The Birth Story

Without further adieu, the birth story. (Hopefully this isn't too much information!)

My water broke Thursday morning at 1:15am. With Trenton my water broke 11 days early (and he arrived two days later); with Chase, my water broke 15 days early. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to make it to a due date! :)

We called the doctor and decided to wait at home to see if contractions started. At 7 we dropped Trenton off with my wonderful, amazing friend Holly, who has a daughter just three months older than him.

We arrived at the hospital around 7:30am, started pitocin around 1:15pm, and delivered the baby at 6:44pm. My one regret is that I wasn't more insistent about getting the epidural earlier. My doctor always told me to request it whenever I was in pain. However, he wasn't there—my nurse was. She apparently was more of a naturalist than I am and kept encouraging me to try to wait a little longer. (Blech!) By the time we convinced her to call my doctor, he said, "Is she in pain? Get her that epidural!" Thank you! Chase arrived smoothly about 45 minutes later, and suddenly every minute was well worth it.



It took us a couple of hours after his birth to decide on his name. While in labor, we wrote our list of potential names on the white board and spent the day experimenting with the names and slowly narrowing it down. Once he came, we held him, studied him, and started crossing names off. Before long, we knew his name should be Chase. Kenneth (the middle name) is Ryan's grandpa's name, and he married us in the Salt Lake City temple. (In case you were wondering, the other contenders for the first name included Tucker, Talmage, Asher, and Jonah.)

So far, things are going well. The first week is a crazy time, full of emotions, fatigue, and incredible love! I don't know how I'd do it without my whirlwind of a mother here to help. Thank you, Mom!