Logan Daniel Shelton...

Next week Logan will be a month old already and I haven't written down his birth story yet. So I'm going to get on that right now and I'll try to keep it somewhat short if I can. I'll just start out by saying that I was spoiled when I had Noah. SPOILED rotten. From my very first contraction to holding him in our arms was a whopping 5 hours...about 5:30 AM to 10:33 AM. This time around I was thinking "That wasn't bad at all! I could totally handle doing that again but natural this time!" So that was the plan. Plans don't always go as, well, planned do they? Logan was due October 22nd. I was dilated to a 1.5 and 50%+ effaced for over a month and originally my doc was sure he'd be coming a few weeks early. Boy did my body pull a fast one on all of us! But finally on Friday morning, October 21st, I started contracting a little before 8. One cute side note...Noah was in my bed with me and I sent him into the bathroom to tell Steve that I was contracting every 9 minutes. He ran in there and said "Daddy, mommy is connecting every 9 minutes!" :) I love that little dude! Anyway...Steve and I were positive that we'd have our new little baby sometime that day. The contractions weren't too bad and staying about 8 minutes apart so we decided to go out and walk around. We walked and wandered and walked and wandered the whole rest of the day. Nothing! Finally the contractions were getting harder and closer together so around 7 PM we went to the hospital. I got the terrible news that I was dreading...I was only a 2. Seriously!? We stayed an hour and they checked me again...still a 2. So we came home. I sort of slept off and on and then around 3 AM the contractions were much more intense and about 4-5 minutes apart. Back to the hospital...they check me...I'm a 4. Holy cow! That's it!? But they did let me stay this time. The hours went on and on and I continued to dilate very slowly. Sadly, if your baby is laying posterior (facing up) it can really slow dilating down because they can be pushing back pretty hard with their head and miss-aligning "things". Which was the case with us. We tried different positions in the bed, sitting on the toilet to help widen my hips and the tub but things continued to move pretty slow even though I was contracting 2-3 minutes apart and they were really intense. I was still trying to go natural but have you ever had a baby laying posterior? The back labor was INSANE! I was screaming in pain. I came to the point around 7 AM ish Saturday morning that I just couldn't handle the back labor anymore. I felt like a failure for making it so long and then having to beg for an epidural. But, I had been contracting for 12 hours and contracting REALLY hard since about 3 AM and I was so exhausted. I mean SO EXHAUSTED! I had been able to stay on top of the contractions for a long time, but I just couldn't do it anymore. I didn't get the epidural until around 8 I think. It was an intense experience unlike last time. They made me sit up and bend forward as far as I could and hold on to my ankles. I had 2 contractions while in this position and I thought I was going to die! That was literally the worst position to be in and have such intense back contractions. Thankfully Steve was right there in my face doing his best to keep me sane. After I got it and they were laying me back down they were going to break my water but it suddenly broke on it's own. That was a HUGE relief! I felt so good after that...for about a minute until the next contraction hit. But I was finally a 10 and I was able to start pushing!! They had to give me oxygen for the rest of the time because I was so far past exhaustion. The epidural was 1/2 way there or so, so I was still able to feel a lot of the pain. With each push the doctor was trying to get Logan to turn and after lots of pushing he finally did! So I pushed and pushed and pushed to try to get him out while he was in a better position. Right as he was about to come, he turned back to posterior and came out. He blew way past the small episiotomy the doc had given me...so STITCHES CITY for me and I'll leave it at that. :) After 40 minutes of pushing...he was here. Our sweet little baby boy had finally made it into our arms and lives at 9:16 AM October 22nd. Steve and I were able to share a wonderful and emotional few minutes together with our new creation, then we were ready to have him clean. :) I could not have made it through without Steve. He was right by my side every second of the way and so incredibly supportive. We have Noah to thank for his name. We told him several that we liked early on and he has been stuck on Logan ever since. He was going to be Logan James and Daniel was another name we had considered for his middle name. But shortly after birth Steve was holding him and staring at him and he looked up at me and told me that he was not Logan James...he was Logan Daniel. I was very happy with that. Daniel is my brother's name. :)
Recovery has been much slower and tougher on me this time. But we are so thankful to have Logan in our family! We love him so very much. Noah loves him too and is such a sweet big brother to him which we are so thankful for as well. Now that this is a mile long, let me make it even longer with some pics!