Happy Birthday Max!

So to continue the story from below...At around 1am the nurses kicked our parents out of our room so that we could get some rest. I don't know who they were kidding because we soon found out it is impossible to sleep in a hospital. Whenever I was close to drifting off, another nurse would come in to check on me. I was moving along pretty normally, about 1 cm an hour. I didn't sleep the whole night and neither did Mark. By 5:30am I was ready to start pushing. I couldn't feel a thing which was good and bad. Good because I wasn't in any pain, but bad because that makes pushing harder. After having me do a few "practice pushes", my doctor (who was the doctor on call and I had only met her 1 time before, not my normal doctor who was supposed to induce me 2 hours later) told me that the baby's heartrate went down whenever I pushed. She warned me that it probably meant the cord was around the baby's neck and that sometimes ends up in use of forceps, vacuum, or a c-section. I told her I really did not want a c-section. They gave me the oxygen mask and that helped, his heartrate didn't go down again after that. A little while later they turned off my epidural so that I could feel the contractions more. That was not fun so I made them turn it back on. The first hour of pushing was ok, once I hit the hour and a half mark, I was done. I did not think I could do it one more time. I remember telling Mark I couldn't do it anymore and he told me I could. So I'm leaving out a few details here because first of all its hard to remember exactly what happened and second of all I don't think anyone really wants to hear those details. All I know is that around 7:30 I had a cheering squad in my room. The shifts changed at 7:30 so I had the night time nurses from the night before and the daytime nurses who had just gotten there. There were literally 8 cheering nurses. Our poor parents were outside listening at the door. I was in a Labor, Delivery and Recovery room so it actually transformed from a regular room with just a bed, to basically what looked like an operating room in 5 seconds. The doctor flipped a switch and lights came down out of the ceiling (seriously), they pulled apart the bottom of the bed and my doctor was running around and putting a gown on and grabbing tools so I knew it was close. The doctor picked up the phone and said "please send pediatrics to room 4" I remember thinking oh my god pediatrics has to come because I am having a baby! Before I knew it he was out at 7:37am and without showing him to me the doctors rushed him over to assess him. To this day I still do not know why they didn't give him to me right way like they do on tv and they did for most of my friends who have had a baby. I think it was because the cord was around his neck so they had to make sure he was ok before they gave him to me. So while the doctor is rushing him over, Mark said "its a boy". We were both crying. I couldn't really see what was going on but I didn't hear Max crying. So I said "is he crying?" then right after I said that I heard his little whimper. He definitely didn't come out screaming. Everyone was kind of just walking around calmly so I knew everything was ok. I said to Mark is it "Max Jordan?" and he said yes. We hadn't decided on a definite name yet for a boy. All the nurses were saying hes beautiful and you did great but I just wanted to hold him. He was 7 lbs 13 ounces and had a ton of light brown hair. It took forever for them to finish doing whatever they were doing and finally I got to hold him about 10 minutes later. That feeling was just what everyone says it is....like nothing you have ever felt before or ever will feel again. So thats the story of what happened one year ago today, the best day of my life.

Max, you are the best thing that has ever happened to us. You will never know how much we love you (until you have a baby one day). We only want all the happiness in the world for you and we feel so lucky to get to be with you every day as you grow up. Happy birthday big boy!!