Our Cup of Coffey: James August Coffey

He's here! He's here! Little James decided to be somewhat punctual - with labor starting on the 19th, his due date. Funny thing is, I tried everything in the book to induce labor. You name it, I'm sure I tried it. Friday morning I drank castor oil twice, my last hope. Aaaaand it did absolutely nothing. I had been taking Evening Primrose Oil and Black Cohosh for a couple weeks and curb walking. After a day of (seemingly) unsuccessful attempts at inducing labor, contractions started Friday evening. Who knows, maybe my attempts actually did something after all. The contractions became regular around midnight. Everyone says "You'll know when you're having contractions". Lies! It took me a long time to realize that it wasn't gas.
After a long night laboring at home, we headed to the hospital at 5 am on Saturday morning. I was terrified they were going to send me home. Thankfully they didn't, even though I wasn't very dilated. We wanted to hold off on getting the epidural until I was dilated to a 4, and man oh man did my body take it's sweet time. It wasn't until Saturday evening, more than 12 hours later, that I was given the epidural. Things continued at the same pace as before. They'd come in and check and say, "maybe a few more hours". I died a little inside every time!
**shout out to modern medicine for providing what I consider it's most amazing feat yet: the epidural. It was AMAZING. I could still feel when I have having contractions, but it wasn't nearly as painful. Hallelujah.**
My body made up for the snail-paced progression by power housing through the pushing phase. It took about 50 minutes and James was here! Pushing started around 7:30 am on Sunday and James was born at 8:12 am. And he was HUGE! Nobody thought we'd have a baby over 7 lbs. I was so small, people thought I was 7 months pregnant, not overdue! The moment James made his appearance, all the nurses and the midwife were shocked. I can still hear the midwife say, "Oh my, he's big!". I guess I was quite literally all baby haha.