July 19, 2015

I'm going to back up a couple weeks before the 19th of July.  On July 6th, Landon left for his 2 week AT (annual training) for the military.  With my due date being July 27, knowing Olivia came 10 days early, and knowing that Landon wouldn't get back until July 20, we knew we would be cutting it close.  His sergeant told him he would be able to leave if I went in to labor, but he was two hours away, and if he got a call that I was in labor, it still could be a couple of hours before he would be able to leave.  Therefore, I had a back up plan.  My best friend, Natalie, would be on standby to be in the delivery room with me if Landon couldn't be there, and Landon's parents or Anna would be able to take Olivia.  \

When Landon left, we both felt like he would be coming home early because of me, so every day when we went to bed, we would say, "Ok, maybe I'll see you tomorrow".  Unfortunately, this made him being gone feel really long.  

On Friday morning, the 17th, I went to breakfast for a friend's birthday.  While I was there, I got a text from Landon that said "I'm coming home.  I'll call you in a little while."  This was such a relief, and I was so excited to see him after 11 days of him being gone.  When he finally called me, he said his sergeant came and told him that if he felt like he needed to leave early, he needed to go that day or else he wouldn't be able to leave until everyone left on the 20th.  Landon jumped on that and said yes, he "needed" to go home.

Saturday, the 18th, I still wasn't feeling anything.  Yes, Braxton Hicks, but nothing that was real and nothing that lead me to believe that the real deal was even remotely close.  At my last appointment, I was dilated to a 2, but I had been dilated to a 2 for the last 2 weeks.  Therefore, I didn't have a bag packed for the hospital for myself OR Noah.  

We had agreed to go to a cookout that evening at Ben's business partner's house.  We knew Ben and Natalie, but we didn't know anyone else there.  Tami and Aaron wanted to hang out with Olivia that day, so it gave us a day to hang out alone since Landon had been gone for almost 2 weeks.  

At about 5 o'clock, when I was getting ready to dry my hair, I had my first contraction.  It didn't feel like Braxton Hicks, but I wasn't convinced yet.  I mentioned it to Landon, and then I continued to dry my hair.  5 minutes later, I felt another one.  I then told Landon to start his timer.  We began timing them for the next 30-45 minutes while we finished getting ready, and consistently, they were 5 minutes apart, lasting anywhere from 40 seconds to 1 minute.

This was starting to feel like the real deal, but I wasn't completely sure.  With Olivia, my water broke, so I knew I was in labor.  I didn't want to be the one who went to the hospital because of contractions and get sent home because it was "false labor".  So we just kept timing it.  We did decide we would go ahead and pack a bag just in case.  We loaded our bags up and headed to the cookout.  This whole time, I'm still timing contractions and they are still between 5-6 minutes apart and lasting anywhere from 30-60 seconds.

Landon told me to text him once we got there if I felt like we needed to leave.  I kept timing my contractions for the next hour and a half.  They were getting stronger and stronger and making me sick to my stomach.  Natalie asked me how I was feeling and if I was having any contractions.  We weren't going to tell anyone because we didn't want to make a big deal about it, but I told her "yes, a few."  When she asked how far apart they were and I replied with "about 5 minutes", her eyes got wide and she said "So you are in labor?!?!"  I told her not to say anything, but the way I was feeling, I knew we needed to leave soon.  I texted Landon, and we headed out early with the excuse that we needed to get our 2 year old to bed.

I was still terrified that I wasn't in "real" labor and would get sent home, so I kept trying to call the on call nurse to let her know what was going on.  I couldn't reach them so we decided to just head to the hospital.  Landon called his parents and asked if Liv could spend the night just in case we would be staying at the hospital.  We got there around 8:00.  They had me go to a room where a nurse and a doctor would check my status and then decide if I was going to stay to have a baby or if they needed to send me home.  I can not tell you the relief I felt when the doctor finally checked me at 8:45 and said "Yep, you are dilated to a 5.5 and completely effaced.  Let's go have a baby."

We got to our labor and delivery room around 10:00.  My nurses asked me if I wanted to go ahead and get an epidural.  I told them I would wait a little longer.  By 10:30, I decided that I would go ahead and get one just so that maybe we could rest a little better since it was going to be a long night.  My nurse predicted that he would be here by 3:00 am.  I got the epidural around 11, and felt some relief within the next 15 minutes.  The nurses turned down the lights, and Landon decided to go to sleep for a little while since nothing was happening and he was still tired from being gone the last 2 weeks.  Poor Landon, at one point I asked Landon to plug my phone in because it was about to die and once to turn the air down because I was hot.  Both times he replied with "sure" and rolled back over on his comfy little cot without doing either task.

At 11:30 I felt a pop and a gush.  My water had broken.  I called the nurse (yes, Landon was still asleep).  She came in and checked me and I was dilated to an 8.5.  Things were moving fast now and would move even faster now that my water had broken.  She came in again at 12:00 and I was completely dilated and ready to go.  They called the on call doctor and told her to head to the hospital.  Landon decided to finally get up when the nurse turned the lights on and had me do a practice push before the doctor got there and immediately told me to stop because we needed to wait for Dr. Walsh.  (Side note, the doctor on call was Dr. Walsh, who was my doctor with Olivia, but did not deliver Olivia because she was not on call.  Because of different reasons, I switched doctors with Noah, to Dr. Dooley.  So Dr. Walsh didn't deliver my baby when she was my doctor, but she did when she wasn't.  Also, I taught Dr. Walsh's son, so we talked about school in between pushes, ha!)

Dr. Walsh showed up around 12:30.  I pushed 3 times and Noah was here at 12:41 am, all 7 lbs 15 oz and 21 inches of him.  It was the first time I had fallen in love with a boy at first sight.  After we were both cleaned up, we were left alone for a couple of hours, just the three of us.  Seeing Landon with his son was such a special moment.  I was so thankful that Landon was able to come home a day early to be there with me through the whole labor.  We got to our actual room around 3:00 am and tried to get a little sleep that night.  We were both exhausted, but so thankful for our new sweet boy, Noah Cole.

Noah Cole

Being pregnant while raising a toddler is not for the weak.  We found out I was pregnant with our second baby at the end of October, when Olivia was almost a year and a half old, you know, the age in which a child starts to figure out how to test the limits, needs lots of attention, needs to stay busy constantly, and is so fun much because they are finally able to "play".  As you also know, the first few weeks of pregnancy is exhausting.  It never really made sense to me because the new baby was only the size of a sesame seed or a pea, but somehow that tiny little baby was sucking all the energy out of me, as well as making me need to pee way too often.  Between growing a tiny human and keeping a toddler alive, I was exhausted.

We had Thanksgiving with Landon's family a couple weeks after we found out and told them.  Landon texted both of them while we were in the room.  They were so excited.  We went to Friona a couple weeks later for Thanksgiving week, where we told my family.  We met my whole family and my sister's basketball game.  We went to her house after to eat pizza.  I had told my dad at the game and asked him when he prayed before we ate if he would thank God for the new baby.  It was a fun and special way to tell everyone.

The next couple of months were busy with Christmas and new years as well as our monthly appointments.  We decided to find out the gender at 16 weeks.  I was just certain it was a girl, probably because I could only imagine having a girl since I already had Olivia, but I just couldn't picture us with a boy.  However, 16 weeks is the earliest that our doctor said you can tell, but it was VERY obvious we were having a little boy.  We already had the first name picked out when we were pregnant with Olivia.  We would be naming our first son after Landon's grandpa, Noah.  Landon came up with the name Cole for the middle name, and it just stuck.  So the week of Valentines, we found out we were going to have a son.  We bought Valentine cookies for the grandparents that said "We love you!  Love, Olivia and Noah"

I had always heard that on your second pregnancy, you start showing a lot sooner, but I was shocked really at how much bigger I was so early on.  I had to tell my students earlier than I was planning after one day when they were all starring at my growing belly.  I could hear the whispers and the giggles, so I knew it was time.  The girls, obviously, were all so excited.

School came to a close, we had a baby shower, began and finished the nursery and Olivia's big girl room, and were ready to meet our boy.