CAEDEN'S BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I will now continue my labor & delivery story from yesterday!  On this day last year, they started giving me Pitocin at 6:00am...contractions definitely got worse!  They were awful!  I remember rolling side-to-side in bed, crying tears, and moaning...forget the breathing!!  I was in too much pain!  At 7:30am they took me off the Pitocin because they said I was progressing fine without it.

I immediately requested an epidural and was feeling great by 8:30am!!  I decided that the epidural was the greatest invention ever!!  At first it didn't work on my left side but after about 20-30 min, it was working perfectly!  They told me I could push the little button to re-dose every 15 minutes, so you betcha I did!  I even had Reid set his stopwatch to go off every 15 minutes so I knew I could push it again!  HA!!  That's how bad the pain was - cannot describe it in words!

So the next several hours were spent in peace, visiting with family and sleeping.  At 11:30am the doctor came in to check me and said I was at 5.5 cm.  Thinking I still had awhile to go, I fell asleep and took a small nap.  They woke me up at 12:30pm (1 hour later) to check me again and I was at 10cm!!!  Crazy!!!  

I started pushing at 12:58pm, hoping that it would be a quick 20 minute thing.  Boy was I wrong!!  An hour and a half later, at 2:31pm, Caeden made his arrival!  When he decide to finally join us, he actually never crowned.  He came out so fast that the doctor didn't even have his scrubs on and the medical team was not in the room.  It was just the nurse, the doctor, and Reid.  So within 1 minute, a whole bunch of people were in the room tending to Caeden.  I was crying tears of relief that he was "finally here!"  Unfortunately, with my 3rd degree tears, I did not get to hold Caeden for 1.5 hours, while they stitched me up.  I then got to feed him and see the rest of my family..

Sigh....the rest was the beginning of something I could have never prepared myself for.  There have been some really hard days this past year...many spent in tears, frustration, and confusion.  But there have also been some extremely rewarding days....the time he smiled at me for the first time in his bedroom when no one else was home, the first time he started reaching for a toy, when we finally got down the "breastfeeding" thing, the first time he reached his arms out to me when he wanted me, and the first time he gave me an open-mouthed kiss on the cheek!  I feel so blessed that God gave him to us and I only pray I can do the best job I can at being the right kind of mother for him!  I pray that God reaches his heart, regardless of how well I do.  And I pray that he will have a desire to love the Lord with all his heart and will love the world as Jesus does.  I love you Caeden!!  Happy 1st Birthday!!!