Welcome Baby Christian!

Warning: This is going to be a very long post! Feel free to skip to the bottom and check out the pictures. I want to be able to write down the whole experience before I forget it! First of all, the fun stuff:

Christian Douglas Joyner was born March 8, 2011 at 6:30 p.m.. He was 8lbs 12 oz and 21.3 inches long. Jared and I are beyond excited to have him here with us finally!


Here Christian and I are on our first outing, the Friday after he was born, for his first doctor's appointment.

Alright, now here's the nitty-gritty for those of you who have been wondering! : ) My doctor decided to induce me on Monday, March 7th at 5:00 a.m.. It was definitely an early morning and I kept praying that I would go into labor naturally because I have heard that induction makes the contractions even worse! Unfortunately, that didn't happen so off we went to the hospital!
Here we are before we left!

Jared with his breakfast of champions...in other words a slim fast shake and a go girl!

Whoa nelly! Here is my last pregnant picture. I was 6 days overdue.

Alright, so we got to the hospital and they poked and prodded and hooked me up to all sorts of monitors. They checked me and I was only 1 cm dialated or so which basically means...I had a long way to go! Then they gave me the first dose of meso-something or other. Basically, it was a pill that they placed directly in my cervix to try and get it to soften to jump start labor. Unfortunately they were only able to give me one dose of that because my contractions started to get too close together and they had to start me on pitocin for safety reasons. They just couldn't get a handle on how much pitocin to give me though so it was constantly being adjusted because they would give me like 4mL and the contractions would slow down and so they would up it to 6 or 8 mL and then they contractions would get too close together so they would lower it again. On and on this went for the entire day. Basically I was having really uncomfortable, but not super duper painful, contractions for 17 hours or so. At 11:30, they turned off the pitocin and gave me an Ambien to sleep and told me that they would start the pitocin again at 5:00 the next morning. I was relieved to have a break and try to get some sleep because I knew that the next day would be a rough one.

Well, the Ambien wore off about 2 and half hours later (have I mentioned that my body just process medications like it's nothing and things NEVER last as long as they should or are as powerful as promised?? Yeah, that'll come into play later in the story too!). At 2:30 a.m., I started having contractions on my own. It was like my body had finally accepted that I wanted the baby OUT and was finally kicking it into gear. The contractions were painful, but still bearable. At 5:00, they decided to put me back on pitocin any way, just to help things along. Once again, they couldn't get a handle on how much pitocin to give me so they were constantly adjusting it. Just to put things in perspective though, they had me on anywhere between 4-8 mL of pitocin an hour and my body was basically doing the rest. There was a lady across the hall who was in the same boat as me (overdue, high blood pressure, being induced) and she was up to 16-18 mL of pitocin an hour...so her body wasn't helping at all!

Any way, around 7:30 a.m. I told Jared to go home and shower and try to take a nap because I was more stressed having him there, knowing that he was going to have to take his state board examination on Thursday with no sleep, than worried about not having him there with me. So he left and my mom came and sat with me for a while. She got there around 8:15 or so, I think, and by 8:45 I was having SERIOUS contractions. It was actually really nice having my mom there because she just kind of helped me focus and breathe through the pain and reassured me that I was doing a good job. I decided to try one of the IV pain medications to see if that would take the edge off the pain, and it did for about 2 hours or so. I called Jared around 11:15 and told him to come back because the pain was AWFUL and I just needed him there. They finally checked me again (they hadn't checked me since that initial time Monday morning) to see that I was at a 4! I was relieved that there was progress, but freaking out that it was hurting so badly and I still had 6 cm to go!

Now things start moving. Let me preface this by saying that I thought for sure I would be an absolute BEAST during labor. I figured it was the one time in my life where I would be completely justified in yelling and swearing and I was totally looking forward to it! To my surprise, I was practically silent. I was focused and in my own world. Jared sat in his little recliner and played his iPhone games and I just breathed through the contractions. I think I only had two crazy moments. At one point, he was just hovering and so I told him to just leave me alone so I could concentrate. Then, the pain was really bad and I said, "Why are you ignoring me!?" haha. All in all, not too rough on Mr. Jared though! Any way, the contractions finally got bad enough that I even put my headphones on and listened to music just to zone out...which actually helped! At 2:00 p.m., after 20+ hours of labor, I had had enough and asked for an epidural. I was never against an epidural, I just didn't want to plan on having one or get one if I didn't really need it.The epidural came and definitely took the edge off, but didn't give me the kind of relief that I was expecting. I could still move, use my legs, etc...and NO it wasn't supposed to be a walking epidural, but it definitely helped even if it wasn't as strong as I was expecting. Unfortunately, the epidural caused the baby's heart rate to just take a nose dive. That was freaky! Especially because no one was telling me what was going on until later. All of a sudden there were like 15 people in my room, they were wheeling in a gurney, they threw an oxygen mask on my face and put my bed down all the way and all sorts of crazy stuff. It took about 10 minutes for the baby's heart rate to get back to normal and I was SO GRATEFUL when it did. I was just kicking myself for getting an epidural and putting my son at risk. It was a terrible feeling.

After the scare, they checked me again and this was honestly maybe 45 minutes after they checked me when I was at a 4, and all of a sudden, I was at a 6! As they were feeling around, my water broke. Now THAT was a weird feeling. Any way, things started to progress really quickly. Around 4:00 p.m., they checked me again and I was at an 8. So within 2 hours I had gone from a 4 to an 8! I told Jared to call my parents and tell them we'd probably have a baby in like 5 hours. It ended up being even faster than that.

About an hour later, I was starting to have serious pain again. So within 3 hours of getting the epidural it was already wearing off. Awesome. They came back and topped off the epidural for me, and that helped, but I was still really uncomfortable. I had them check me again and I was at a 10! WOOHOO! But as they were feeling around they realized that the baby was face up. They had me try to lay on my side to get him to turn, but all of a sudden I knew that he was COMING and it was time to push. They didn't believe me though! : ) They kept saying that most women giving birth for the first time push for 3-4 hours. They called my doctor and told him that I was going to start pushing, just because it would make me feel better. He was all sorts of confused and said, "Well, I usually have them labor down for an hour before they start pushing", but the nurses assured him that I wanted to push. So I start pushing and all I kept hearing was, "Wow, you are a really good pusher". The nurses kept saying it over and over again. They even said that I was doing all the right things, even things they hadn't told me to do! haha, I guess I was made for giving birth after all! After about 15 minutes my doctor came in to check on me, but I really think it was because he couldn't figure out why I was pushing already. He stood there and watched me for a few minutes and all of a sudden he said, "Wow, you're a really good pusher" and started getting ready! He actually said later that if he were a fetus, he would want me pushing him out! hahahaha

Long story short, I ended up pushing for just over an hour. There was no screaming or crying, for which I was really proud of myself, just silence and sheer determination to get the kid out! My doctor actually told me after that he thought for sure he would have to have a c-section, so he was really surprised that I was able to deliver vaginally. Contractions were a beast, but the actual pushing, giving birth part, was seriously awesome. If I didn't have to be pregnant again I might actually consider having another kid ;)

Now onto the photos!

Our first picture together :)

His stats. Yes, he was still nameless at this point.

Being measured

Sooooo thirsty! Giving birth is hard work!

Grandma holding him the next morning.

His Aby holding him a few days later. Unfortunately she had bronchitis when he was born so she had to keep her distance for a bit :(

And these next shots are from a newborn photoshoot we had done when he was just 3 days old. Someone Jared knows needed some newborn shots for her portfolio so she agreed to do a free sitting for us! She did a wonderful job! :)

Being a mom is hard, but Jared and I are completely in love with this little boy already. What an incredible blessing being a parent is! I am so grateful to my Father in Heaven for trusting me with this perfect little spirit.