The Story of Baby Charlie

Some of you may be wondering how the labor and delivery went with baby Charlie. Did I make it to the hospital? I sure did! Here's what happened:

On Monday night I started to have some contractions - about 10 minutes apart. I had 3 of them and they were strong enough to make me groan a little bit, so I thought this might be it. The next one was 7 minutes later. I decided to wake up Craig. He got up and was casually calling our friend Taylor to come over and watch our kids so we could go to the hospital. At this point, I'm starting to panic a little because the contractions are starting to come faster and stronger. I told him we needed to go and we were going to Moreno Valley hospital, not Riverside - I wasn't sure I would make it all that way. While Craig was piddling around doing who knows what, I told him I would be waiting in the car. After taking his sweet time to get to the car, he opens the car door and whacks his head on it and gets a huge goose egg. Then, in the car, he starts complaining to me about how much it hurts and how big the goose egg is, etc. I told him I didn't care about his dang head and to just drive and get me to the hospital. I mean, really, comparing a little bump to labor?? Bad move Craig.

So the drive wasn't too bad. I actually got some breaks in between my contractions, so I was excited about that. I think Craig got me there in about 30 minutes. Impressive. So we pull up to the emergency entrance and I barely waited for the car to stop before I bolted out of the car and into the hospital. A security guard knew that I was in labor immediately and they checked me in super-fast and got me up to labor and delivery. The first thing I told them was that I wanted an epidural NOW. (A little backstory - I had been so sick for the previous 3 weeks that I could barely get out of bed. At this point I didn't want to feel anything.) So the nurses are slowly getting the IV's hooked up and the antibiotics going. I'm thinking, you people don't understand!! If I don't get the epidural NOW it will be too late!! So they check me and I'm between a 4 and 5. The contractions are coming superfast now and I started to freak out a little. Ok, so maybe a lot. It had been about 15 minutes and they checked me again - 8 cm!!! About 2 contractions later, I started to feel the urge to push, but they wouldn't let me because the doctor wasn't there. Lame. At this point I'm screaming bloody murder and the nurse is saying to me "calm down." I'm thinking "YOU calm down!! Why don't you trade me places!" So anyway, the doctor finally gets there and they have me start pushing. Here's the worst part: they have me lie flat on my back to push! What?? That makes no sense at all. I told them I needed to sit up and they wouldn't let me. I was thinking, "I've done this before. I know how to do it and pushing on my back is the wrong way!" So because of this, it was a lot harder to push him out than it should have been. Even so, my labor was about 2 hours from start to finish. At least Charlie gave me an extra 45 minutes to get to a hospital.

Because I was strep positive, I had to stay in the hospital an extra day, since I had only gotten about 30 minutes of antibiotics during labor. They needed to run some blood and urine cultures on Charlie to make sure he was ok, which he was. He's a strong little baby. He can already hold his head pretty steady and can roll to his side. Oh, and he was 7lbs 1 oz and 19 1/2 inches long. Welcome baby Charlie!