Happy Birthday, Baby Boy!

It isn't often that you can remember EXACTLY what you were doing a year ago today. A year ago last night I was whining to my husband. I just could NOT handle one more night of being a large, pregnant woman. My due date had come and gone 5 days before. I still showed no signs of progressing towards labor. Although I had never met anyone who was pregnant for 10 or more months, a dark, foreboding thought entered my mind: what if this baby never came and I was doomed to an eternity of heartbearn, hemorroids, and uh-hmm, hell? These thoughts swirled through my mind as I tossed around in bed. I downed about 10 or so TUMS (a nightly ritual) and finally fell asleep. At about 1:00 AM, I was awoken by a strong urge to pee. I jumped (as best as a pregnant person can) out of bed and ran to the bathroom. As I loitered back into bed, I took note of the time, and thought maybe I had eaten something bad because my stomach hurt. About 7 or 8 minutes later, I felt like I needed to pee again. I ran back to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet--no pee, but I did notice my stomach was very hard and felt ache-y. At this moment I hopefully asked myself if this could be a contraction? (the twins were taken via c-section and I never went into labor with them) "No,"--I dismissed the thought when I remembered my doctor laughing at me, "you'll KNOW when you have a contraction."

Again I headed back to bed and was sitting there pondering my situation, when all of a sudden I sat up and realized I had wet my pants! How embarrasing!-- wait, had my water broken? I ran to the bathroom for the third time in the last half hour, sat down, and was elated to discover that no, I had not wet my pants, but my water had broken. Hallelujah! My rejoicing quickly turned sour when I walked into the bedroom to tell D and was overcome with pain. I jumped into bed and winced as I woke him up. We called my mom (I am sure she was SOOO happy to get that call at 1:30 AM). She said she would get dressed and drive on up (she lives in Alpine, about 35 minutes away). We gathered up 'the bag' and then, the contractions really started coming every seven or eight minutes. I decided that we better go right away so we called mom and she said she was on the road--about 5 minutes from the house. We felt comfortable leaving the slumbering twins (at that point I didn't care, I just wanted to get to the hospital and HAVE THAT BABY, I've heard my fair share of 'babies born in the car on the way to the hospital' stories). It was gently snowing and we felt really strange driving on the deserted roads, in the dead of night, in the middle of SLC.

Well, the rest is history. After an 1 hour and 1/2 of pushing, Roger finally arrived at 11:57 A.M., weighing 7 lbs, 5 ounces. My favorite part of the experience was getting to hold Rogie just seconds after he was born. It was truly worth waiting for instead of going with the scheduled c-section (every hour after my due date passed I wondered if I was crazy for waiting instead going under the knife). I missed the bonding after the twins' arrival because they were wisked away to the nursery for observation and a bit of oxygen. I didn't actually get to hold them until about 2 or 3 hours after they were born!

My favorite part about newborn baby Roger was his hair. He was born with a full head of chestnut brown hair-- it never fell out, just turned blonde (he's had dozens of haircuts this year!) His full head of hair is STILL the thing that most strangers comment on.

I am so glad that Roger is a part of my life. He's brought us joy, fun, and lots of dirty diapers..