Julian was born on October 12, 2016 at 12:30 am. He was 7 lbs 3 oz and 19.5″.

He had been due on October 31st. I was induced at 37 weeks (October 10th) due to high blood pressure.

Tomorrow he’ll be one month old.

It was a hard pregnancy. Hard mentally and physically. I was in a lot of pain the last few months. I was depressed and anxious, despite medication.

We went to the hospital at 7:30 AM on October 10th. I was only 1 cm dilated. They started with cervidil. That didn’t have too much of an effect. I decided to try and get a few hours sleep off the monitors before they gave me cytotec around 3 am. Then the next morning they started Pitocin around 10 am.

The contractions never got extremely bad. I got an epidural when I was at 3 cm, around 5pm. They had broken my water around 3 pm, I think.

When I had Gabe, I was unable to move my legs at all or feel anything below my waist for 24 hours with the epidural. I never felt any pressure or desire to push.

This time, after awhile I was able to move my legs around after the epidural was placed. Around 10 pm I started to feel some pressure down there and by 11 the pressure had become intense. The mid-wife was in with another delivery, so they didn’t check me again until about midnight. His head was right there. They told me not to even sneeze because he could come out while they got ready. He was out in about 3 rounds of pushing, maybe 15 minutes. I had a small tear that just required one stitch. I did not hemorrhage afterwards this time. They gave me additional medication to avoid that.

We weren’t cleared to leave until Friday, since he was born on Wednesday. If he had been born an hour sooner, we could have left Thursday. Despite being early, he didn’t have to spend any time in the NICU or have any issues. They did detect a heart murmur, that we’re having an echocardiogram done Monday for. They said it was common and not really cause for concern. I have a heart murmur, although it wasn’t detected until I was an adult.

Surprisingly, Julian was born with dark hair. I was expecting another light-haired baby. We can’t tell yet what color his eyes will end up being.

The first three weeks were rough, although a little better than the first time. I’m slowly coming back to normal, although my blood pressure is still high.