A 10 year old and an 8 year old...

SO as if having a 10 year old wasn't enough....Alex turned 8 on Thanksgiving Day. I wondered when and if his birthday would ever fall on Thanksgiving - wonder no more!

Eight years ago, we had family visiting for Thanksgiving. The family did most of the thanksgiving dinner work - I couldn't stay on my feet very long (very swollen) and the contractions would really get going, telling me I needed to slow down. So I'd sit down, put up my edema-riddled feet and the contractions would stop. They were never very regular, but they were strong. Pretty strong for Braxton-Hicks, I thought, but they couldn't possibly be "real" - I wasn't due for another month. I was prepping myself for having a Christmas baby. The plant where we worked was in the middle of a maintenance/refueling outage during that time as well, so I worked that weekend a little for the outage. The following Monday, everyone was either back home or back at work (my mother in law was also working the outage at the time). I had to leave work early for a doctor's appointment - and since it was the last month of the pregnancy, the appointments would now be weekly. Hubby drove me the hour and a half to my OB/GYN; that was another peculiarity of this pregnancy - if I was driving a car for more than 30 minutes, I'd get some serious contractions, with alarming regulatiy. It wasn't as bad as a passenger, but still happened.

So we went in for the appointment. When my doctor did the examination she looked at me, startled, and asked "Are you in labor?" I was pretty sure I wasn't. She exclaimed that I was 6 cm dialated and 80% effaced. Holy cow! I guess those weren't Braxton-Hicks after all. "Woo-hoo," I thought, "I did that standing on my head. I am Iron Woman! I may not even need an epidural for this one." Yeah right, whatever. "I can't let you go home," our doctor informed us, "...you need to go straight to the hospital. We're having a baby tonight." WOW! That was unexpected. Guess I shouldn't have said "See you tomorrow" to my coworkers when I left...and then it hit me...omg, this baby will be a month early. I started to worry.

So off to the hospital we went. They hooked me up to all manner of monitor and what not - no big deal, I wasn't a rookie this time. My girlfriend Jenn, bless her heart, stayed at our house and took care of our then-two year old, Ryan, while all of this was going on. I was put on a pitocin drip to speed things along. But later that night, we found that I'd only dilated 2 more cm. "We'll have to do another c-section," my doctor informed us. I was devastated - terrified by my last experience (I got really sick). I thought for sure I'd be able to do this one the old fashioned way. Not so much.

But no matter...it wasn't long before our baby joined us...another boy!! My sweet baby Alexander...and my recovery was MUCH better this time...He's still my baby, too.