Best laid plans

Oh my. It has been a while, hasn't it? I had all kinds of intentions for blogging--I even planned a follow-up to my "I Will Wait" blog from more than a year ago. Aaaannnnnndddddd it never happened. It might, still, but not today.

I'm currently 39 weeks and 1 day pregnant. Except I'm not. Nope, little baby Jonas had other plans. Two weeks ago exactly, at 37 weeks and 1 day, as I was getting out of bed to get ready for work, my water broke. When I called Ben to tell him, he wanted to make sure I hadn't actually peed my pants. Pretty sure peeing your pants doesn't happen involuntarily multiple times in succession. :p I called my boss to tell her I wouldn't be in and she asked how I was doing. I mentioned that I didn't really know how I was getting to the hospital since Ben was in Cinci, and she generously came and got me and drove me to the hospital.

I didn't start having contractions until Ben got there, close to an hour after my water had broken. They verified that it had, in fact, broken (apparently they wanted to make sure I hadn't peed my pants, too!) and then got me into a room. The first couple hours of contracting weren't bad...manageable at least. Time went by so very fast.

I was dilating ok and progressing as they would expect. But then the contractions got pretty painful. I opted to have some medication to help with the contractions, but it was still more than I felt I could handle. I tried getting in the bath (I had requested a room with a tub) and getting on the birthing ball, but neither offered enough relief to make it worth it. So, I chose to have an epidural after seven hours of contractions.

It made things quite a bit better. I dilated up to 8 1/2-9 inches quickly...as in, within 10 minutes. But then I stalled. For three hours I made no progress, the baby's heart rate dropped several times and they noticed that he hadn't descended into my pelvis. They were concerned that he wouldn't make it through my small pelvis and suggested considering a c-section. After talking it over with Ben, we decided that would be the best course of action and within a half hour, my son had joined us!

The last two weeks have been a wonderful and frazzling time. Jonas has grown more than half a pound from his birth weight and brings new experiences to our family every day.

Between issues with the cat jumping in the bassinet to honing our swaddling abilities to sorting our a night time schedule (which works most of the time), it has been an adventure. While our best laid plans haven't always gone the way we wanted, they haven't always gone awry, either. I'm ready to see where this little guy will take us and how we will grow together.

The journey isn't over now that he's here. It's just a new direction that we're headed in, and it is certain to change on us countless times over the next couple of decades as we continue on the journey. He is a precious addition to our lives and we are lucky to call ourselves his parents. Whatever our best laid plans may be through this journey, he is worth every bit of it.