Flashback Friday! The Un4gettable Labors and Deliveries Part I.

Tomorrow marks the date of the longest Ben and I have gone without having a new baby--Two years and two months.  Who would have thought I would have even cared about such a date.  It is kind of bittersweet.  I mean, I like babies and all.  I love their smell, their cuddles, their little whimper-y cries that are sometimes just too sweet to console immediately.  I love how they grow and begin a lifetime of first.  It all begins with a little push from mom, or maybe a big one.  I do not miss the labor after the delivery though.  With that we begin.
First of all there was Riggs.  Benjamin Riggs Evans, that is.  My due date was May 22, 2003 and he decided that he couldn't wait another day!  At 6:00 that morning I felt a strange sensation while I was laying on the couch.  I had been sleeping on the couch for several weeks, maybe months.  Still technically being newlyweds (remember we were pregnant after being married two months), Ben didn't want to leave me by myself and had rearranged the couches so that the front of our love seat and sofa faced each other.  It made what I called the Utah couch because that was kind of what it looked like.  Anyway, I got up and left Ben sleeping on his side of the sofa and decided to go take a shower.  I wasn't sure what was going on, but I was sure a long hot shower would be good for me.  I discovered that my water was slowly leaking, but not really breaking.  So, I finished up, dressed myself, prepared for more leaking, woke up Ben with a "Honey, my water is breaking, but it's not really broken".  He got up, sort of bewildered, but then again, he always wakes up like that.  He got a shower, too while I paid a few bills that needed to be taken care of before we left.  We were surprisingly calm for first time parents wouldn't you say?  Ben called my parents and his while we drove the long 1 mile trek to Natchitoches Parish Hospital.  They started me on pitocin because of the water leakage.  I felt a few contractions while I watched Regis and Kelly, then I got an epidural and didn't really feel much more until they told me push.  The doctor came in, Dr. Avalez,  and he had me push one more time.  Then the last time he used that suction cup thing and performed an Episiotomy and Riggs was here.  What a handsome barrel chested and strong 8lb 6oz baby that was!

You could tell we had cleared out Boudions pizza buffet a few times. Okay, okay, well actually he was about five months old in this picture. Ben had a friend that was an art major at our local university and we didn't have to take our own camera to the hospital that day...now I can't find our very artistic renditions of nothing.  We were very calm that day, did I mention that?  Tomorrow I'll talk about L&D #2.