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It’s so hard to believe that Mason is already a month old! I would be lying if I said it hasn’t been a tough adjustment but each day I feel a little better about juggling life with two.

I wanted to write this earlier when it was still fresh in mind but this is the first chance I have had to sit down at my computer and relive Mason’s arrival.

I’ll start out by saying it is no fun going past your due date. The waiting game plays with your mind and only made me more anxious each day! Logan was a few days past his due date so I thought I was mentally prepared for Mason to arrive later than his. His due date was April 25th and I thought he would be a few days late and make his big arrival on my birthday April 28th. That day passed and still no signs of Mason. When I had my cervix checked on my due date, I was only one centimeter dilated but no signs of labor. I had the inducing conversation with my doctor. While this wasn’t ideal, I knew how big Logan was and was worried Mason was only getting bigger by the day. Logan was 8 lbs 12 oz and I had a difficult recovery after his delivery. I was measuring smaller with Mason so I had my fingers crossed for a smaller baby this time!

We agreed to induce when I reached a week past my due date. The plan was to check into the hospital at 7am on that Tuesday morning. The weekend before, I was so confident I would go into labor. No, that did not happen. I did all I could to stay busy. Overall, I still felt good but decided on my due date to only continue with Pilates until the baby arrived. I did daily workouts on my exercise ball but really took it slow. You can see some clips of my workouts on my Instagram feed.  The pro about being late was I got to be a part of this photoshoot on Sunday with some other Seattle mamas!

We checked into the hospital at 7am and had to wait a little while since they were in the middle of a nurse shift change. By 8am, we were in our delivery room. I was anxious how my body would react to pitosin. At 9:30, they started me on the pitosin. Shortly after it was administered, I started having contractions. They were super irregular and not painful at all. Two hours in, the contractions were still fairly irregular and I was worried about my body’s response to the medication. The nurse assured me this was normal and I was right on track. By 12:30, the contractions were becoming more uncomfortable and regular. At 1:00, my doctor came in to check on me and broke my water. I was only a little over 3 cm dilated at this point. I knew things would happen fast now and I was determined to wait as long as possible to get my epidural. Looking back, I should have asked for the epidural a little sooner because the contractions escalated quickly. None of my contractions with Logan hurt this much. At 3:00, my epidural was administered and it took some time to kick in. A lot of the pain was in my back with these contractions. Once the epidural kicked in, I felt so much better! The next two hours with the epidural went by really fast and at little after 5:00pm, my nurse checked me and I was completed dilated and effaced! Things were really about to get real! My doctor was planning to come back at 5:30pm so we decided to let me rest before the pushing started. With Logan, I pushed for over two and half hours and wasn’t sure how much longer it would be. I was preparing myself for a few more hours…

At 5:20, my doctor arrived and we had a brief conversation about 5 being the lucky number for this birth. We joked about how this baby had to be born before 6. I started pushing at 5:30 and after just a few contractions, Mason was out! Such a different experience than our first! We immediately fell in love with this tiny human that came into the world at 5:35 in the 5th month in room 555!

Post delivery was much smoother and I only had a tiny tear that needed a little stitch. We ordered some food before the cafeteria closed and ate in the delivery room as they had to go through all the hospital procedures before transferring us to our postpartum room. We were in our postpartum room by 9pm and so exhausted! I was finally getting some feeling back in my legs and was able to get up and walk to the bathroom by myself finally! We stayed Tuesday night in the hospital and by the next morning, we were so ready to break out. My doctor came by around 10am and I got my release to leave. Now, we were just waiting on Mason’s doctor and Labcorp to come by. We ended up having to wait until 4pm for the lab technician to come by for some testing on Mason. We were a little annoyed because we didn’t get out of the hospital until around 6pm. I have never been so happy to get home and be a family of 4!

Thanks to PinkBlush for the cutest robe. I wore it nine months pregnant and living in it these days at home.