So, here is the story: I was past my due date by a week, and everyone was getting really curious about when I was going to arrive. My mom started having contractions on Dec. 12th, but we all patiently waited at home until 10 a.m.on Dec. 13th. We had set up a date to induce labor at the hospital on Dec. 13, but when we arrived at the hospital and got mom hooked up on all the machines, we found out that we were well into labor already, and that we weren't going to be needing induction today. This information was very exciting for everyone involved, including the delivery nurse who thought that we were going to have a baby before her shift ended at 4 p.m. Ha!
Everything was proceeding very fast. We jumped from 4cm dialated to 7 cm dialated in 1.5 hours. Mom's pain was increasing, and we decided to start the epidural for her comfort. Mom was feeling great, and the contractions were still coming, but labor began to slow down, so we just kept waiting to be fully dialated and ready for delivery... and this is when our second delivery nurse arrived for the beginning of her shift.
At 7 p.m., Dr. Tu arrived, and everything was in place to start "pushing". We waited a little while for the medical staff to get prepared, and at 8 p.m., we began. We pushed, and pushed, and pushed, and we pushed more. Mom was working very hard, and things just seemed to take forever. Dad must have counted to 10 about 5,000 times as we tried to get me into my parents hands. It was as if every new hour that came, the medical staff would tell us that I would be arriving in just another hour... and that is when our third delivery nurse arived for the beginning of her shift.
Maybe it was the hour of the night, and maybe it was that we were ready to be done with labor, but the new nurse that came on shift was so very different than the two earlier nurses that we had come to enjoy. The earlier nurses had encouraged us along each step of the way, but the 10 p.m. regime had orders in hand from the minute she walked in the room.
At 11 p.m., Dad, Dr. and nurse all began to see signs of my hairy head, and that encouragement brought with it a sense of accomplishment. Mom knew that she was moving along, and that we just had a little farther to go. With each minute that ticked by, we began to understand that I was not going to be arriving on the 13th of December (although Uncle Jim, who was also born on Dec. 13th thought he had the due date pegged). But the beginning was in site.
With each new contraction brought twice as much hope, and just past midnight, Finnegan Laird Jensen was born at 12:40 a.m.
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