Voting is closed!

Thank you for voting for the baby's name and song but voting is now closed. You see, after I finished updating the blog on Sunday the baby decided to make an appearance. Here is the story:

At around midnight on the 21st I starting having "pain" in my stomach. Steve and I both agreed it was probably indigestion or nerves or anything but labor. Over the next few hours those pains kept coming and at regular intervals. I went to bed and then around 3 a.m. those pains started to get worse and my water broke. We finally decided we should go the hospital to check it out even though we were both convinced I couldn't be in labor 3 weeks early.

As Steve shoveled out the driveway, I was practicing the breathing techniques learned in class. We finally got in the car, called the doctor and was off to the hospital (about 30 minutes away). It was 5 a.m. at this point so we could zip right in. We got to the emergency room and walked to the maternity ward where they were expecting me. I got changed, got hooked up to monitors and the nurse asked me to rate the pain. I told the nurse on a scale of 1 to 10 it was probably a 7 or 8. She gave me this look like "Sure, lady you are probably 2 cm dilated and are just a wuss." After her examination she discovered I was 8 to 9 cm dilated! She said if the baby had turned I would have had a great delivery but, the baby hadn't turned yet so they needed to get the team ready for a c-section.

There were at least 3 people working on me at all times. I was signing papers, getting needles, getting anesthesia and at the same time having contractions (not too enjoyable). By the way, it took 3 nurses to get my belly button ring out. They actually had to cut it off because no one could figure out how to remove it!

Anyway, at 6:33 a.m. Lucas Carter Shahnamain was born. He is beautiful (but I am a little biased). He weighed 6 pounds 11 ounces and is 18 inches long. Lucas will celebrate his birthday 2 days before mine -another baby who didn't want to miss out on one more Christmas! More pictures to come later.