Welcome Benjamin

On June16th (one day late) Hubby and I welcomed our third baby into our lives. I'm still in shock and so deeply in love, my world is kinda foggy. I still can't believe that 1. we had another unplanned baby, and an Ike baby at that! 2. we are now officially outnumbered by kids and 3. I have another sweet baby to cuddle with and smother with kisses. I have no idea how I'm going to manage three kids at home by myself, but I have heard that it's been done before so I'm trying to keep faith.

I'm hoping that I'll get back to blogging soon, but it did take me almost three weeks to write this!

The story of Benjamin Hyer:

My "due date" (and I quote, because my grandmother says that babies are never early or late; they come when they're ready) was June 15th and to honest with you I was ready for him to come well before that! Well on Friday, I was really working myself up to have this baby on Monday. I know the due date is just a guess, but with Allie and Martin being born on their due date, I was certain that this little one would come on or before the 15th. Nope! Benjamin marches to the beat of his own drum. Either that or he's going to be that child that refuses to listen to his momma, but will do what I say just as soon as I no longer want or need him to. Anyways, Monday came and I woke up knowing he wasn't ready. I think I cried. Well I know I yelled at Hubby at least and I think there were tears involved. After I threw my little temper tantrum, we ran a few errands and ended the evening with a few walks around the neighborhood.

Later that evening, after the kids were in bed I started having good contractions. Well I had been having good ones for a few days, but I didn't get my hopes up and refused to start timing them until the were closer and more consistent. I played my Birthing Day track from Hypnobabies and really focused on getting my mind ready for labor. After trying hard to NOT time my contractions I crashed on the sofa around 1 am. Around 3am I woke up and decided that this was it!! I finished packing, took a shower and called the midwives. My contractions were about 5 min. apart, but not intense. Of course now that I think of it, I was using Hypnobabies so it was really hard to tell if they were "go to the hospital" intense or not. Theodora, the midwife, said to wait a few hours until they were closer together. I set my mind to wait until at least 5 am so it wouldn't be a ridiculous hour to call my mom. I think I was really playing into one of my ridiculous-oh-so-pregnant-irrational-fears. A few nights before I freaked out in the middle of the night about having to call my mom over in the middle of the night and not having clean sheets for her to sleep on. The next day I went out and bought an extra set of sheets and washed them, you know, just in case. Sooooo, I wanted to wait to call her at the break of dawn in the morning, leaving no need change the sheets. When 5am rolled around I decided we could wait until 7am when the kids woke up and then we could just take them to my mom's house. Around 6:30a.m. Dawn, the new midwife on call, called to see how I was doing. After updating her on my contractions, we agreed that I could come to the hospital when I felt ready, in the next few hours.



We dropped the kids off at my mom's. On the way, between packing them up and getting excited about FINALLY meeting our baby, I got distracted from my Hypnobabies. I started to really feel the intensity of my contractions and then I panicked a little. Once we were back in the car, I played my Deepening track and refocused. We arrived at the hospital around 8a.m. and decided to grab some breakfast, since I knew they wouldn't let me eat once I checked in. Thank god Martin knew his way around because I felt like a lab rat in that freakin' maze they call a hospital. Seriously people, why do they make it so hard to navigate when you've got a bunch of drugged sick people wandering around in the place?? Anyways, we grabbed some breakfast, but by the time I sat down to eat it, my contractions were about three minutes apart and coming on stronger and longer, so we boogied up to the maternity floor after calling Dawn and letting her know we were checking in.

It was about 9a.m. when we were settled in our room and Dawn check in on us. I was 6 cm and 90% effaced!!! After monitoring me for a few minutes and finishing up all the paperwork, I climbed into the shower. I was supposed to just use the shower since baby was still floating around and wasn't wanting to stay engaged in my pelvis. After a few minutes of standing, I decided that I didn't care too much for the shower and wanted to sit in the tub instead. Martin drew me a bath and all was right with the world. I labored in the tub for about an hour. Dawn came to check on me and I decided to get out of the tub. Back on the bed, Dawn checked me again and I was only 7 cm 100% effaced. I gave her the thumbs up to break my water since it was bulging anyways. Then, things moved a little faster. I grabbed my Ipod again and really focused on relaxing and getting this baby to move down. At one point I opened my eyes, the room was dark and Martin and Dawn were just staring at me. Weird. I later found out that Dawn was watching my breathing to see how my contractions were progressing. I don't know what Martin was watching.

Dawn checked me again and I was 9 1/2 cm 100% effaced. I told her I was going to push anyways. She gave me the go ahead, which really didn't matter, because my body was already pushing. I think I pushed for about 45minutes. I could tell this little one was going to be bigger, because he was harder to get down than my last baby. Anyways, I'll save all the gory stuff for the first-time-moms-to-be that I run into.

At 12:03pm, my third little blessing was placed on my chest and Martin and I wept, that happy, uncontrollable, body heaving cry of happiness. We were so excited to finally have our baby that Martin forgot to see what we had. Dawn had to remind us to look and when Martin did, we were shocked! It's a BOY?!?! Benjamin was 7 pounds 13ounces and 22.5inches and the most mellow baby out of my three. He's perfect!