Oh what a day! Isaac Ryan Frederick's birth story:

I left you all hanging on Saturday morning at 2:30 am. I kept trying to convince myself that I wasn't really in labor. Oh but I was! The contractions kept getting closer and stronger. At 3:30, as I was on my hands and knees breathing through a contraction, I thought to myself, "I'm going to try to wait until 6:00 before I wake anyone up." About 10 minutes later, I realized that I definitely couldn't wait that long. I went to tell Ryan that I was in labor around 4 am and when he realized the closeness and intensity of the labor pains, he told me to go wake his mom up right now. I had also sent my mom a text message telling her I was in labor. She called a few minutes later and said, "This is your 3rd baby, you really need to go wake Karen up!" So I finally went down stairs and woke her up at 4:20, informing her that I was in labor and might need her to take me to the hospital.

We left for the hospital just after I had a contraction at 4:47 am. We got to the hospital around 5ish and had to enter through the emergency room. The lady sitting at the desk, was not in that big of a hurry and told me to sit down and they would have someone take me upstairs in a minute. At which point, I almost punched her. :) I really only sat down for a couple of minutes, long enough to have a contraction. Then we went upstairs to the maternity floor and the intake nurse wanted to be all chatty-Kathy, too. They asked all the general questions, some of which I just couldn't remember the answer to! Ha!

They finally got me to the observation room, and by this point, I was really, really uncomfortable during the contractions. But I was able to breathe through them and was really concentrating on relaxing my body in between each contraction. The nurse checked my cervix and said, "Whoa! I'm going to call the doctor!" I asked the other nurse how dilated I was and she told me I was 8 cm already! The first nurse comes back and tells nurse 2 that we are going to room 348 (totally making that number up!) because it was the closest. In my mind, I was thinking, "Holy cow, I'm about to have a baby!" I get to the first room and they couldn't get the computer to work, so they moved me next door. They got my iv going and the within just a few minutes the doctor came in. He checked me and broke my water and told me I was almost 10 cm.

Side note: I still can't believe my water never broke on its own!

He asked if I felt the urge to push yet and I told him no so he said he'd be back in a few minutes to check on me again. He came back after just a couple more contractions and told me that Isaac was getting a little unhappy and we might need to start pushing. I told him that I still didn't feel the urge to push, but he said push anyway. On the first push, I then felt the urge to push, but it hurt dangit and I didn't want to. They made me push anyway, because they are nice like that. :)

Three pushes later, little Isaac's head came out. One more push and I felt the shoulders pass and then the rest of his slippery little self slid on out! He was born at 6:01 am (good thing I didn't wait until 6 to wake anyone up!) weighing in at 8 lbs 15 oz. and was 20 3/4 inches. I gave birth with my mother-in-law holding one leg and a random nurse holding the other. As sad as I am that my husband wasn't there, I was very glad that my mother-in-law was. I never in a million years would have guessed that she would be my labor coach, but it worked out great! She was a champ and was so encouraging to me. When I was absolutely sure that I couldn't push, she assured me that I could. :) She also wiped away lots of sweat from my head and neck.

We are overcome with love for this little boy! We feel insanely blessed. Thank you Jesus for this precious baby boy! We give you praise for his health and safe delivery.

Our family of five!

I will add more pictures of our newest little turkey tomorrow when I get home.