on tuesday the 16th, my official due date, i went in for a 40 week checkup and membrane sweep. over the course of the day i dilated from 0-3 and was determined to be in early labor, so we packed up our bags, left kiki at home with grandma, and headed to st. thomas. i made no progress while there despite walking for 2 hours, and by that point it was too late to go back to st. john. i was contracting steadily so we didn't want to take that risk anyway. we checked into a hotel on the beach and got a few hours of sleep. on wednesday, we hung out on st. thomas and went back to the hospital only to find that i had still not progressed and was having what they call prodromal labor. because of my age, the complications we had with cat's birth, and the risk of living on an island with no hospital, we decided to head home to see cat and spend one last night at home, then start an induction in the morning.
on thursday, we hopped on the first barge over, grabbed mcdonald's breakfast, and arrived at the hospital at 7:30am. they put in an iv, set up the monitors, and started pitocin. i walked, bounced, sat, laid, etc. and after a whole day of that i had taken the maximum amount of pitocin you can get and only dilated 1 more cm and the baby had not descended at all. after 3 days of constant contractions without any pain medication i was exhausted and frustrated, so they put demerol in my iv and let me sleep for a few hours. friday morning we started over from scratch with a whole new bag of pitocin, and i decided to go ahead and get an epidural which was never part of my birth plan, but it worked! it worked so well that i slept most of the day and finally progressed to complete without feeling a thing. they let the epidural fade just in time for me to feel everything to push, and after an hour, 8 lb, 21 inch perfect little nolan came into the world at 6:40 pm. he cried for what seemed like forever, but has pretty much been sleeping since then. he is the sleepiest little baby and almost as easy as his sister was. she is so in love with him and wants to wake him up all the time by giving him kisses. she tells me all day every day "this is bebe brother nolan, he's sweet!"
