Welcome baby Jacob!

We welcomed baby Jacob into this world on Thursday, 7/2/09, at 7:18 p.m. He weighed 6 lb 3 oz and was 18" long. He was born three weeks early, but full term at 37 weeks. I met my goal of having a natural birth, but the pushing phase was the toughest because it was just over 3 hours! I had some medicine to bring down my blood pressure, magnesium, and it also slowed down contractions which is potentially what dragged out the pushing phase. But everything turned out great in the end. Jacob was crying at first, but he had his eyes wide open and was just looking at us for several hours after his birth.
We had lots of visits on Friday, and thank you to Uncle Moses and Aunt Gaby for taking this picture.

It all started on Thursday morning. I had my usual several restroom visits through the night, but I couldn't fall asleep again after 6 am due to discomfort on each side with very minor contractions. Just before 7 am, I ran back to the bathroom because I felt a gush of water coming and I was pretty sure my water had broken! I also am pretty sure I saw the mucus plug, which was about as gross as it sounds, but there was no mistaking what it was... So Manuel and I calmly got ready in the morning and prepared our stuff for the hospital (thank goodness we finished packing my bag on Tuesday night). I called the doctor when the office opened at 8:30 and we headed to the hospital to validate my water had broken. Sure enough, we were admitted and the contractions progressed. Around 1:30 p.m. my doctor checked me out and was shocked to see I was 9 cm dilated (of 10 cm) and the cervix was 100% effaced, so labor progressed quite quickly. My blood pressure was continuing to increase, so I had some medicine to help bring that down and it also slowed the final phase of labor. I started pushing at 4 p.m. and baby Jacob arrived at 7:18 p.m. I saw it all in the mirror, and let me tell you seeing the head come out was a crazy thing but it was such a relief because I was completely exhausted physically.