JJ's birth story

Like most pregnant woman I was hoping you would come a little early.  I either wanted to have you and be home before James' birthday(the 4th) and Easter(5th) or wait and deliver after Easter.  Since you had an unexpected 10 days in the NICU I'm very thankful you came after Easter.  I felt great on Easter and went to church and to brunch at Gram and Dunn.  That night I didn't sleep very well and was up most of the night with random contractions.  It was exactly how Henry's labor had started so by 6am Monday morning I called Gia to tell her to get ready to come over.  Then everything stopped.  I called back at 7am and said that nothing was happening so she didn't need to come over yet.  Thankfully, your daddy had a golf tournament that morning and was able to get your brothers off to school and preschool so I was able to rest and sleep all day.  Around 4pm I felt contractions coming on again but nothing very strong or painful.  Mommy and Daddy decided Gia should come over and spend the night just in case we needed to leave for the hospital.  By the time she arrived around 8pm we decided we probably wouldn't be able to sleep much so we decided to go to the hospital just to check on my progress.  I really didn't feel like I was in labor yet something told me I should go to the hospital regardless.  I felt very silly because being my 4th time you would think I would know when I was in labor.  We got to the hospital around 9pm and I was 4cm.  The nurse said she would have to talk to the dr about admitting us.  She quickly came back and said we were there to stay.  At this point my contractions were still mild to medium and pretty inconsistent.  I was thrilled that we were going to be meeting you very soon!  I requested an epidural which I got around 11:15pm.  Then we had to wait a long 4 hours before meeting you.  Daddy and I were getting pretty sleepy, but we were too excited to nap.  The Dr came in a little before 3am and said we were ready to deliver.  You were my hardest baby to push out.  The dr said you kept moving which made it harder on Mommy.  After 20 minutes you were here.  We were so excited to finally meet you, see your sweet face and find out you were a boy!!!!  Mommy got to hold you right away and you had a strong cry.  You also had lots of reddish hair which was a big surprise!  We knew you had hair, but I would have guessed brown.   It was great to finally get to hold our sweet baby boy and we were instantly in love with you!