The birth story

Let me start out by saying how incredibly thankful to God I am for Anderson. After a year and a half of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant I ended up quitting my highly stressful job. I had prayed about leaving for months and when I did leave I ended up pregnant a month later. On August 16th, 2010 we found out through 3 positive pregnancy tests that we had a little bun in the oven :). I had a great pregnancy for the first 7 1/2 months. In fact, I didn't even know I was pregnant at first. No morning sickness, no heartburn, no being more tired then usual (although that came a little later). God really blessed me with a great first and second trimester and part of the third. At 7 1/2 months I realized that I was starting to swell. It ended up getting worse and worse and at 37 weeks my blood pressure started to rise. On Friday, April 8th I ended up in the hospital with severe pre eclampsia and very high blood pressure. So Caleb and I were scheduled to come in the following Monday to have my water broke. We arrived Monday morning at 7:30 and they got us into a hospital room. We were very excited and nervous about becoming parents. At 10:30 am the doctor came in and broke my water and I started to contract every 2-3 minutes. At this point the contractions were quite tolerable. I was on Facebook constantly updating and Caleb brought his laptop so we could watch movies. About 2 hours into labor I felt sleepy and was actually sleeping in between contractions (which was great). Around 11 the nurse came in and told me that the doc suggested inducing me but that I had the right to say no which I did. I really wanted to do everything as naturally as possible. But my contractions ended up stopping and I was not dilating. Then around noon they came and took my blood and found out that my kidneys were infected from all the water in my body. The doc said that they really needed to induce me so I could deliver quicker. At this point common sense kicked in and I went along with it. So after about 6 hours of natural active labor I was induced. It took about 30 minutes for me to feel the contractions become more intense. And they definitely did. I held out for a few hours and then the pitocin caused my contractions to come every 30 seconds for an hour and half. I was in agony with no break between the contractions. I did not want an epidural but the pain was causing me to shake violently. Caleb started to pace the floor and I could tell he was worried. I prayed about the epidural and asked God to literally tell me what to do since I felt that I was in no position to make a decision. That was when Caleb came over and said "Honey, get my kid out as safe as you can. Get the epidural, you don't have to prove anything to anyone." And 45 minutes later the epidural was administered. I had an hour of complete pain relief and then....my epidural FAILED. So, I pretty much had a natural birth anyways LOL. When I got the epi at 7:30 pm I was 4 cm dilated. At 10:00 the nursed checked me and I was at 9 cm. They had me do some "practice pushes" and then 30 minutes later I was 10cm and ready to go. After almost 13 hours of labor on April 11th, at 11:36 pm weighing in at 7 lbs 14 oz and measuring 20 inches long Anderson Gage Schuster made his debut. They cleaned him up and placed him on my chest and we fell head over heals in love with our precious baby boy. And we knew that our lives would never be the same again.