Calvin's Birth Story

After an uneventful 40 weeks and 3 days I woke up due to a lot of pain at 5 in the morning of November 29, 2010. By 10 am my contractions were 5 minutes apart and lasted for about 1.5 minutes, so we called the hospital and were told to go to labor and delivery. I was brought into triage and they put me on monitors and checked my cervix. I was at only 1 cm so they had me walk around to get my labor going. An hour later they checked me again and nothing had changed, so they sent us home to relax. We went to Panera Bread on our way back home. I had a nice salad and Alex got a tuna sandwich. The contractions were still pretty painful, but irregular.
Later that afternoon we went to a huge shopping mall. I was hoping that walking around would help with the labor process. To catch my breath I had to stop walking every few minutes. I wonder what all the people around me were thinking :) We ended up buying something from H&M. On our way home we got something spicy to eat from Pei Wei.
By about 9 pm I was in so much pain that I could not handle it anymore, but my contractions were still not regular. I called the hospital anyway and off we went again. When they checked me I was at 3 cm. They finally let me stay and I got my epidural. I was a little bit afraid to get it, but it was really awesome and helped a lot. I might have slept through the night, had it not been for the blood pressure cuff that woke me up every 30 minutes or so...
At around 8 am the next day they checked me again and I was at 8 cm. Two hours later I started to push. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. After 3.5 hours I was about to ask for an assisted birth when Dr. K told me she would vacuum Calvin out. Calvin Jörn was born weighing in at 7 lbs 7 oz and 20 inches tall at 1:50 pm on November 30, 2010. He was perfect and we could not be happier.