Birth Story And Picture Overload!

I know I always like to hear everyone else's birth story. So I thought I would share mine... disclaimer: May be some graphic details! So on July 10th I was headed to bed around 10, and I had a thought come into my head telling me the baby is coming soon. Through out my whole pregnancy I had a strong feeling he would come early, so I would often have these thoughts. So I went to bed not thinking a ton about it. Then at midnight I woke up for my first bathroom run of the night. When I went I noticed a lot more discharge. Right then I knew something was up, but when I stood up nothing gushed out of me so I thought I would just go back to bed. Then at 2 I woke up for my second bathroom run of the night, and this time there was even more discharge. So I woke up Mark and told him I wasn't sure if my water was breaking or not but something was up. Of course being the calm half asleep male he says to just go back to sleep. So I climbed back in bed wide awake knowing something was going on. So I tossed and turned for a while when all of a sudden a gush came out of me. It happened the same exact way with Grace and almost the exact same time, pretty crazy. Anyways, I stood up and the floods came! I ran over to Mark's side of the bed turned the light on and yelled, my water broke! Also the same exact way I told Mark my water broke with Grace. I'm not a calm person, so screaming seems to work best for me. So Mark jumps up and says let's head to the hospital! Then we both realized my mom wasn't scheduled to come for 2 more weeks and we had asked our neighbors if they would be on call for us if I went into labor before my mom arrived. But we both felt bad calling them at 2:30 in the morning to come over. So we thought we would just wait a few more hours at home until it was a more decent time to call them. Well, that didn't last long because as soon as I climbed back in bed more and more gushes would come out of me and I thought, this is ridiculous, I'm not going to sit in my bed in a pool of fluid, we're going to the hospital! So we called our neighbors to come over and watch Grace.
Once we got to the hospital they hooked me all up and and I was only at a 1 at this point. They didn't want to give me pitocin because they wanted to see how much I could progress on my own since I was having a vbac. Well, after several hours I was only at a 2. So they started the pitocin slowly. And I started to progress pretty fast, about 1 cm an hour. And my contractions were getting pretty strong so when I was at a 4 I got an epidural. I really didn't feel much after this point. I was just laying in bed trying to get some rest. But I was also really really nervous about the pushing because I already had a c-section and I had a higher chance of my uturues being ruptured. Which I know only happens to about 1% of women but I seem to always have all the rare stuff happen to me, I don't know why, but it's true! So I was pretty scared.
When I was finally at a 10 the nurse said I could start pushing. She also mentioned to me that your first vaginal delivery it's pretty common for a women to push from 1 to 3 hours. And I told her 3 hours was so long, and I would not be pushing for that long. Boy was I WRONG!!! I pushed my little heart out for almost 3 hours! I wanted to die. My epidural was waring off when I first started pushing to I pushed the little button to get more and I didn't feel any different so I pushed it again and again and I was not feeling numb at all at this point! I could feel every contraction, every push, I could completely feel my legs. I was not a happy camper, I kept telling Mark I could feel everything it was terrible because I was like that for a good 2 and a half hours. Then the anestioslogist came in and I told him I was feeling everything and so he put more medicine in directly to my iv. Then I was finally numb again! Which was a good thing because about 15 min later the doc had to cut me because I was ripping and Rocco was born right after that. Wow! Needless to say I was exhausted! I was pushing my hardest for 3 hours! Rocco was born at 6:30 p.m. on July 11th. The next day every muscle in my body ached even in my face! But it was all worth it once I saw little Rocco. =)
I'm glad I was able to do a vbac. It was a really tough decision for me to make. I kept going back and forth about it. But in the end I knew I would regret it If I at least didn't try having Rocco vaginally. The recovery has been tons better with a vaginal birth. I'm able to do a lot more on my own which I wasn't with a c-section. But it really doesn't matter how they get here, as long as they get here safely!
Rocco is such a calm, chill baby. (Except for at night =) I'm not getting much sleep at all. ) I'm hoping he will continue to stay like that. With Grace as a big sister he will have to be pretty easy going because she's already trying to play babies and princesses with him. Poor little guy doesn't know what he's in for! But Grace really has been a good big sister so far. My mom left on Friday so I'm officially on my own with 2 kids now. AHH!
But Mark and I are so blessed to have Grace and Rocco!