Welcome Ethan James Claassen!

After a long labor, Ethan James Claassen was born on Saturday, May 30, at 9:40 am. He was 8lbs 14.5oz and 19.75 inches long.

I had a doctor's appointment on Wednesday to have a non-stress test. The test showed that I was having some contractions but not many, and he was healthy. We scheduled for induction on Saturday at 8am, but we sure were hoping that he would come out before Saturday.

I started having contractions 10-15 minutes apart that night. Since I was bleeding a little, I called the doctor on thursday morning and she recommended me to go to the hospital. At the hospital, the nurse checked and said "your contraction is 7 minutes apart and you are 3 cm dilated, but not yet. I can feel the baby's hairy head though." We walked around the hospital for about an hour but there was not much progress. So we went home.

Friday morning, my contractions went down to 5 minutes apart, but each contraction lasted about 2 minutes with some horrible back pain. We went to the hospital again, hoping that it was it. Same nurse checked me again and said "it's only 3-3.5 cm dilated. Your contractions vary between 4-6 minutes. I'm surprised how slow it's progressing!" The water was bulging so she did not check too much. We were sent home again.

I kept having contractions about 4-6 minutes apart all day long, pain of about 7-9 on scale of 1-10 (yes, I know I don't tolerate much pain). Around midnight, we decided "ok, we won't be sleeping tonight, and we'll be back at the hospital again in 8 hours anyway, so let's call the doctor and see what options we have". The doctor agreed with us that we should get some sleep since we hadn't slept for two nights at that point. We went to the hospital at 1:30 am, got the epidural at 4 am and I slept for 3 hrs. Oh, that was the best sleep I'd ever gotten! My water broke at 7 am, and the doctor checked me for the last time. Then he said "well... it doesn't feel like a head". He quickly did an ultrasound and sure enough, the baby was breech! We quickly shifted our plan from induction to c-section. The surgery started at 9:35 and he was out at 9:40!

Looking back now, it makes sense that my labor went forever long and I had a horrible back pain. Our guess is that he flipped sometime on Thursday after we came back from the hospital. Even though it was not how we planned to have him, I was glad that I had a c-section considering how big he is. All the doctors and nurses were good, too, that I have nothing to complain about.

We've been home for over 24 hours now, and all three of us are still adjusting to this new life. I feel like Jeff and I have learned so much already! It has been a lot of fun hanging out with Ethan. Oreo is adjusting to Ethan ok, too. Ethan sure has been more awake and crying a lot more than when we were at the hospital, but he is only three days old. We'll see how our next few weeks will go :-)