Due to my incredible lack of time I have been unable to write about Tatum's birth story. I'm not sure how much time I have now either so my details may be a bit lacking, that and it seems like years since I actually gave birth. Tomorrow is Tatum's 3 week birthday, though it seems like we have had her forever. I can hardly remember the days where she wasn't here with us. So here in the run down.
My little bug was having a hard time finding her way out into this crazy world, so the doctors decided that we were to be induced on the 28th of December. 8 days after her due date. When the time came around to head into the hospital, the rooms were all filled and we were told to wait at home till they called us ... to make a long drawn out, emotional story very short, about 30 hours later we were finally called and told that a different hospital had opened up, and to head on in at 10pm. This was going to make for a very long night and following day. My mom, Jeremey and I headed in in good spirits and were given a very nice room and the induction immediatley began. When hooked up to the machine the nurse actually told us that I had already began having contractions, I just hadn't been feeling them. At this point it seems that I lost all track of time, and the concept of time, because the whole process felt like 10 minutes, but apparently (according to my husband) I spent about 6 hours going through progressing contractions till the doctors decided to give me the localized pain medicine. What I forgot to mention to my nurse was that I am HIGHLY sensitive to pain meds, my body has crazy reactions to them. I usually take a quarter of the dose of pain meds that doctors ever prescribe to me. I wasn't thinking about this at the time, and as soon as those pain meds hit my IV I might as well have been on a neverending carnival ride. I lost my mind ... no but really I did. My vertigo hit turbo speed and the room was spinning so fast that I had to have my eyes closed for the next 5 hours. (I didn't know that till just now when I asked Jeremey, I thought it was more like an hour). Along with the spinning I started to shake out of control, and started seeing and saying crazy things. I remember seeing and telling my mom and Jeremey that I could see this little elf with a green hat on a chalkboard, and that I knew I was saying crazy things to them but that I really wanted them to know what was going on, hahaha, what a psycho! I'm not sure how long after that I was given the epidural, but it didn't even phase me because the pain medicine had had such a strong effect on me. Before we knew it I was dilated to a 6, they broke my water and things were moving along quite nicely. I'm sure all of these things seemed much much longer to Jeremey and my mom, but again, it felt like just a few minutes to me. The nurse came back in a few hours later to check my dilation again, and I heard a "whoa this baby is ready, you are 10 centimeters dilated" WHAT, what happened to 7, 8, and 9??? The tears started streaming as everything became very very real. The nurses flooded my room, the doctor arrived and before I knew it I was PUSHING. I was pleasantly surprised when they said I was a great pusher. After months of thinking that I wasn't going to be strong enough, hearing those words were such a relief and blessing. After about 5 contractions worth of pushing and 15 hours of labor my little Tatum was born at 1:37pm on December 30th, she was blue and not crying as they laid her on my chest. Instead of enjoying my first moments with her, I was scared to death asking the doctors why she was blue. It seemed like years passed before one of the nurses said to me "she is just fine, she is okay" and they wisped her away from me to clean her up. Praise the Lord. I had a healthy beautiful baby, and did NOT have to have a C-section. I couldn't keep my eyes off of her in the distance as they cleaned and weighed her. I just wanted to see her and hold her again. Much to everyones surprise she was a 7 pound 8 ounce baby, 19 3/4 inches long. My little tiny baby that everyone expected me to have had proved the world wrong ...
Now there are a million other details, and a million other things that happened after the birth in the following day, but my brain is not quite working as well as it use to right now, lack of sleep. Another long story short. I was discharged the next day on new years eve, and we brought Tatum home as the greatest gift of 2010 with just a couple hours to spare!!! We love her so much we can hardly stand it, she is gorgeous and wonderful and precious and we are so thankful to the Lord for entrusting her to us. Thank you to everyone who prayed all day and night for us. It made all the difference in the world to Jeremey, Tatum and I. We can't wait to share more about our little bug.
Oh and for those that are wondering how we chose the name ... We found "Tatum" on a list of names, and just both agreed that we liked it, hahaha, no super spiritual or deep story behind it. As for her middle name "Joy" we named her after my cousin Joy who is a very special person in our lifes. When she was just little she stopped growing correctly and now is behind on her development. She is 25 years old, and is the sweetest girl we know, and she truly is a JOY. Turns out that the name Tatum actually means "bringing joy" so ... I guess that makes our little girl a double dose of Joy!!! (picture of me, Joy and Jeremey below).
