him what was going on.   

I had been planning on laboring at home for a while before going into the hospital, so we killed some time and continued to time my contractions.  We decided to take down our Christmas tree so that we didn’t have that to do when we got home.  So around 4:30 that morning we took down our tree and cleaned up all our Christmas decorations.

We finally decided to go to the hospital around 7 that morning.  Having never done this before I had no idea how intense things were going to get and didn’t want to take any chances of this baby coming while we were still at home.  When we got to the hospital I was hoping to be at 3 or 4 centimeters because at my last doctors appointment I had been 1-2 and had been having contractions for about 5 hours at this point.  Unfortunately I was only at 1-2 still so they had me walk the halls to see if I progressed because they couldn’t admit me unless I made some changes.  Our hospital was very small and just had one small hallway in Labor and Delivery, so we starting walking up and down the hallway.  Thankfully after an hour I had progressed and they admitted us.  I was so excited; I was going to have a baby!! 

I spent the next few hours breathing through contractions and continuing to walk up and down our hallway.  The nurses all joked that they thought I was trying to walk the baby out, but the walking helped me progress.  I had been planning on trying to have the baby naturally and was trying to keep things moving along as much as I could.  After lunch my doctor came by to check on me and broke my water.  My contractions picked up some after this, but I wasn’t miserable yet.  It wasn’t until after dinner that things got really intense.  Once I got to transition (the last couple of centimeters, and the most intense part of labor), I was starting to doubt if I was going to be able to do this without pain medication.  I just tried to take one contraction at a time, and breathe through them.  Austin and my mom were in the room with me and they were awesome labor coaches.  They encouraged me, rubbed my back, and gave me lots of support.

Finally it was time to push.  I was so determined to meet this little boy that I pushed with everything I had.  At this point I was really feeling a lot of pressure, but I knew it was the end and that kept me going.  Sean Jacob Grigg was born at 7:09 P.M. I was so relieved that he was out.  I can’t even explain the joy and love I felt when I first saw him.  The doctor put him on me right after he was born while Austin cut the cord (I was so proud of him for doing this).  The nurse took him to clean him up on the other side of our room where I could still see him, and Austin got some great pictures.  It felt like it took forever to get him cleaned up, I couldn’t wait to hold him.  When they finally brought him over to me Austin and I were both overwhelmed with so much love for this little boy.   

I was so thankful that Sean came on the 28th right in between my birthday on the 29th and my dad’s birthday.  He has his own day in the middle of a very busy week.