Gavin's Birth Story

Now that I've shared Knox's birth story with you, it's time to document Gavin's! Since his is more recent, it may end up being a lot more detailed long. Bear with me. I wasn't as good at keeping up with his pregnancy as I was Knox's, so I guess this makes up for that? (you know, just trying to justify it for myself.)
At the end of my pregnancy, I was D O N E. I loved every single second of being pregnant with Knox. I didn't necessarily hate being pregnant this time around, but it was certainly not as easy. Chasing a two year old around while pregnant is, honestly, quite miserable less than enjoyable. When I started my weekly appointments at 36 weeks I was dilated to maaaaybe one centimeter (I think she was just trying to make me feel better) and about 50% effaced. Same at 37 weeks, same at 38 weeks. At my 38 week appointment we had this conversation:
Dr. M: What day will you be 39 weeks? Me: Next Wednesday. Dr. M (looking at computer): Hmmm...I could do next Wednesday. Want to schedule it?
Hallelujah, praise Jesus....I'm pretty sure the heavens opened up and the angels sang. YES I want to schedule it. And so, we did.
At that point, I really wanted Gavin to just hangout for one more week. I swore I didn't want to be induced this time around, but that all went out the window about 32 weeks. Especially with Jessica's wedding ten days after my due date. Being induced a week early gave me 17 days until her wedding, which was doable (if you know me well, you know I went back to work when Knox was two weeks old. I'm not much of a homebody.). This time around we also had Knox to think about, and going into labor in the middle of the night was less than ideal. I get really tired of hearing people say "babies aren't meant to be born at your convenience. You should really let them come on their own." Yes, well in a perfect world that would be great. But in MY world, a scheduled induction was perfect because we didn't have to freak our toddler out in the middle of the night. 
And so, he did. My children are happy to stay in my belly as long as they possibly can. It's warm in there. According to my mom Gavin was "happy in his cozy cabin." You're so clever, Mom.
We were scheduled to be at the hospital at some ridiculously early hour before the sun was even up 6am. I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep a wink the night before and I'm pretty sure Clayton didn't either. Knox's Auntie Jess stayed the night with us so that we wouldn't have to wake him up early and he wouldn't even know anything was amiss when he woke up. I went in to kiss him before we left and of course, I cried (I cried pretty much every night when I put him to bed after we scheduled my induction. Hormones are no joke.) He had such a fun day with Jessica and she was able to kind of prepare him for his brothers arrival!

We got to the hospital, filled out all of the paperwork (because I forgot to pre-register this time. Oops.) and got into our room. We had this massively huge room with a bathtub, which Clayton immediately started making rude, crude and socially unacceptable jokes about. I'll leave those to your imagination. I, once again, got into my lovely hospital gown and crawled into bed.
The nurse that came in to do my IV...well, I'm pretty sure she was trying to kill me. I hate having an IV in the top of my hand anyway, and this one was terrible. She apparently got it right next to a valve. Which means nothing to me, except that I thought I was dying. Okay maybe not dying, but I was sure I was going to pass out while she was drawing blood, which by the way, took like fifteen hours. Or at least it felt like it. Once she got that in, the very best labor and delivery nurse there ever was (whose schedule I may or may not have planned my induction around) came in. We talked game plan, started pitocin and waited for the doctor to get there. 
Dr. M came by first thing and went ahead and broke my water to get things going. My nurse was shooting for one centimeter an hour and the plan was to have a baby before 5pm. Remember that time when I told you my babies are happy to stay in my belly?
The morning was pretty uneventful. My parents came that morning and the plan was for my mom to stay the day and to be in the room with us again. Clayton's philosophy was that everything went great with Knox, so why would we do it any differently this time?
This time around my doctor told me I could get my epidural just as soon as I wanted it. I am no hero, so I got that bad boy around 10am just as soon as I started to feel my contractions. 
A couple of hours later the nurse came in to check me and laid my bed flat. I don't really remember what happened, but all of a sudden I was super light headed and felt like I could fall asleep in an instant. I vaguely remember hearing monitors beeping and Clayton and my mom freaking out a little bit. I remember another nurse coming in and asking my nurse, "is that her heart rate or the babies?" It was Gavin's and it had dropped drastically. I have these stubborn kids. Once I was sitting back up and on oxygen everything started evening out and I was fine. I think it was scarier for everyone else than it was for me because I really had no clue what was going on! After that I just wanted to nap, so I did for a bit.
A little later I could tell my epidural was wearing off on one side because I could freely move and lift one of my legs. The nurse called to have it re-dosed and the guy that came to do it wasn't messing around. I felt like each of my legs was the size of an elephant and as heavy as two! My progression was slooooow, but that was fine because I was comfortable and just hanging out. Every time someone came to check me I'd think surely I had made at least a centimeter or two of progress, but no such luck. A little before 5 my epidural was wearing off again, so we had it re-dosed before all of the anesthesiologists left for the day.
Best nurse ever left at 7pm at the end of her shift and I was still just hanging out around a 5-6.
A couple hours after she left, I once again felt my epidural wearing off and my contractions were BAD. My nurse wasn't taking me very seriously, and come to find out, they didn't think they were getting a very good read on my contraction monitor. I had been comfortable all day and at this point I was absolutely miserable. I asked her to please call someone to come re-dose it and instead she decided to try to move me into different positions to see if we could get it working again. I finally made my mom go tell her that if someone didn't come fix it, it was not going to be a good night (I'm certain those were the EXACT words I used. I would have never ever threatened to punch someone in the face)! 
My contractions continued to get worse and I was starting to feel a little bit of pressure and all I could think was "sweet baby Jesus if the anesthesiologist gets here too late and I have to feel this baby coming out, I may never recover." Thankfully, that's about the time he showed up. We got it re-dosed, and right about the time it kicked in, I told my mom and Clayton that I felt like it was time to push. My mom grabbed the nurse and sure enough, it was pretty close to time. She had my push a few times just laying in the bed to kind of check and see how we were doing. She told me that he was crowning, and so it shouldn't take very long to get him out.
She got all of the carts in and everything ready to go and then called the doctor. She had me start pushing, and I felt like he was going to come any second. I told her that if she didn't want a baby born before the doctor got there that we needed to wait, so she told me to start breathing through my contractions instead of pushing. Oh man, talk about torture. All I wanted to do was push!  Dr. M got there pretty quickly and started getting her gown and glasses on. She could see the misery on my face and said "I'm here! Push if you feel like you need to!" And so I did. One time. And out popped my sweet baby boy at 10:33pm! She was caught so off guard and wasn't even totally dressed yet! We all started laughing and couldn't get over the fact that he just kind of shot right now (sorry for that visual image).
I was so thankful to have not been on Stadol this time around. While I remember Knox's birth, I was so much more aware of what was going on with Gavin's birth. I was able to see Gavin as soon as he was born and I remember EVERYTHING. His lungs were clear enough that he started crying immediately, so they brought him over for Clayton and I to see. 
I never worried too much about how I was going to love two children equally, but in that very instant I completely understood how it is possible. My heart was bursting with love for this tiny boy that I was meeting for the first time. And once again, our family was complete.
He was 8 pounds even and 20 inches long. Almost the exact same size as his big brother, and equally as perfect.

We finally got into our postpartum room around midnight, and I immediately sent Clayton for food. I hadn't had a single thing to eat since the night before, and I was starving. Pickings are slim at midnight, so we settled for Jack in the Box. A hamburger and curly fries has never tasted so good!

They brought Gavin to us for just a little bit so I could feed him and love on him and then we took him back to the nursery so we could try to get some sleep.

The next morning, all I could think about was getting Knox up there to meet him. We decided to let him go on to school so that we didn't totally disrupt his day and Clayton would pick him up and bring him to the hospital. We had visitors throughout the day, so that helped to pass the time.

It was finally time for Clayton to get Knox and bring him to meet his brother and my heart literally felt like it was going to burst. I could not wait for Knox to get there! And instead of telling you how it went, I'll just let you see for yourself. These are unedited (because who has time for all that with two kids), so you get the whole three minutes of video!

This semi-sweetness also took place.

And then there were four. And our hearts were full.