Dane Joshua Austin

My last post said 10 days left... when in fact, I went into labor that night. Now that I have a little time, I want to share the birth story and pictures of the cutest little boy. Our little miracle baby.

Dane Joshua Austin
Born October 7, 2010 at 4:09 a.m.
7 lbs 3.5 oz and 20 inches long

On Wednesday, Oct 6, I had a dr. appt. I went in at 3pm and the dr. checked and I was still the same as the week before: 1.5 cm dilated and 80% effaced. I was kind of bummed because I thought I would have made a little more progress, but hadn't. At the appt. the week before the dr. also stripped my membranes and of course nothing came of that. So, at this appt. he asked again if I wanted to have them stripped just to see if my body was ready. I said yes, might as well. He did that and then told me that he felt my bag of waters bulging and he wouldn't be surprised if my water broker naturally instead of having them do it at the hospital. I thought, ok fine, but didn't think anything of it, because nothing happened last time.

After the dr, I came home and made some dinner. Josh came home from work around 5:30 and we were just about to eat. I walked into the bathroom and all of a sudden I felt a huge gush of water. I go, "Ummmm, Josh... I think my water just broke" He comes in and I started freaking out realizing this was going to happen. We were both soooo excited! Unfortunately, there was no time to eat dinner, so we finished getting everything together and headed to the hospital. Here is the picture of us on our way out:

My water broke at 6:30 and we headed to the hospital at 7:30.  I was dilated to 3cm and was 100% effaced once we got there. The contractions really didn't start until after I got to the hospital. Around 8:00 they started getting quite painful. I knew I wanted an epidural, but decided to wait a little bit until the contractions were pretty hard until I got it. Mainly because I was scared of the needle, lol. Little did I know, it hardly hurt and from there on out was easy peasy.  Before the epidural:

I got the epidural around 9:45 and at that point I was 5cm and progressing pretty well. I was nervous the epidural would slow things down and I would need Pitocin, but luckily that wasn't the case and I never needed any.  By 2:45am I was fully dilated and ready to push. At that point it was just me, Josh and the nurse (who was amazing by the way). It was the most amazing experience and Josh was the best coach ever. After about an hour of pushing, they called the dr. and told me to stop pushing until he got there. In the middle of pushing:

Once the doctor got there, I pushed four times and Dane's head was out. Then the rest of his body just came right out and there he was, crying away! He had a little bit of a cone head, but was completely perfect and healthy. What an incredible experience to see our beautiful little son the first time. I did have a small episiotomy, so I had to get stitched up, but then we got to hold our sweet baby and we just had immediate love for him. Dane did have a small breathing issue for the first 30 min, just that he was breathing to fast, so we had to wait to feed him until his breathing slowed down. He didn't need any oxygen or anything, and he was fine within 30 min and hasn't had any issues since. He was also not a crier at all. He only cried when he first came out, but that's really it. Here are some more pictures on his first day of life:

Just about to go home. We had to supplement with formula a couple of days because he lost 9% of his birth weight before we left. He was 6 lbs 9 oz when we left. But we stopped that yesterday.

 Everything we came home with... lots of stuff

 Getting him all set up in his car seat and his first little outfit

 Grandma holding sweet baby Dane:

 He always holds his pacifier his is mouth... so darn cute.