December 25, 2011
What a beautiful Christmas morning! Today Austin and I were blessed with the most amazing gift from our Heavenly Father; a strong, healthy baby boy. Oliver Shark LeBaron born at 10:45 AM—weighing in at a whopping 9lbs 7oz and a tall 22 ½ inches long. He wasn't supposed to come today, but I am sure happy he did.
I went to see Dr. Judd on Tuesday (Dec. 20) and my cervix wasn't doing ANYTHING. I was very disappointed and frustrated because I wanted to meet my baby so badly. Austin and I kind of like to do our own thing, so when the doctor told us that there was only a 5% chance that this baby was coming out this month, we decided to drive to Colorado to see our nephew, Garrett, get blessed and to spend Christmas with our LeBaron family. No one in their right mind would get in a car at 39 weeks and drive 8 hours across Wyoming. That's nuts. But Dr. Judd sounded so confident and almost guaranteed that I wouldn't start labor until the first week in January so we went anyway. I-80 proved to be the only effective method of induction. All of those bumps and curves must have got something going in there.
About 3 or 4 hours into our trip I started feeling very mild contractions. So mild, I didn't really think anything of them and I didn't notice them very much. We got to Loveland in one piece at about 11:30 on Friday night, and besides my sore bum from sitting so long, I felt fine—until I went to bed. Every thing I had read about labor and contractions told me that I would definitely know when the contractions were the real thing because I wouldn't be able to walk and I wouldn't be able to breathe through them blah blah blah. Not true. It felt like bad gas. Every 10 minutes it felt like major gas pains, which have been a common part of this pregnancy anyway. I was up the entire night, it really wasn't very bad, just bad enough to keep me awake. I felt a tiny bit of tightening in my tummy with the gas pains but not enough to convince me it was a contraction. The next day, sisters-in-law, Jen, Emily, and Brittney all reassured me that they were just Braxton Hicks contractions and I would definitely know when it was the real thing. Saturday night came and the pains were getting closer together. Austin wanted me to time them but I thought it was a waste because they were still too mild to be labor contractions. By 1 in the morning on Sunday, they were 3-4 minutes apart and lasted for about 2 minutes each but STILL not convincing enough. It just didn't hurt bad enough! To pass time and try to distract me from the annoying aches and pains of pregnancy, I woke Austin up and asked if we could open our Christmas presents. He's so sweet, he said yes and got out of bed (2am) and came out to help me. Craig (father-in-law) came out to turn off lights and lock up before bed and we told him what we were doing, he woke up Cindy(mother-in-law), who also didn't think I was in real labor, and she suggested we go to the hospital just to see what was going on. She thought they could give me something to take the edge off the pain of these “braxton hicks contractions”.
I was feeling a slight sense of urgency at this point that Austin just did not share with me—surprise surprise. He wandered around looking for keys and shoes, brought me another present to open...basically not hurrying at all. He took his sweet time following all of the traffic laws on the way to the hospital even though the roads were completely empty. We got in to McKee Medical Center in Loveland, Colorado at about 3 o'clock on Christmas morning. I told them we were from out of town and a brief history of my pregnancy. They checked to see if my water had broken...it had. I don't know when or how I missed that. They checked my cervix...I was dilated to an 8. How the heck did that happen without me knowing?
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