I'm so glad it's over.

I don't know how many times I said that last Tuesday - so glad that my pregnancy is over and so glad that the labour is over! I don't have too many pics yet and, as you can see from the announcement above, we still don't have a middle name yet either. But, at any rate, he is home and I'm so glad.

I had been feeling strange for a few days and even thought my water broke the Thursday before, but I didn't really feel real contractions until they came very sporadically all Monday night. When I woke up on Tuesday morning, I still wasn't 100% sure that the baby was going to come out that day, so Jeff went off to work and I made pancakes for Callum and Max. I'm not sure what time I figured I better call my Mom, just in case, but by the time we packed up the kids and she dropped me off at the hospital at 9:30am, I made a call to Jeff saying, "If you don't want to miss this, you better get down here ASAP."

By 9:55am, my water broke in the hallway of the maternity clinic before they even got around to assessing me. A few minutes later, my contractions were up to 3 or 4 minutes apart and the doctor decided to pay attention to me. After several exams, I was informed that the baby was breech - he was on his way out bum-first. At this point, I was told that the standard practice for breech babies was to do a C-section but, considering the rapid development of this labour and my 2 previously successful vaginal deliveries, I was a good candidate for a vaginal breech delivery. As I was scared to death of delivering this baby backwards but I was even more unimpressed with the idea of a C-section, I told them I didn't want a C-section - then I was suddenly wheeled into a delivery room where more and more doctors and nurses started to get involved and everyone seemed eager to be part of my labour. It was very different than with Callum and Max, where it was mostly just a nurse with Jeff and I for most of the labour. Anyway, there were 11 people at one point, all standing around waiting for the pushing to begin.

With no epidural and the hardest pushing I have ever done, Simon came out at 11:35am. But he is calling me now, so I better publish this post and get going...