Adams Family Adventures: Welcome, Baby Thomas!

Well, now that we have a child, it's time for us to officially enter the blogosphere! Here's a quick recap of how Thomas Jay Adams came into the world on June 21, 2013:

After about a month of contractions coming and going (and a few false alarms that resulted in disappointing trips to the hospital), I was so ready to have this baby! Not only was I feeling HUGE and uncomfortable, but I was just so anxious to meet my little sweetie. When my due date came and went, we started to try all of the labor-inducing tricks we had heard of... hiking, warm baths, special cookie recipes, spicy food, walking barefoot in the sand... you name it- we tried it!

36 weeks pregnant in this picture-
you can imagine what 40 weeks 4 days looked like...

It was 3 days past my due date and I had been having contractions all day long, getting stronger and closer together. But, this had happened before and I had been sent home from the hospital with contractions 3-4 minutes apart because I wasn't dilating... so we had decided that this time we would keep waiting until the contractions really started to hurt. By around 11 pm that evening, the contractions had started to calm down, so I went to bed disappointed again... but then I woke up at 1:00 am on June 21 to my water breaking!

Our hospital bags had been packed and ready to go for weeks, so we headed straight to the hospital. Once I got to the hospital, they checked me and my cervix was still only dilated to 1 cm and I was not contracting very much. We decided to wait it out to see if my contractions started picking up naturally, but after about 5 hours, the doctor said it was time for Pitocin. The Pitocin helped get my contractions coming stronger, but since I had been contracting nonstop since the day before, my body was completely worn out and my blood pressure had started to drop. So, they lowered the dose of Pitocin and gave me oxygen and made me just rest for a bit. After a while, they put the dosage back up and things started moving along again. I got my epidural, finally dilated to 10 cm, and started to push! The baby was positioned head down, but with his body kind of turned to the side, so every time I pushed, I would feel him press into my spine (just above where the epidural started of course... so I could feel the pain cutting like a knife with each push). But, after just over an hour of pushing, and 22 hours in the hospital, our beautiful baby boy was born at 11:16 pm!