Labor and Delivery of Parker

Parker Keaton Grisham
The past couple days have been a whirlwind and it feels very surreal. It has yet to sink in that Seth and I are parents though I have noticed that our conversations these days are more about poopy diapers and taking naps. I decided that while Parker is sleeping (he is a very good sleeper) I should get this up on the blog. Here is the recap of my labor and delivery:
One day after Parker’s due date on June 15tth I started having contractions at 5am… except I had no idea that they were contractions, I thought that Parker was just inside pushing on me and it caused a lot of pressure (side note to everyone who has told me what a contraction feels like, you need to be more descriptive!) Then I noticed that these feelings of pressure were coming pretty consistently so I woke Seth up and he started his contraction timer app on his phone that he was so excited to use. It turned out that I was feeling lots of pressure every five minutes and the feeling lasted for 38 to 45 seconds. I called the hospital and said that I thought I was having contractions but I wasn’t sure, they told me that it didn’t sound like I was and that I needed to take a warm bath and stay at home. So I did that and nothing changed so I called the hospital again around 8am and they told me that I could come in and get checked. Seth and I thought that I was just having some pains and we would be sent home for sure; we almost didn’t even grab my hospital bag but we were not prepared at all for actually staying when we got there.
As we were filling out paperwork in the ER another expecting mother came in behind us just screaming and going nuts and since I was just walking around and not screaming and not going nuts I started to feel really embarrassed for even coming in at all as I clearly was not as much in labor as this girl. They wheeled me up to the labor and delivery to be checked anyways and Seth and I were quite surprised to find out I was dilated to a 4-5. The nurse told us that we were definitely having a baby today and we couldn’t believe it. As it turns out the other expecting mother who was going nuts was in the next room over and I was much farther along than she was; apparently I have a much higher pain tolerance than I thought.
By this time it was 9am and we called the family to tell them what was going on and that there would be a new family member by the end of the day. My mother quickly left her work and Ashley left the daycare to come be with us. At 10:30am I got my epidural; I figured I was going to get one anyway so there was no point in waiting until I couldn’t stand the contractions to get it. We waited for a few hours for me to dilate to a 10 and passed the time by taking a nap, watching the World Cup, reading magazines and making predictions about what time Parker would come. A week earlier Seth and I took a video on my cell phone of us making predictions on the day he would be born and I was a few days off but Seth was pretty spot on; he predicted June 15th at 3:07pm. At the hospital we decided we were going to play “Price is Right” rules and you can be as close to the actual time without going over. Around 3pm I started feeling like I could push and soon I had the doctor and nurses swarming around me. There is no sense of privacy when you’re in labor, I lost count of how many people saw my forbidden zone. It took me about ten minutes to figure out how to really get a good push and another twenty three to actually push him out, total pushing time 33minutes. And he was born at 3:37pm, Seth was close on his guess. I think I had a pretty good labor and delivery, even if it had been hours and hours of hard labor, seeing and holding Parker for the first time was worth anything. He weighed 7.9lbs, much bigger than anyone predicted, 21in for length, 10 fingers, 10 toes, 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 arms and 2 legs. We couldn’t be happier parents.