From the very beginning of Jacob's sweet little life, he has come into a crazy, busy world of go, go, go! We found out we were expecting him just a few weeks before our long planned Disney trip over Christmas break. So, he got to enjoy his first trip to Disney from the comfort of the womb and I got to enjoy Disney 6 weeks pregnant. 😝
After that, we had two baseball seasons, an all star summer season, and oh yeah...we decided to move. The move was going to happen either before his arrival or after depending on how quickly we could get things set with Auburn. After lots of not knowing and plans up in the air, we finally figured out that we would move in September for Dan to start work in October. And this ended up being the most perfect plan, but I'll get to that later.
Let's get back to the day that Jacob entered this world.
I went in for my 39 week checkup with Dr. Fyke and all things looked to good but holding steady. We talked about plans for my 40 week appointment and the possibility of going past due date. We were on a pretty tight schedule with the move pending so I was a little stressed leaving the appointment knowing that it could be more than another week before we met our baby. But, at the same time I was also convicted in waiting until he or she was ready to make his or her debut(we still didn't know if we were having a boy or girl st this point.).
So I went home to a business as usual evening. Funnily enough I had 3 friends text me that evening asking how things were going and checking to see if there were any signs of impending baby arrival. I said "no" of course and joked about going two weeks late or having the moving truck here while I was still in the hospital.
We went to bed and I was having some very, very mild contractions that I attributed to the doctor appointment and drifted off to sleep around 10:30. Dan jokingly said to make sure I woke him when I was in labor because he had picked August 12th as his birthday guess and just knew he was going to be right. I chuckled and said "wishful thinking." Around 12:15, I woke up to some stronger contractions but again I wrote it off as nothing, and tried everything I could to get them to stop. I couldn't go back to sleep and they continued intensifying as I watched the wedding episode of The Office on Netflix. I decided to wake up Dan around 1:00 to see if he had any ideas. He started by saying "Again! You waited to wake me up again?!" Apparently I have a track record of this from my pregnancy with June. So we timed contractions and Dan became more and more sure that I was in true labor but I still had my doubts. 4th baby and I still couldn't tell when I was in labor...crazy! Dan finally convinced me to call my mom since she was our "plan" for our other kids. Mom got on the road between 2 and 2:30, which would put her in Starkville around 4:15 or so. Dan then started scheming who we could call to sit with the sleeping children until then, because we were going to the hospital. I said, "let's just wait a little while to see if mom can get here in time." He then went on to say he had no intentions of delivering our baby at home and called our wonderful neighbor, Kelli. I felt so bad for calling her at 2:30 in the morning but she was nothing but happy to help and hurried right over. We left for the hospital around 2:45 and I had 1 contraction in the carport, 1 in the 5 car ride to the hospital, and then 1 in the parking lot of the emergency room. I think it was at this point that I became convinced that I was in labor and wasn't going to be sent back home. We got checked in quickly and whisked up to l&d.
The sweet nurse who met us there asked "and what do we have going on tonight?" I looked at her and said "pretty sure I'm in labor." She checked and sure enough I was about 4-5 cm along and so we got all set up. Labor was progressing soooo quickly and was getting stronger by the minute. I texted my doctor on our way in, but I figured she wouldn't get it until the morning. But, lucky enough for us, she was on call so she would be headed our way soon anyway! Yay!! My water still had not broken and I had some really rough back labor going on. Dan was so encouraging and told me how tough I was but all the while I was wondering if it was too late for an epidural and deciding that I didn't want to do this while natural thing again. Ha! Dan in his nicest way said "I respect your decision no matter what you do, but I'm almost certain we've missed the epidural boat. We are about to have a baby!" The nurse came and checked me again and said I was about "8 or so" and she was going to check to make sure Dr. Fyke was already driving our way. Dan says that he could tell by the look on her face that I was probably more than 8 and she was getting a little worried that the doctor wasn't there yet.
Dr. Fyke walked in, asked if I wanted my water broken and I said yes because my back was hurting sooo bad. She broke my water and I immediately started to say that I needed to push because the baby was coming. Everyone was a little frantic trying to get everything ready for birth and the nurse was practically holding the baby in. On the next contraction, I had to push and out came baby's head into the nurse's hands. Dr. Fyke came over and delivered the rest of the baby and Dan proclaimed that he was a boy! Here he was at 4:19 am on August 12th! I was so shocked at all of it! How quickly labor had gone...that he was a boy...that it was over! He was a perfect 7 lb 2 oz and 19.25 inches long and looked just like every other one of our kids. We named him Jacob Todd and were immediately in love with our newest addition. He started nursing almost right away and was just absolutely perfect!
