I guess all my suspcions of Tuesday night were right after all - I had a feeling we had something brewing!
So, to (try) to recap this long story, Rodney and I were up til midnight (haven't been able to sleep well this last week) working on laptops in bed (I know, I make it sound so sexy - hahahahaha!) and by 2am, I was back up, feeling a contraction every 7 minutes. I woke the Rodman up sometime before 3am so he could help me track the contractions. Finally, at around 4am, I decided it was time to call the doctor and see if we should come in and we were told it was probably cool to do so. So we called my brother, Manolete, to come and watch over the boys while he headed out. At the hospital, there was still a fear that they would send me home if I was having false labour as I was only 2cm dilated and apparently some women can walk around that dilated for days/weeks. But walking around the hospital for a bit really did the trick and by 9am, I was at 4cm and my doctor said not to send me home.
I was hoping not to need pitocin in order to avoid the epidural for this one and I was doing so well with contractions and dilating that I didn't need it to help me progress, but the aspirations of not getting an epidural quickly went down the drain because the pain was just too much and I suppose my threshold for pain is not as high as I thought. I tried fentanol (sp?) first and that lasted about 30 minutes for relief so I went ahead and asked for the anesthiologist to come rescue me. Yayyyyy for epidurals, man. It gave me hours of much-needed rest and also respite from the monster contractions. By 2pm, I was stuck at 8cm dilated and so they recommended the pitocin to help the final stages. Since I was already on the epidural - why not?!
By 4:12pm, we started pushing and by 4:34pm, we were hearing those magical words, "It's a boy!" Unfortunately, Dr. Arjomand didn't let us film the birth (party pooper!), but I had them wheel in a mirror so I could watch the little man pop out. Everything about the birth was as easy and smooth as I wanted it to be, starting from the desire to experience real labour instead of my water breaking again. So, welcome to the world Xavier Rhys Grussing! (His name is pronounced Zay-vyer Reece, by the way.)
Right now, it is 11:22am on May 1st and Rodney and I are on computers and email, writing everyone back to thank them for congratulatory notes. Xavier is asleep in the bassinet - he's had a preety intense last 21 hours so far and is pretty knocked out. We should really catch up on sleep before he lets those nonstop munchies and rockstar lungs loose on us again. Just kidding on the crying because he's been so non-fussy so far and we are feeling so blessed at this little piece of perfection we made all by ourselves.
More photos to come when we get a chance to download more, but here's one of me and the boys, our first family photo.
Tomorrow marks Xavier's 3-week birthday. In this short time, I'm amazed at how much he's already changed. In addition to getting longer and heavier, he's starting to spend some time awake and looking around at things, he's getting chubbier by the day, and he's definitely getting cuter every day! It's crazy to realize that, as much sleep we've already been deprived of, there's still months and years of it to come. Thank goodness it's all worth it. :) 
He's seemlessly merged into our family and we are so lucky because he's turned out to be an angel baby. He's so calm and quiet that it's been so easy so far. He's also been sleeping these past few days in 2-3+ hour stretches so we can do things like nap, catch up on housework, and even get out of the house. Now, if we can just get past the non-stop feeding hours, life would be perfect - hehehehe! What a little dream child this is!
The older boys are adjusting amazingly well to the new brother in the house. Ethan is an old hat at this big brother stuff so he's really done a great job of being a sweetheart to both his brothers, understanding the lack of energy and time that mom has right now, and being so wonderful and patient at everything; good thing he's good at self-entertainment and that Rodney is around to give attention all around! Ethan's nickname of "Buddha" really suits him well because he's got such a mellow and sympathetic personality.
Graeme is likewise enjoying all the attention that his daddy is giving him these days - so much so that he could care less that I'm generally "stuck" with Xavier and with running my new business, the 24-hour breastaurant. Rodney and Graeme are attached at the hip these days and let's just say that, if I wasn't so tired, I might feel more left out and jealous than I do. ;) When it comes to Xavier, Graeme constantly asks about what the baby is doing. Unfortunately for him, the stuff that Xavier can do right now is limited to eating, sleeping, or pooping so the answers don't vary much. The cutest thing about Graeme, though, is that he will come up to watch Xavier and never fails to say two things about his new baby brother. (1) "He's so cute!" and (2) "Can I pet him?"
