Baby Liam

OK, now I haven't taken ANY pictures yet. We seriously only have a couple shots that Nick took in the hospital. I promise I'll post some really cute ones soon!

Liam Hurley Sabey arrived on Friday, June 18 at 3:42 a.m., weighing 8 pounds 2 ounces. He is perfect in every way!

Just a warning...this is a birth story, so get out now if you don't want the gory details!

On Thursday at 5:00 p.m., just over a week before my due date, I was cleaning the bathtub (a chore I'd put off for weeks), and all of the bending and twisting was probably a good idea...my water broke! I rushed around packing my hospital bag (another task I'd been procrastinating) and we headed up to Memorial North. I was checked out at the triage center and it was determined that I was having contractions 5-6 minutes apart and was dilated to 3 cm.

Because my water had already broken, I was admitted and told that if things didn't start picking up after about 6 hours, I would need to be put on pitocin. Nick, Claire and I hung around the hospital for the next few hours, waiting for my family to arrive to take Claire home. I never sat down and just walked, walked, walked, trying to keep those contractions coming!

At 11:00 pm, I was only dilated to 4 and my contractions hadn't picked up at all. In went the dreaded IV and the contractions definitely increased in intensity (and pain) once the pitocin started. At this point, I lay down in bed and tried to get some rest between contractions.

The pain was getting worse as time went on. By around 1 a.m., I was only dilated to 5. I started getting VERY cold and my entire body was shaking. This made it impossible to rest between contractions and I was starting to feel overwhelmed. I moved to a birth ball and was wrapped in 4 warm blankets, which made me feel a million times better. The mood lightened a lot and Nick and I started goofing off -- I discovered that laughing through the contractions made them much more bearable!

Around 2:30 a.m., my contractions were spacing out again and they increased my dose of pitocin. The pain became nearly unbearable at this point, and I could hardly breathe through the contractions. My nurse was certain that I was in transition because the pain was so bad, but I was only at a 6!

At 3:00 a.m., I moved back to the bed and things started happening fast! Suddenly, I felt the urge to push very strongly and could hardly contain myself from doing so as the nurse checked again...in just about 15 minutes I was already dilated to 9, and the nurse said to go ahead and push! After 19 minutes of nonstop pushing - and lots of screaming - baby Liam was born. He was so beautiful!

Thank you to all my friends who encouraged me to attempt a natural birth. Although the pain was almost worse than I could have imagined, everything went much more quickly and the recovery is going better than I'd expected.

Welcome, Baby Liam! We love you!