Nicholas's birth story

** Warning to Kelly and people like her who are petrified of live births! Live birth pictures to follow! One particularly graphic! **

As I mentioned when I told Nathaniel's Birth Story recently, getting ready to do it all over again has me thinking a lot about when the boys were born. And since I wasn't blogging then, it occurred to me that hearing about their births would be new to almost all of you.

We found out we were expecting Nicholas when Nathaniel was a year old. At the time, Nathaniel wasn't walking or talking, and it seemed like he was just a baby himself. But by the time Nicholas arrived, Nathaniel had been walking for two months and -- with the help of a speech therapist -- had developed quite a large vocabulary.

On Oct. 2, 2004, I had a lot of contractions, but nothing that felt like the labor I'd experienced with Nathaniel. The following day, we went for a long walk in the hopes that the contractions would get stronger, but they remained pretty mild. Finally around 8:00 p.m., I started to get nauseated from the continued contractions, even though they weren't that painful.

Grayson thought it was definitely labor and wanted to take me to the hospital. I didn't think it was labor because it just didn't feel "severe" enough.

Around 9:30 p.m., though, Grayson called the OBGYN, who said it was time to go to the hospital.

Grayson took a minute or three to tell me how right he was on a scale of 1 to 10, and then he called our friend Christy to come get Nathaniel and take him to her house to spend the night.

By the time we left for the hospital, I was pretty seriously nauseated, so we had to take a trash can with us. I don't mind saying, that totally sucked. I hadn't experienced that with Nathaniel's labor, so I wasn't prepared to feel that sick.

We checked in at the hospital at 11 p.m., and although I wasn't dilated at all, I was showing continuous contractions on the monitor, so the nurse told us to stay.

Sure enough, two hours later I was 2 cm dilated. I remained really nauseated and threw up all night, and I suppose because of that I got my epidural really early ... around 2.5 cm.

Even with a boost, the epidural wore off before I started pushing, but I was throwing up continuously and just wanted to be done!

Little Nicholas crowned after just one minute of pushing, the OB was summoned and dashed into the room a few minutes later, and two minutes after the OB arrived in the room, Nicholas burst onto the scene.

Oct. 4, 2004

1:30 p.m.

8 pounds, 3 ounces
21.5 inches long

The adjustment to having two kids was much more manageable than I'd feared it would be.

I think my expectations were different the second time around ... much more realistic.

I was able to relax a little more and -- once I quit torturing myself by trying to get a baby to nurse who ABSOLUTELY REFUSED TO NURSE -- I enjoyed it so much more.

Who knew that we could be so blessed?

And now, looking back on yet another addition to our family AND the one we're currently expecting, I'm in constant amazement that this is my life.

AMAZEBALLS, Internet.