Happy Birth Day!

He came on the day we prayed he wouldn't.
Two days past his due date, and having rejected the ideal days to be born, he made his appearance, just a reminder that babies will come when they want (unless they're a c-section or induction.) Ellie's first preschool Christmas program was on a Thursday morning so I had gone from asking people to pray her baby brother would be born on a certain day to asking them to pray that he wouldn't come until Thursday afternoon at the earliest.
He didn't get the memo.
On Wednesday, December 14th, I woke up at 1:30am. Just because. You know how it goes - you're pregnant, you have to wake up and pee every couple hours. Typically I fall quickly asleep again but not this time. Then, at 3:00am, just as I was starting to drift off to sleep finally, I felt a contraction. Quite a bit stronger than the ones I had been feeling over the past couple weeks.
11 minutes later another one.
9 minutes later another.
"Tim," I said quietly.
"Hmmmm?" he muttered sleepily.
"I think we're having a baby today."
"Ok."
7 minutes later another.
Then another.
"I'm going to start getting everything together," I told him.
"Why don't you lay down and rest?" he asked. "We're not supposed to go in until they're 5 minutes apart for an hour."
"Yeah," I countered. "That rule doesn't apply to people on their fourth delivery, when the past two labors were only four hours long and who have to drive forty minutes in to the hospital and who are already dilated to four centimeters. I'm getting up."
He was so laid back it was driving me crazy.
I finished packing the suitcases and went on to wake the kids up since the contractions had started being 5 minutes apart and it was now 4:00am. I called our friends who had offered to watch the kids and told them to meet us at the hospital. I called my mom and set up plans with her that my dad would still go in to work, she would still wait at home for the fuel gas people to come fill their tank (they had not had heat for 4 days before that) and they would come to Grand Rapids that evening to see us and pick up the kids.
Tim, during this time, was deciding to get the kids a snack and was still quite laid back.
I was still yelling out contractions and suddenly Tim snapped into reality.
"Quick! They're four minutes apart! Get in the car! Get the kids in the car! Do you have everything?"
After loading up our very excited and very awake children and the suitcases, we were off to GR. We pulled up to the hospital around 5:00am and he dropped me off at the ER entrance, then went to meet our friends and hand the kids off to them. I made my way in and was soon taken up to triage where they put me on the bed, declared me 6 cm dilated and strapped the monitors to me.
And that's when my labor started stalling.
I was moved up to a labor and delivery room and my contractions slowed to around 8 minutes apart and mild enough to not be bothersome. I started sleeping between them. My doctor broke my water and nothing progressed. I briefly walked the halls and bounced on the birthing ball with no success.
My doctor started Pitocin at 9:00am.
At 10:00 am I was still at a 6 with nothing happening. The nurse upped the Pitocin a bit and suggested I lay in a different position. Since I had felt his head down on the left side of my pelvic bone area for the end of the pregnancy, I decided to lay on my right side in hopes it would help him slide down.
And did it!
The contractions immediately started coming 2-3 minutes apart and after a couple, I called my nurse back in. She checked me and said I was at a 7. I called her back in a few minutes later and said I felt LOTS of pressure and that I felt like I had to go to the bathroom. She said that was good, that it was the baby moving down.
I told her she had better check me again. She seemed a little hesitant since she had just been in there to check but did it anyways.
I was 9 cm.
She called my doctor in and he checked me and said it was time to push.
After about 15-20 minutes of pushing - which I could have shortened because I knew I wasn't pushing the right way but I was stalling it then, I could remember the pain from pushing Caleb out, the "ring of fire" if you will, and just really, REALLY didn't want to feel it again - when my doctor said, "I can see his head. I see hair."
"Dark hair?" I asked.
"Dark hair."
"Lots of it?" I asked with hope.
"I see the top of a head with lots of dark hair," he confirmed.
And with that, my baby came out with the next push.
After 8 hours since my first contraction, with only 3 of those hours actually feeling like I was in labor and 5 hours being stalled, we welcomed our fourth baby - third son - into the world at 11:05am.
Ezekiel Nelson Ross
Ezekiel means "Strength of God" and we picked it because we were knew we were going to need God's strength to enter a season of life we never expected by having four children.
Nelson is my maiden name. My parents only had two girls and so it's a way for me to honor my dad and pass on his last name.
His nickname is Zeke.
He has been an added surprise into our journey and less than a month ago we welcomed him with love.