6 months

How quickly he went from this...

to this...

My youngest is 6 months old today. I was going to wait until he was a year old to share his birth story with you, but I'm finding that as time passes, the details slip away just a little. For that reason, I'm sharing it now.

As you know, Trevin was born four and a half weeks early. I half expected Tyson to arrive around the same time in my pregnancy. When the middle of January came and went with no baby, I had mixed emotions. I was DONE being pregnant, was done with nesting, and was so excited to meet our little one, but I also knew that the longer he waited to arrive, the better.

February 7th was Tyson's due date. When January 31st arrived, I was seriously done. I didn't think I'd have a February baby. Two weeks early had been my guess, but nonetheless, here I was, Sunday, January 31st, with no baby yet. I worried, at this rate, that he was going to come late...how silly of me.

The day started like any normal Sunday. We went to church, came home and had lunch. I joked with Bryce as he got ready for frisbee that he should make sure to check his phone between games, just in case something happened. Bryce was gone and back from frisbee and still, no contractions. But by about 5:00, things started to happen. I was having contractions, about every 15-20 minutes or so, still pretty irregular. No big deal, but they were painful. I don't remember them being painful like that with Trevin when they were still that far apart.

We were supposed to go bowling with our church small group that evening. Bryce and I debated back and forth if we should go. After all, it could be false labor. We finally decided to go, thinking that if it was indeed labor, it would probably speed things up a bit. Bad idea. Everytime I stood up to take my turn, I'd have a contraction. I'd usually suffer silently until it passed, bowl my turn, then go and sit down again. I didn't want to talk to anyone, I just felt icky. And I'd try to time my contractions, but they were not happening at any regular interval, just everytime I stood up from sitting. But they were definitely getting stronger.

By 8:45, we were on our way home. I was starting to have pretty regular contractions on the way home. By 9:15, they were 6 minutes apart, still manageable, but I was feeling lots of pressure. I called the hospital to let them know and see when I should come in. They told me to come in when I was ready, but that I should probably wait until my contractions were a little closer together. We called Bryce's dad and stepmom and let them know we'd need them to watch Trevin that night and would be calling again to let them know when to come over.

10:30 rolled around and my contractions never got much closer than 5 minutes apart, but I was ready to go to the hospital. I didn't want to leave Dave and Cindi hanging about when they needed to come and stay with Trevin, and with Trevin, once my contractions were this strong, his delivery came soon after. Since just about everyone had told me that the second baby comes faster, I didn't want to risk not getting to the hospital in time. So we called Dave and Cindi again, and they were over by 11:15. We hopped in the car and headed to the hospital.

Around midnight, we checked in to the birth center. They sent me to triage to be checked. At this point, my contractions were still 5 or 6 minutes apart and I half expected them to send me home. When the nurse checked, I was dialated to 7 cm! Based on my previous experience, my immediate thought was Good thing we came in now. This baby's going to be here in no time! Bryce even guessed that the baby would be here by 2:30 am.

So we were checked into our room, met my wonderful labor and delivery nurse, and waited. And waited. Contractions were still coming every 6 minutes, sometimes now every 8. They were getting a little more painful, but nothing unbearable. By 2:30, the midwife came in and checked my progress. 8 centimeters. Okay, so not much progress in two and a half hours. I was getting tired and frustrated. She broke my water, thinking that it might speed things up. Another 45 minutes went by, the midwife checked again. 9 centimeters. Okay, still 1 cm to go. Contractions were starting to come more frequently and were much more difficult to talk through. At about 3:30, I felt like I needed to push. I was so excited because I hadn't gotten to the awful point of throwing up or being in unbearable, unmanageable pain like I had with Trevin. Bryce was sleeping on the "couch" in our room and I just let him sleep. Why? I don't remember. Maybe I just knew that the pushing would be futile at that point in time.

So I pushed with every contraction...every 5 minutes. After doing that about 3 times, we decided that this was really going nowhere and I should maybe just change positions to see if it would speed things up a little. I layed on my left side. I layed on my right. After two hours of this, I was totally fed up. The midwife checked again. Still 9 centimeters. Sheesh. She decided to break my water one more time because it appeared that I had another bag of waters that hadn't broken. 15, or so, minutes went by and still no progress.

"I think we better give you some Pitocin, since your labor isn't progressing." This is so lame. Before she could give the Pitocin, I asked if I could get up to use the bathroom. As I got up, labor kicked in. This is it. This is what I remember with Trevin. Ow ow ow ow ow. All that horrible, awful, painful labor that I thought I got to skip...how silly I was. A few minutes later, around 6 am, I was at 10 cm and ready to push. Half hour, tops. That's what I expected.

6:30 came and went. 7:00 came and went. Still pushing. By 7:30, I was done. I could not do it anymore. Just cut him out of me. I don't have another push in me. But I guess you can't really give up like that. When I didn't think I had it in me anymore, I pushed again and at 7:43 am on February 1, 2010, Tyson Gregory entered this world and changed our lives forever.

We love you, our feisty little man! Happy 6 months!