hello mr. hudson!

on tuesday, june 18, we welcomed mr. hudson elliott wells to our family! he was six days late (more on that later) so we were definitely ready for him to arrive.

i woke up early that morning, per usual (i never sleep well when i'm pregnant, usually waking up a few times every night -- it's both amazing and ironic how your body prepares you for the post-childbirth lack of sleep), and felt stomach cramps. it took me a few minutes to realize "hey, this might be a contraction!" and then i started getting really excited. i started tracking the cramps on a contraction app on my phone, but they were pretty erratic. after an hour or so i ended up falling back to sleep, so i was bummed when i woke up because obviously i didn't have anything too exciting going on.

i got up with jack, played with him, and went to the gym -- did the elliptical machine, weights and lots of squats...and tried to ignore lots of stares from all my fellow gym-goers. that afternoon, i went in for a regular doctor's appointment and got a non-stress test. while sitting there hooked up to the machine, i watched my cramps (which i'd still been having off and on all day) create perfect bell curves on the print out and started getting excited -- maybe these WERE contractions! they even started becoming more uncomfortable as i sat in the office. i chatted with my doctor, who was the one on call that night -- we made plans for a friday induction (i NEVER want to get induced, but it seems like whenever i schedule one i end up getting a baby right after) and i left with us both crossing our fingers we'd see each other again soon.

i stopped at the grocery store on my way home and ended up hobbling around as the contractions got worse. went home, watched the sound of music while my mom and jack played baseball outside, and called b to tell him to come home early just in case. my mom made tacos for dinner, we put jack to bed, and i decided it was time to go. our hospital is about 20 minutes away and my biggest fear was not making it in time (we know TWO people who have given birth in their cars on the way to the hospital in recent months -- yikes!!) but all was well -- i was definitely uncomfortable by the time we arrived, and had to seriously breathe through contractions while we waited in the ER for the labor nurse to come get us.

we got up to our hospital room at 8:15 p.m. i was NOT feeling very happy -- already dilated to a 6! -- and was even more irritated when they told me the anesthesiologist was 10 minutes away. great. i tried to focus on the gorgeous view out our window (a rainbow just for me!) and then finally he came.

i loved my epidural with jack -- it had been a light dose so i could still feel & move my legs -- and expected the same thing this time around, but as soon as he stuck me things got weird. i felt some strange sensations through my shoulder and back, i got super shaky, and pretty soon my whole right side was tingly and numb. the right side of my face started drooping and my eye got really bloodshot. i told my doctor about it and she and the nurse both said they'd never heard of those side effects before -- soon they were both out in the hallway googling my case, while b and i googled from my hospital bed and freaked out a little. not exactly the most reassuring thing to have happen in the hospital.

luckily, i didn't have to be on the epidural long because soon it was showtime -- i only pushed a few times and hudson was born at 10:39 p.m., just 2 1/2 hours after we arrived! they laid him on my chest and he calmed down as soon as i started talking to him. he weighed one ounce more than his big brother -- 8 lbs, 6 oz -- and had lots of dark hair. (and as soon as they took me off the epidural, my body went back to normal. yay!)

i already feel a lot more laid back about parenting with hudson -- there is definitely something to be said for your comfort level with baby #2. since this isn't my first rodeo, i feel so much more confident this time around in knowing that everything will work out, that weird things are probably just a phase, etc. also i have much better hair color than last time. ;)

by the time we all got cleaned up and i could move to my recovery room, it was after 2 a.m. and we were exhausted. you never sleep much in a hospital, though, and between all the nurse visits and feeding the baby i barely got any rest. the next day, my mom and jack came to see us and jack was SO excited to meet his "baby hudson." he got to hold him and check him out and thought he was pretty cool.

i had to stay an extra night in the hospital so they could complete all of hudson's 24-hours-old tests, and we checked out the next afternoon. that day, my mom asked jack if he wanted to go to whole foods for lunch (one of our faves) and he told her no -- he just wanted to stay home and wait for baby hudson. it felt so good to come home and start settling into our new routine!

oh, and for the record -- we loved the name hudson for a long time, and wanted another geographically significant middle name to go along with it. (jack's middle name is parker, after parker CO where he was born & where we lived for only three months during b's MBA internship.) we picked elliott, after elliott bay -- the beautiful part of puget sound that seattle sits on. much better than something like issaquah or snoqualmie or another crazy native american word. ;)