He's Here!

As our due date of July 11th had already passed, we were getting very impatient thinking that Baby J was not going to come on his own. We ate pineapple, went for long walks, had some spicy food- we tried it all.

I had been feeling somewhat crampy and uncomfortable on the evening of the 12th as we visited with the neighbors, but didn't think much of it. By Sunday morning, I was having pretty regular contractions that all seemed to be in my back and quite painful. We waited around a while before finally calling the doctor. The doctor advised us to wait until the contractions were about 5 minutes apart and then head in to the hospital. So at about 4:00 or so we headed to GBMC.  Unfortunately, even though I was having regular contractions (now about 3 minutes apart) they sent us home at about 9:00pm and told us to return if the contractions got more severe (weren't they severe enough?!!?) Apparently, even though I had contractions all day, I hadn't made enough progress to be admitted.

We headed home and hoped to get some sleep. The contractions continued throughout the night and I wasn't going to get any sleep. At about 4:00am, I couldn't take it anymore and we headed back to the hospital. Right as we got in the car, the skies opened up and we found ourselves driving in a terrible storm. (You know... the kind of storm you see in movies where you can't see two feet in front of you and scary things jump out from behind the trees?)  I kept suggesting we pull over, but Jamal didn't think that was a good idea, so we trudged on. We reached the hospital, along with several other women going into labor, thus we had to spend quite some time in the waiting room. This was not so fun, and it seemed as though I was the only one in pain. Everyone else was hanging around on their Ipads and thumbing through magazines. An hour or so later, after being bumped by a woman having twins, I was finally brought back and admitted. Thank goodness. 

I spent the day in labor and Jarrett arrived at 4:48pm. It was a very quick pushing session- almost too quick for the doctor to arrive in time! They actually asked me to stop pushing for a few minutes until he arrived.

We spent the next two days recovering the hospital and getting to know our precious little boy. Jarrett enjoyed visits from his grandparents, his Aunt Jaina, Crystal, Jeanine and Heidi.