Campbell's birth story

I'm feeling rather nostalgic right now with Campbell's 2nd birthday coming up and wanted to share the upcoming events leading up to his birth.

Don't worry there will be NO talk of mucus plugs, placentas, or any other things that might make you want to second-guess eating before you read this post. {Whew!}

There was a lot of pressure building up to Campbell's arrival. My parents canceled their trip to a family reunion and my in-laws were on their way down from Kentucky "just in case" he came. I wasn't due until July 8th, so it was highly unlikely that he was coming this soon. What is the saying, "A watched pot never boils"?

I had contractions off and on for days, only for them to stop after 30-45 minutes. So when I started having contractions at 11:15 p.m. on June 27th, I didn't really think much of them. They were about 10 minutes apart. An hour later they were 8 minutes apart, and two hours later they were 5 minutes apart.

I think it's always so funny seeing men in the movies running around like crazy, driving to the hospital and leaving the wife behind at home. What was my husband doing, you ask? Let me re-enact it for you. It sounded something like this...."zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz huh? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz" And that was after I told him that my contractions were 5 minutes apart and going strong for 3 hours. 

I wasn't too sure if I was in labor or not because I never experienced contractions with Nolan because I was induced. I called my mom and the doctor and they both said it sounded like I was in labor. So we headed to the hospital at 4 a.m. Up to this point, I was only dilated to a 2 at my doctor's office. But when they checked me at 5:00 a.m, I was a 3 but my contractions were really starting to space out. So we started planning where we would eat breakfast on our way home.

At 7 a.m., the doctor said I was dilated to a 4 and said, "Looks like we're having a baby!". After all this wishing that he would come, and then panic started to set in. I was admitted and they broke my water by 9:00 a.m. They gave me my epidural at 10:00 and checked me again. I was a 5.  Things slowed down a little bit for the next hour so they gave me more Pitocin to get my contractions closer together. Well that seemed to work because I went from a 5 to a 9.5 in 30 minutes.

He was still up pretty high so they let gravity do its work, and sure enough within two minutes of sitting up, it was time to push. Five contractions and twenty minutes later, Campbell Allen McDonald made his appearance into this world at 3:15 p.m. weighing 8 lbs. 1 oz and 19 1/4 inches. It felt like I was looking at Nolan all over again. Both were exactly a week and half early, the exact same height and only 3 oz. difference on their weight.

And no, I don't have a steel trap memory to remember every detail like this, although my husband would argue that I do. Thank goodness for my pregnancy journal because I had all of this written there. I'm so thankful that I wrote it down because there's no way I would have remembered those details and it makes me realize that all those hours of blogging, journaling, scrapbooking will be loved by my boys someday.

Here is a video of the pictures that Justin took of me while I was pregnant with Campbell. It almost makes me want to have another one...almost.