Abbreviated Birth Story of Benjamin

leaving for the hospital... no time for a retake :)

Phew... what a week!  Benjamin is one week old tonight which is incredibly hard to believe.  I feel like this past week has passed by like a dream! 

Thought I'd give a little wrap up of what went down.

BIRTH DAY-
This birthing thing was amazing and crazy...  if you want the full story I'll be happy to tell you in person, but I'll give a quick summary here-
Thursday morning I woke up with a contraction at 5am and some pain in my lower back.  That morning I watched Pride and Prejudice (thanks to Amy) while sitting on my birthing ball, went for a mile walk, ate some left over fajitas (which I regretted later), etc.  About 2:30pm rolled around and I noticed the contractions about 7 min apart.  I called Joe to come home and by the time we were walking out of the house they were about 2-3 min apart and getting pretty darn painful, mostly in my back.
At the hospital they assessed my progress in the Triage area at 6:30pm and told me that they were pretty busy that night.  At this point lets just say that things went quickly- because of the position Benjamin was in to say that there was pain in my back is a rediculous understatment.  Fast forward (water breaking, lots of contractions and breathing, oxygen mask, concern for baby's heart rade, etc.)
At, I think 9pm or so my midwife checked the progress and said that I was 5 out of 10 cm dialated (meaning about half the way ready to deliver).  I will admit this was not the news I wanted to hear, to think that all of this pain and I'm only half way there!  Well Ben caught my drift because on the next contraction my body pretty much said it was "go time."  The midwife came back and realized that somehow in the last 5 min I was fully ready to push!  Being that I was not yet in a Labor and Delivery room there was great commotion as people raced in to help out in the Triage area of the ward.  Ben made his fast and furious arrival about 5 minutes later at 9:16pm.  The whole experience is so surreal to me, it was like a dream because it caught me so off guard.  I was then moved to a real delivery room with Benjamin.  I did some fist pumps down the hallway and the nurses laughed at me.
Joe, Benjamin and I got to spend an amazing hour together bonding before he was off to the nursery and I to the recovery room.