Tatum James has arrived!

We are so excited that Tatum made his entrance to the world a couple days early!

Tatum James Howard

8lbs 14 oz

20.5 inches long

On Tuesday night, some good friends from church threw me a baby shower! We were all joking around about ways to induce labor, and my friend Tiffany gave me a labor inducing foot massage! I got home around 930 and put all the stuff away and waited for Colby to come home.

39 weeks and 4 days

We got quite the surprise when my water spontaneously broke while we were watching Americas Got Talent before we fell asleep! At about 12:30am I felt a little pop and a small gush so I got up thinking I might have just done something embarrassing but then as soon as I took those 3 steps to the toilet water just gushed everywhere! It just continued to gush and I was trying not to laugh because then it was just gushing more! I told Colby after the second gush that I thought my water had just broken! He didnt/couldnt believe it and asked me if I was sure I wasnt peeing myself! :) We packed up the bags (I had stuff sitting aside but not in a bag) and headed out to the hospital about 15 minutes later. We got to the hospital and werent sure exactly where to go so we walked through the emergency department, at this point my clothes I had changed into were now completely soaked (again!) and I got some pretty funny looks from the ER waiting room! We headed down to L & D and I had to sit on a pee pad while I finished registering. I left a couple little puddles in there before I got called back into the triage area!
They checked me and I was only at a 1 and 40% effaced, which was progress from the previous 0 & 0 from the Friday before! They had to keep me though because my water had broken!
We had to wait for a delivery room to open up so we walked around for about 45 minutes. Once we got in the room they waited to check me until 430am. I was only at 1.5 and 70% effaced, so they started  me on a slow drip of pitocin to help get me to dialate. Around 7am I still wasnt making much progress so they upped my dosage and the awesome doctor on call told me I could eat some breakfast! THe nurse was in just as much shock as I was, so I got some French Toast!
I decided I wanted to wait to get an epidural until I was at a 4. I finally hit an almost 4 around 1030am and my contractions were hurting pretty bad. I had to stop and breath and couldnt focus on anything else. I told the nurse I was ready for my epidural and just my luck I had to wait another hour for the anesthesiologist to get out of a c section.
I finally got my sweet relief around 1130! They did the epidural so fast, he was in and out of the room within 10 minutes and he did all of his paperwork! It was crazy!
Well Tatum was being a little stinker and would drop his heartrate with my contractions after they upped my pitocin to an 8 (out of 16) so we had to keep turning it back down or off and start all over and they put me on some oxygen to help him out.
I finally was able to doze on and off throughout the afternoon.
My family all came to visit me (mostly Tatum) and they got in around 6/7.  My new nurse started at 6pm and had me switch to some new positions to help dialate even more!
Finally around 930 I was dialated to a 9 and he was in the process of turning. It was almost time!
I started to feel lots of pressure at about 10, but the dr was in the middle of an emergency c section so I had to wait. The nurse checked and I was already crowning!
Once the Dr came in and got set up we pushed through 3 contractions and he was here! It was amazing! Colby was a great coach and even cut the cord!

It was such a long day, but one we will never forget! He is completely perfect!
We went to the recovery room, he got a bath, and tried to get him to eat and he wouldnt. We tried every hour and after 6 hours we tried to give him a little formula because his blood sugar was a really low. He still wasnt interested, but we were able to get his sugars up just a little bit, just not enough, so he got sent to the NICU for observation.
They ended up keeping him and putting him on an IV for fluids and an antibiotic. They decided to do the antibiotic because it had been almost 24 hours since my water broke before he was born and there is a higher risk of infection.
He ended up swallowing lots of nasty stuff on his way out and had a pump in his stomach to get it all out, but they removed it after a few hours.

 After his bath. 

Now we are patiently waiting for him to be released! I will be discharged today, and he hopefully will be tomorrow (Sunday at the latest!)