Breathe momma breathe

On Saturday, November 18th we woke up around 8am to start the day.  Our house had been filled with germs from Jackson having a cold and a GI bug the night before, and from a nasty bout of strep, and upper respiratory infection that I had.  I knew the baby could come any day and thought that today was the perfect day to scrub the house of germs while Derrick was home to keep Jackson occupied.  I ate my breakfast and started three loads of laundry and scrubbed the bathrooms, dusted the furniture and mopped the floors.

As I cleaned each bathroom I noticed the braxton hicks I thought I was having started to become a little more painful, more frequent and I thought "hey... I wonder if labor is starting".  After cleaning the house I tried to take a relaxing bubble bath, which turned not so relaxing as the contractions were only getting stronger, at this point they were every 5 minutes and lasting roughly a minute.  I wanted to get myself all showered and cleaned up and finish packing the suitcase.

I snapped this quick picture between contractions to do a comparison of the exact same gestation of my pregnancy with Jackson in 2014, I couldn't believe how far we had made it.

2014                                                                                                     2017

I thought we had a little bit of time considering I had been 2 cm and 60% effaced in the office two days prior, lots of time.... Around 2pm I was contracting every 4 minutes and lasting a minute and definitely strong.  We called my dad and had him come over to sit with a napping Jackson.  Around 2:45pm we arrived at the hospital checking in.  I was excited to see how far we had progressed praying the laboring at home did something.  When they checked I was 4cm and 100%, woohoo progress.  After labs and getting paperwork lined up I was able to get my epidural (praise the Lord and thank you to the awesome Dr. Rawlings for the great epidural).

Thankfully Dr. Friesen was on call for the day and happened to be there for another delivery so he stopped in and broke my water around 4:10pm.  They checked shortly there after and I was 6cm!  I called my sister and told her to make her way to the hospital to come see the birth and take pictures for us.

Around 5:50pm, I felt a lot of pressure and fullness and my wonderful labor nurse Terri checked and I was COMPLETE!  Time to get ready to push.  We did a few practice pushes around 6pm and at 6:15pm Dr. Friesen arrived.  After just 10 minutes of pushing my big beautiful baby boy Easton Gordon came into this world.  Love so much love.

Thank you to my sister McKenzie for taking some amazing pictures for us during the labor and delivery time.  I will spare everyone the really intimate pictures (haha) but I am so thankful to have those memories as the moments pass so quickly.