Superman is here!!

Well hello everyone! We got home today around 1pm and we just crashed. Hopefully I can remember everything for you all.
Tuesday morning I went in for my NST at 11am and the OB said my blood pressure was too high. It was 144/102. I am normally a 108/86. So she said she wanted to induce TODAY. I asked if I had time to run back home to get my bag and she said she just wanted me to get started on the pitocin ASAP so I needed to get someone else to pick it up for me. So I went straight to the hospital with my sister and Aidan with me. I called DH and told him to leave work and go home and get the bag and a list of other stuff and get to the hospital. We also called our moms and MIL left KS as soon as I left her a message. She had had a bag packed in her car for weeks and was ready to come. She left there at 1215 on her way to IL.
I get in a little labor room and they hook me to the belts and after two attempts they get an IV going in one arm. The pitocin starts to drip at 1230pm. Shortly before that DH arrived at the hospital. My BP is still high thruout everything.They told me that around 5 or 6 the midwife or the OB would be in to break my water. So I laid around and waited for the contractions to start gaining strength. I was contracting good between 1 and 4pm. The contractions were every 2 minutes and I was still pretty comfortable. The IV fluid was going right thru me and I was up to pee every half hour and I thought my water was going to break on its own a few times. Between 4 and 5pm the contractions were really strong so I told them to call the epidural lady on up. They said I had to be at 4cm to get an epi and they would check when they break the water.The midwife comes in to talk to me at 5pm. She got me a shot of something in my IV to relax me and then she broke my water at 515pm. She checked me and I was only 4cm when she broke the water so the epidural lady can come in. Yay! The MW also attaches an internal contraction monitor and fetal heartrate monitor. I have cords taped to the inside of my legs now instead of around my belly.
Up to par with my last delivery, the pain gets stronger after my water breaks. So I am saying OW thru every contraction and trying to talk to the epi lady. A nurse checks me and thinks I am at 8cm so the epi lady cant give the nice epidural and instead I get some spinal shot that didnt do a bit of relief. Might as well have not had anything there.
Then my friend Carol gets there. Carol is a nurse/lactation consultant at the OB office who I started scrapbooking with and she agreed to be my adopted mom until my mom or MIL got into town. She arrived right before 6pm. I am laying on my left side and trying to breathe thru contractions and she is figuring out how to work my camera so she can take pics til MIL shows up.
Well I feel the need to push all of a sudden and the MW looks at me and says that if I feel it then do it. So I am being told to slow down my breath and blow out a candle and just keep breathing. I am laying on my left side and DH is kinda behind me holding up my right leg. I push and kinda yell at the same time and the MW tells me, "no noise, just push hun." She says it a few times and I get a little annoyed but try to comply.Well I push and push and scream and tear and then at 612pm, out pops Arik! I tore on top, a labial tear. I had watched a few pushes in a mirror and on the last one I pushed until I just let out a huge scream.
So I get Arik laid on top of me and rubbed down while DH cuts the cord and they start stitching me up and delivering the placenta. Arik then decides to pee on me so my gown gets ripped to the side and I am given what they call the mandatory Sacred Hour. As long as baby keeps good color and breathing then I get skin to skin contact for at least an hour after delivery, uninterrupted. Well we get a little over 2 hours which was fine with me. I loved it!MIL arrived at 630pm and was so disappointed that she just barely missed it. :(So Carol grabs my boob and Arik's head and helps us latch on real quick. He took to suckling so well. I was just so thrilled at how good he was so fast. Then Aidan and my sister come in the room and get to see Arik. I am kinda oblivious to what else is going on in the room cause I am still in a lot of pain and I have the baby right on top of me so I dont know what all anyone is doing. After 2+ hours of skin to skin I finally realize that I dont know how much he weighed and stuff and my sister who has been on the phone is giving me impatient looks cause she has NO information to tell anyone except that I did it without pain meds and what time he got here. LOL
So they bring in the scale and weigh and measure him and wipe him off and put a diaper on him and everyone else gets to hold him for a few minutes until I get him back to nurse again. They took the IV out of my arm and moved me to a private room then. So the rest of the night I just work on nursing and pain control and my blood pressure is still high.
It feels like every muscle around my lower back and butt has been stretched and pulled and bruised and I feel like my pelvis and tailbone are broken in a million pieces. They give me some perkoset and motrin. Still a far cry from an epidural. They started me on BP meds Wednesday night and today my BP is down to 130/98 so they said I could choose whether I stay in the hospital another night or go home on bedrest, so guess which I chose?
I dont get as good of pain meds since I came home, but I did get better sleep in my own bed this afternoon. I hadnt slept while in the hospital Tuesday night and barely got an hour nap all day Wednesday between all the visitors and baby stuff. My mom got there late Tuesday night (430am) with one of my sisters and hung out for a while. My dad and stepmom and stepgrandma and stepcousin visited Wednesday afternoon and they all headed back for KS before I even left the hospital. MIL headed back this afternoon after we got home.
What else? My sister Hannah is staying 2 more weeks to help out. I am on bedrest because of my BP for at least a week. Its quite thunderstormy here too. But other than that, we are glad to be home with our new bundle of sweetness. He is such a great baby. He has barely cried his big brother just loves him up. He is nursing so well. He looks like his daddy and he has the same chin as his big brother.
Arik Daniel
Born 7/11/06 at 6:12pm
Wt 6lbs 11oz and 18" long

Here's a link to some pics I have uploaded so far.
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v13/soccermom/Arik/