Story of Max's Arrival

Max Owen Williams arrived this week to join our little family, and George and I couldn’t be happier!! We feel so blessed to have such a healthy, beautiful little boy, and to have had a very quick and easy delivery followed by an out pouring of love from our families, and friends, and neighbors. I seriously don’t even know if I can put into words the gratitude I feel in my heart right now.

Monday was one of the most stressful days of work for both me and George…Maybe we could just tell the baby was coming soon. After having to lay off one of my title clerks on Friday, I spent the day on Monday going through all of her stuff and trying to get caught up on it and get things figured out and assigned out. On top of all that stress, I felt like I had been leaking something all day and was concerned that it could be amniotic fluid. By the time I left for the day on Monday, I hadn’t gotten as much done as I had liked so I just left piles and piles of stuff all over my desk with sticky notes of what needed to be done with each pile in case I wasn’t back the next day.

Just to give me a sound peace of mind, I stopped by the hospital on my way home to make sure my water wasn’t leaking. I was there for three hours with multiple tests done only to verify that my water hadn’t broke and everything was fine. However, I think whatever the nurse had been doing down there put me into labor that night. I started having consistent contractions all the way home, and all night long, but they were still pretty far apart and not horribly painful. By 6:45 that morning they were 7 minutes apart and very strong. Luckily George accidentally slept in and didn’t go into work as early as he had planned because I really needed him there. I finally was able to get into a warm shower to hopefully relieve the contractions, but I think that just sped them up to about 4 minutes apart. We sat at home for over an hour at 4 min apart while George packed our things into the car. We were on the phone with my mom the whole time with her trying to talk me through breathing techniques. She asked what George was doing, and I look over and he’s trying to pick out the outfit he wants his baby boy to see him in for the first time… the referee shirt? How about his scout shirt? He ended up deciding on a bright orange happy shirt… (guess he doesn’t know that babies can’t really see right away). Anyway, after about an hour I had taken about as much waiting as I could take so we headed off to the hospital.

By the time we got to the hospital I was throwing up because the pain was so unbearable, so the nurses got me back into a room quickly only to find I was already dilated to a 6! It was a good thing we didn’t stay home a second longer. I got the epidural within 20 minutes and received INSTANT relief. How women give birth naturally is a complete wonder to me! After that, everything went so fast. We watched two movies, and the nurse finally came in to check how far I had dilated and found that I was already to a 10 and the baby was already starting to come out. I pushed through about 4 contractions, and there he was, all slimy and grey laying on my belly. It was one of the most unbelievable things I have ever seen. How could that precious little baby have just come out of me?

He was 8 lbs, 1 oz, and 19.5 inches long. The doctor and nurses couldn’t believe how big he was for a first baby, and how fast he came. They recommended that I come straight to the hospital on my next baby instead of waiting at home.

We are are just thrilled to have him here now and apart of our little family. It's been kind of a crazy week, with a lot of learning going on about how to be parents, but we have so much help, and so much support coming from every direction that it's really helped make this adjustment an exciting one. George and I are both just so in love with our sweet little Max.