Rowan - my little wolf

"He came naked, by night, alone and very hungry, yet he was not afraid!"
- Rudyard Kipling "The Jungle Book"

Saturday night at 5:30 I had a contraction.  I had another one at 5:49.  They stayed pretty light and about 9 minutes apart until about 7:30.  Then I had them every 3-5 minutes and it was all we could do to get to the hospital and into a room by about 9:10.  I was at a 4 when I arrived.  Within an hour I was an 8.  The contractions had no break between then for the last half hour before I received my epidural.  This labor was much more difficult than Little Birds until the epidural was placed.  With no break between contractions there was no time for me to rest or recover from the previous contraction.  The contractions were also much stronger. After I was an 8, my doctor showed up.  I was completely dialated a few minutes after I had been an 8.  That was around 10:30.

I had tested positive for GBS at a previous visit, which meant I was supposed to receive antibiotics 8 hours apart.  Considering that, they wanted to let me wait to push until the antibiotics had been in my system for at least 2 hours, so I laid there, feeling absolutely fine for about 45 minutes.

At 11:30, they were ready to let me push.  They set up the room for delivery.  I was really worried about pushing.  It took me 2 1/2 hours to get Little Bird out and I could feel myself pushing then.  With an epidural I was worried I wouldn't be able to do it well enough to get him out before he was stressed.

At about 11:40, they asked me to push once just to see how it looked like it was going to work.  It was 20 minutes until December 11th, my birthday - and I was sure Rowan would be sharing it with me.  But after 1 push, my husband looked at me and said "Honey...he's going to have his own birthday."  At 11:45, he was born.  He was beautiful, and giant and cried out as soon as he was free.  My mother was with me for this delivery and she was moved to tears.  Doc and I were so happy to finally meet him.

He came with a full moon, and an eclipse.  He came like thunder - fast and fierce.  His middle name, Elyas, is the name of a character in a book who is friendly with wolves - I think this child will not be so mild mannered as a tree.  I think Rowan my be my little wolf.