Our new addition... the birth story

A little overdue, but I must introduce Mr. Joshua Mitchel Stover to the bloggy world.  Our third baby boy was happily welcomed into this world on Thursday, October 11.  Yep, that's right, his birth date is 10-11-12.  Pretty cool.  Apparently lots of people chose this date for c-sections and inductions, because the hospital was crazy crowded.  We didn't choose the date, it chose us.  :-)  It was our due date though, but I honestly didn't think he would come until the weekend.  But, we had a check-up with the OB that morning and an ultrasound to check on fetal movement.  Apparently, Joshua wasn't really cooperative and he only scored 4 out of 8 on his biophysical profile, so our doctor smiled and said, "looks like we're going to meet this baby today. Here's the plan.  You are going to walk down stairs, get admitted and we will see him soon - hopefully, he'll cooperate once the fetal monitor is on, but if not, we might see him REALLY soon."  So off we went.  I was really nervous.  I didn't want a c-section.  I just didn't intuitively feel like he was coming that day.  So much for mommy intuition.  We weren't even prepared.  We had driven two cars into Louisville that day.  I was planning on working that afternoon, for crying out loud.  I love it when God takes over and just does His thing in His timing.  That's what I had prayed throughout this pregnancy - that we wouldn't be given the choice to induce or not.  Well, that's exactly what happened. 

So, we got admitted, hooked up and off things went.  He was cooperating better, so there was no need for a c-section, thank you Jesus!!! Billy ran home to get our stuff and I got hooked up for monitoring and was given an antibiotic through IV.  I was dilated at 3 when we got there, but they decided to go ahead and speed things along with pitocin and breaking my water fairly soon after we got there.  My birth plan (all natural) kind of went out the window because of BACK LABOR.  OUCH is all I have to say.  I made it to almost 7 cm and finally asked for an epidural when I semi-yelled something like "this is crazy stupid" to Billy.  You know what??? I'm not sad about it.  At all.  I enjoyed the labor and delivery so much more after that little epidural.  I progressed quickly and the whole experience (leaving the OB's office to delivery) lasted only 7 hours.  And, can I mention that my OB is an angel?  She wasn't even on call that day and drove back to the hospital that evening to deliver our sweet baby boy.  She delivered both Jacob and Jonathan, so I'm just so grateful it happened the way it did. 







 I hate to make some mommas jealous, but I only pushed 3 times. (i think it's because I exercised throughout pregnancy and my body is in pretty good shape).   Seriously.  30 seconds of pushing and I got to hold my sweet baby boy.  His cord was around his neck, not tightly, thank the Lord, but apparently, that was the reason he'd failed his little tests that morning.  He was perfect from the start.  Great APGAR scores and just beautiful.  He surprised us by being smaller than we thought.  He was 7 lbs 10 oz and was 19 1/2 inches long.  He also had a bunch of black hair.  For some reason I thought he was going to be bald.  No idea why, but I was dead wrong!  Perfect is all I can say.  We enjoyed a little time with just him and his mommy and daddy.  What a precious few minutes. 

Oh Joshua - you are so loved.  Welcome to our world little man!  Your brothers are completely obsessed with you and hold you all.the.time.  You guys are going to be the three little amigos and it makes my heart happy knowing how much fun you guys will have together.  You have the best daddy on the planet.  Hands down.  He loves you so much.  He's quite the role model - watch him carefully and follow in his footsteps as he leads you toward Jesus.  I love you to the moon and back my sweet friend and even more than that.  You make my heart feel whole.  Love love love love you!