Yesterday was Zanders 2nd birthday! It is crazy how fast time has gone buy. He is so much fun. We love all the words he picks up and how polite he is. He always says please and thank you and I just love his little voice.
His cousin Mason is just four days older than Zander so on Saturday we got together with my side of the family and had a part at McDonald's. It was a lot of fun to let the kids run around. My sister Megan, Masons mom, brought cup cakes.
They had this very fun play area with soft toys that were instruments that actually played music. Zander had a blast!
Here are the boys enjoying their cup cakes
Sunday we had Abe's side of the family over which was also a lot of fun. Zander loved having them over and showing them all of his fun presents
He loved his cake and everyone singing happy birthday to him. He picked up on the happy birthday song after last month when it was my nephew Ethan's birthday party and he will start singing just the words happy birthday. You could tell he felt very special while everyone was singing to him.
And since I have never written down Zander's birth story I think I will share it here.
Zander was born on Friday November 20th 2009. I woke up around 4:30am with some contractions and woke Abe up. He leaves for work early in the morning and I wanted to let him know he would probably have to call in. We stayed home until around 8am when the contractions started getting closer together. When we got to the hospital and they checked me I was contracting every 2 min but I had not dilated since my last appt. So they had me walk the halls of Labor and Delivery to see if that would help. Abe was great while he walked with me and would rub my back through contractions. I was worried they would send me home. I remember asking the nurse that if I went home how would I know to come back in? She just said when the contractions hurt more. I did not feel great about that!
Luckily I dilated more and was admitted. I ended up staying in the same hospital room that my sister-in-law Kenzee did two months earlier when she had her baby. I did get an epidural which was great! I was able to rest and relax most of the day. It was just Abe and I so we watched movies and waited. My water broke on it's own. When the nurses told me that things were progressing I really started pushing my epidural button in preparation for the pushing. Finally around 6pm they decided to have me start to push. So I called my mom at that time to let her know. They live 45 min away so I figured by the time she got their I would have had the baby or pretty close too. That was so not the case. I pushed and pushed but really had no progress. After about 40 min they said I needed to take a rest because Zanders heart rate was not recovering enough between pushes and my contractions were a little to close together for him. So I took a 20 min break and during that time my mom and Abe's mom came into the room. It was really nice to see them. They ended up staying when I started to push again. I got so nauseated and threw up the orange Popsicle I had during the break. That was kind of embarrassing throwing up in a room full of people. The nurse and the MA were great they had me push several different ways. One was pulling on one end of a towel while the MA held the other. I also pushed on my side. Still we were not having a lot of progress. I kept asking if I was doing it right. They reassured me I was and said I had great breath control which I attributed to all my years of swimming. Finally after two hours the doctor came into the room. The epidural was starting to were off a little I had not pushed the button at all while I was pushing so I could feel the contractions at the top of my stomach. It was not painful just very tight. I was not very happy with my doctor as she I had been told through the whole day she would come into check on me and she never did. Her office was only down the hall! Anyways I kept pushing with her and she was able to reach up and adjust Zander a bit. His head was kind of cocked and making it hard for him to get through. She finally said that we would do two more pushes but after that if he was still not here she was going to need to do a C-section. So on that next push I pushed with all my might and held my breath and just kept pushing and finally he was here!! It was such a relief after pushing for so long. The nurse said that not may women would have been able to deliver that baby naturally after pushing for so long. I was also very glad to have my mom with me in the room. Abe was able to go with Zander while he got checked out on the other end of the room so my mom was able to stay by my side.
Abe and I were so happy and elated with our new baby he was perfect. Although he had a big bump his head from were he was stuck. We were just glad not to have to do a c-section and finally be able to hold our baby boy!
