Labor story....

We have been home for 30 hrs already and Kaio is 3 1/2 days old! It has been such a wonderful and amazing couple of days. First I wanted to start with sharing our 'birth story':
After my water broke on Tuesday morning, I had a 2nd check up at the hospital (the first one was at 5:30am - at which the send us home. And the second one at 6pm) I had started getting mild and irregular contractions and they monitored the baby's heartbeat, since everything was normal and the contractions were still irregular they send us home again. When we got home the contractions started picking up and becoming more regular. We waited at home, I took a nice long bath (Jason and mom took a nap) and at around 11pm my contraction were at every 3 - 5 min lasting 45 - 60sec. I was ready to go to the hospital! Getting there at midnight, they checked my contractions and the baby heartbeat and decided to 'allow' us to stay (I wouldn't have gone home if they had told us to do so, since at this point, the contractions started to hurt!) They send us to a room with another woman in labor and I started using the different positions to help ease the pain. I used gas&air - which made me feel funny and I started to talk between my contractions again (I guess I was able to entertain Jason and mom since it makes you act a bit 'drunk'!) We then went to a big nice birthing pool where we stayed for another hour. I could not handle it anymore, the contractions were every 2 - 3 min and very painful. I begged for an epidural! Unfortunately I only was dilated 3 cm and the midwife wanted me to wait longer... I couldn't, I was not coping well with the pain. (even with all the great help from Jason and my mom! It was hard for them to see me in pain as well!) We were send to a delivery room and the anesthetist was called. It seemed to take forever for him to arrive and when he finally did and administered the epidural I was in heaven!!! (around 4am) I can not imagine delivering a baby without it! We were all able to take a nap in the room. At 7:30 the midwife checked how much I was dilated (since I had previously only dilated 2 cm in 4 hrs, I was afraid we still had some waiting to do) but to everyone's surprise, Kaio's head was coming through the cervix! At 8am the midwifes changed shift and two young midwifes were going to help from now. We got all "prepped" to start 'pushing'. I was not feeling anything so they monitored my contractions and explained how they would tell me when to push and how to do this. Right before we started they said they would have to call a Dr. to use a ventous or forceps after 1 1/2 hrs of unsuccessful pushing. I definitely did not want that, so after 3 pushes I was able to touch the tip of his head and after another couple he was out!!! They immediately put him on my chest. I can't describe how that felt!!! Kaio started crying immediately (he scored 9/10 on the Apgar test) and I was just overwhelmed with emotions and happiness. Jason saw the birth and was also speechless, he was able to cut Kaio's umbilical cord! Mom was happy to finally find out the gender of the baby and his name! Kaio latched on the breast immediately and was feeding 10 min after birth!!! After 30 min they took Kaio to have him weighed and measured up, it was then that I realized that the midwifes were panicking a bit and several Dr.'s had come in and out of the room and they all looked a bit worried. I looked down are there was a lot of blood (I thought at first it was the placenta, but I had not 'delivered' it yet) A Dr. came in and said I had no external tears but there were tears internally and she was going to stitch them. After 45min of stitching they were finished. I was starting to feel very light headed and tired... I was very pale and weak. I lost 2lts of blood! They send of my blood to check on the hemoglobin levels to see if I needed a transfusion. Luckily I was on the borderline and I was able to opt for not having a transfusion!
We spend that day in the delivery room under observation... It was great having Jason and my mom there and enjoying Kaio's first hours! He is absolutely perfect and beautiful. He is very well behaved and has a good set of lungs!!!! (which he knows how to use well!)
A correction - Kaio's birth weight was 3.49kg (not 3.44kg).