Dawson Elliot Jolly

He has arrived and he’s perfect! From my last update you know that I was scheduled to be induced on Monday 8/23/10 at 6am. Well, Dawson thought that was definitely a good day and decide to start the process on his own. I went to bed Sunday night excited that I was going to meet my little boy that next day. I took a Unisom at about 7:30pm thinking it would help me sleep and kick in early so I could hit the hay. Well, I was wrong. I didn’t go to bed until after 10:00 and had started feeling some contractions. I laid in bed wondering if these were more braxton hicks or the real thing. After falling asleep for 15-30 minutes at a time I finally woke up at 1:00am and thought “I better start timing these things”. So I laid in bed staring at the ceiling (which our clock projects the time onto the ceiling) and timing my contractions for the next hour. They were consistently 3-5 minutes apart for the next hour so I decided to get out of bed and do my hair and make-up. Yes, I got prettied up to head to the hospital in the middle of the night. It was better than laying in bed in pain. After an hour had gone by I called the on call doctor to let him know I had been having contractions for the last hour, 3-5 minutes apart and was scheduled to come in at 6am for an induction anyway. He let me know I was doing the best thing by going into labor on my own since they have been so busy my induction probably would have been pushed back and I would have been sent home. You can imagine how relieved I was to sit there in pain after hearing that. The doctor let me know to head on in and he’d let them know I was on my way. I then went to wake up Tod and told him it was time to go to the hospital. He replied “it’s only 2 o’clock”. I let him know I’d been up all night having contractions and we needed to go to the hospital. Tod got out of bed and headed to the bathroom to get ready. We then were all packed, ready to go and woke my mom up to have her head upstairs to our room so Cooper wasn’t left up there by himself. As we headed down Reed Mkt Rd on our way to the hospital we looked at the clock (2:45am) and realized it was the same road, same time in the middle of the night that it was when we headed to the hospital when my water broke and I was in labor with Cooper. Heading down 27th St there was road construction so we couldn’t go through the stop light on hwy 20 and had to take a nice detour out hwy 20 a ways to come back and take a different road to the hospital. Go figure! We arrived at the hospital around 3:00am and they were all ready for us. Off to room 151 we went, two doors down from the room Cooper was born in. Once the iv was in and they monitored Dawson’s heartbeat and contractions for a bit it was off to walk the halls we went. They were hoping that I would be able to labor on my own without the help of Pitocin. Tod and I did several laps around the labor and delivery ward until I couldn’t walk through my contractions any longer. My contractions were about 5 minutes apart and I was dilated to 3cm’s by the time I was back in the room and the nurses were happy with the progress I had made so into bed I went to labor the rest of the way. I was then checked about every 2 hours and went from 3 to 5cm’s before Dr. Davis arrived. She was happy to see I had beat her to the hospital and to my 6am induction. I was happy to see her so she could officially order my epidural. The anesthesiologist then arrived to give me my epidural and off to comfy comfy land I went. I was feeling good until about 7cm’s and the epidural wasn’t completely numbing all the pressure/pain anymore. We decided to stick it out since I was so close to getting to 10cm’s and were afraid if the anesthesiologist numbed me up again I’d be too numb when it was time to push. Next check I was 8cm’s and not loving all that I was feeling. The nurse had just left the room and told me I was handling the pain really well and if I couldn’t take it anymore to let her know and she’d get the anesthesiologist back in there. It wasn’t more than 5 seconds after she left the room that I felt a lot of pain and hit the nurse call button to have her come right back in. She walked in and I said “it hurts, it hurts, it hurts”. She had me turn onto my back and checked me, sure enough I was 10cm’s and it was time to push. At this time it was about 12:15pm and I started pushing. She called Dr. Davis to let her know I was 10cm’s so she could head over to my room. Once Dr. Davis walked in the room it was about 3 pushes and Dawson had arrived at 12:41pm weighing in at 7lb 8oz and 22 inches long. He came out with lots of dark hair, a good set of lungs and as perfect as can be. Immediately I could see the resemblance between his and my own baby pictures and the differences between him and his big brother Cooper. We are so blessed to have two beautiful boys and are now a happy family of four.