Duke Anthony Felecos-- The Birth Story Part 1

Our sweet baby boy has been with us for 24 days! 24 amazing, life-changing, slightly weird days.  I say weird because I can't believe I'm a MOM.  It seems so surreal.  Something I have dreamed about becoming for more years than I care to admit and now it's here and I'm a mom and there's this sweet little boy looking up at me each and every day, instilling his faith in the fact that I'll take care of his every need.  And I will.  WE will.  I certainly can't leave out the hubs in this scenario.  Everyone says it but seriously I've fallen in love with him 10x over since seeing him embrace the daddy role.  I absolutely love it.

In honor of my sweet boy being 24 days old, I thought I'd go back in time to 10.24.2015 and share the story of how he entered the world before I forget all the details.  Duke was due on 10.23.2015 and throughout my entire pregnancy, I had mentally prepared myself to go late.  My sister was late and had to be induced with her two girls and we were all late for my mom.  I had a countdown to our due date regardless because the day itself is still significant, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't super worried that I would have to wait a million days after that day before Duke would make his arrival.  Thank God he proved me wrong.

I worked the full day on Friday 10/23 and then went to the mall for dinner and LOTS of walking with the hubs.  The whole week I'd been eating my weight in pineapple and eggplant parmesan because I'd read some old wives tales that these things may or may not help induce labor.  I even tried to get spicy Chinese food, despite the fact that I'm a big pansy, but it turned out not being spicy at all.  So we walked and walked until I thought my lower back was going to completely give out and we headed to Brookstone to sit in the massage chairs.  One of the women who was working came over to warn me that they have to advise "these chairs can induce labor!" and I said "Is there a special setting for that!? I'm due today."  After being sufficiently massaged from head to toe, we headed home.

There wasn't much on TV so we opted for episodes of Friends that never get old.  Rachel happened to be super pregnant in these episodes and the last one we watched before I fell asleep on the couch was her water breaking and her leaving for the hospital.  I went into bed around midnight and woke up at 1:30 a.m. with cramps and assumed I just had to pee really bad {par for the course at this stage of pregnancy}.  When I stood up I felt very wet and simultaneously thought "Holy crap I think my water broke..." quickly followed by "Oh no, I'm going into labor and I'm sooo tired."  #momoftheyear

I slowly made my way to the bathroom and yelled for Dennis who was super calm about everything until I quickly had a contraction and it HURT.  I got up to get my phone to call the hospital and no more than 4 minutes had passed before I had another contraction.  Dennis was packing up the last minute things for our hospital bag and getting in the shower and I told him he needed to hurry up because contractions were coming in quick!  My midwife advised us to come on in because it sounded like we were in fact in labor.

Throughout my entire pregnancy I had also been telling Dennis that we would have plenty of time before we would need to go to the hospital.  I wanted to labor at home as long as possible and not get sent home for going in to the hospital too early.  He had been telling me that he was going to get me to the hospital as quickly as he possibly could and likely break all the laws of driving.  Neither one of these things ended up being true.  We had a total of 36 minutes from water breaking to getting into the car and because it was 2 a.m. on Friday night/Saturday morning, Dennis was driving like an 85 year old man and barely hitting the speed limit.  As I was rushing my parents off the phone due to contractions coming in hot, I was begging him to drive faster because for the love of God we're having a baby and it hurts!

We slowly made our way up to Labor and Delivery, stopping every so often to breath through a contraction.  I loved the nurse we had initially- she was so positive and encouraging.  My contractions were coming in 2-3 minutes apart at this point so when she asked if I wanted an epidural I said ABSOLUTELY and she ordered it right away.  At 3 a.m. I was 3 centimeters dilated and 100% effaced and our nurse assured us that it looked like things were moving really quickly.  At this point I didn't want anyone touching me during contractions which made the whole process a lot harder on the hubs.  He just sat in front of me and stared, totally helpless as I breathed through each one and squeezed the crap out of my leg.  My legs started to feel really tingly and they told me it was because I was hyperventilating...hahaha here I thought I was breathing like a champ!  At 3:30 a.m. I was getting my epidural and letmetellyou it was worth the ridiculous pain of having to stay completely still while breathing through contractions as they stuck a giant needle in my back.  It took a little while to start feeling it but once I did, the relief was absolute perfection.

And because this is getting long-winded {even for me} I'm going to end Part 1 here...stay tuned for Part 2!  As a thank you for making it this far, here's a picture of the sweet babe this is all about:

-T-