Baby Rain is here...

...and his name is Colin Jacob! In old-style fashion, here are the stats:

Birthday: 4/18/09

Time: 5:16 a.m.

Weight: 6 lbs, 4 oz

Length: 20 inches

Hair: longish dark brown

Cute?: Oh yes.

Awesome?: You got it.

And apparently, the fast labors do run in the family (at least for this generation), because he was born in 5 hrs!

Quick little story about his birth:

As you know, I'd been having irregular contractions for days. On Friday, I had my midwife appointment. That night, I went to my co-worker/friend's house and hung out while she, and 3 other co-workers/friends scrapbooked and drank wine while I watched. I left there at 8:30, and went home to lay on the couch. I went to bed at 10:00ish and had a few contractions that were about 10 min apart. I did my best to get to sleep, not thinking anything of them. I awoke with a contraction at 12:20, opened my phone up to see the time, noted it, and moved on. Well, I ended up doing that quite often! Every 3-7 minutes the contractions kept coming. So after an hour, I called the hospital. The nurse suggested I wait a bit longer since this was our first one, and being at home is more comfortable. I told her no way, and I was coming in because of my GBS and because I was born quickly. Kev and I packed up really quickly (the bag was ready to go thank goodness!), and headed to the hospital. We got there at 2:00 am.

When I got checked, my cervix was at 5-6 cm! So then there was a rush to get the penicillin dripping to treat the GBS. Of course, it took 4 tries to get the IV in, but finally we got rollin' on that while I answered a bunch of questions and had contractions. They really weren't that painful. I'm not going to say they didn't hurt, but I never thought I couldn't get through them. 

Midwife came, and started running the water for the water birth. I got checked again and was at 8-9, so I got in the tub at around 4:00. The warm water made the contractions even more manageable. So I labored in there for awhile, and at 4:30 got out to go to the bathroom. After doing that, Midwife broke my water and we were happy to hear that it was clear. If there were meconium in it, we couldn't have had the water birth. I got back in the tub, and felt an urge to push. I pushed for about 30 minutes. Part of me felt like it went very slow, part of me felt like it went very fast. All I know is it hurt a lot, and between the nurse who was whispering sweet nothings in my ear and Midwife who was firmly telling me to push in this certain spot, Colin arrived.

Kevin did a great job of holding my hand and keeping cool washcloths on my forehead while I was in the hot water.

Would I do it again? Considering it would probably be less than 5 hrs, heck ya. I'd do a water birth again. But would I do it tomorrow? Hells no. Postpartum stuff is disgusting!

Colin is learning how to feed, and got circumsized this morning. He sleeps a lot. He's awesome.

We're going to leave the hospital tomorrow morning after breakfast sometime.

More later, including a picture :)