Baby Marshall Story

Alright so here is how the birth of Grant Ryan Marshall is told by me Mike......

So Anna had a Dr. appointment friday afternoon around 1:45pm and we were going to have the Dr. help jump start her body into labor with a little strip of the membranes.....Dr. wasnt there due to an emergency surgery and wouldn't be back until after 4pm which they said was fine if we wanted to come back to see him. We had one of the nurses still strip her membranes. She was also checked and dialated to a 3. Then we came back and Dr. Hodges stripped her again around 4:30pm and at that point she was at a 5.

After leaving the Dr.'s office we ran a few errands and headed back home in hopes that Anna's contractions would steadily progress in there frequency and intensity. We were home roughly an hour or so when Anna said it was time to head to the hospital as her contractions were becoming more intense and frequent.

We dropped our boys off at Anna's brother Mark's house for the night and headed to the hospital. We checked into the triage station around 10pm who then monitored Anna for about 20 minutes and told us we would be checking into Labor and Delivery cause we were going to have this baby tonight .

It was a packed house in Labor and Delivery that night as it had been snowing that evening and they say the pressure change that comes with a storm has an effect on inducing labor. Anywho...this was it, the time had finally come and we were excited.

Our good friend Kaley was with us and was and would be a huge help over these next several hours.

Anna's goal was to have this baby without an epidural and I will admit that I was a little skeptical as I know Anna has a low tolerance for pain ( I hope I don't get in to much trouble for saying that ha ha).

Well to shorten the story Anna did awesome! We did the whole birthing ball thing then off to the tub and then back to the bed (Poor girl was getting worn out and it didn't help that labor was happening in the middle of the night). Well here we were she had progressed from a 5cm to 8cm dialation fairly quickly but had hung at an 8 for a couple of hours and the contractions were wearing on her. Dr Hodges came in around 2am to check on her since he was on call that night and shortly there after decided to break Anna's water to hasen the last couple of cm's (which did the trick). He gave Anna a quick prep talk that these next 3-4 contractions were not going to be fun or easy and he was right. Anna only pushed for about 2-3 minutes and at 2:49 am we were the proud parents of our third boy! Anna was over joyed too, as the Dr. put Grant on her chest after being born Anna shouted out "Its Over!".Grant was all lungs blazing when he came out and weighed 7 lbs 14 ounces at 20 1/2 inches long with a decent amount of dark brown hair.

My first impression was that he looked like his older brother Evan when he was born. Standing there soaking in this miracle of an experience I was so proud of how well Anna had done and this precious little spirit that I now get to hold in my arms. I felt truly blessed all had gone well, mom and baby were both healthy and no complications.

I told Anna she made this so easy that I was ready for kid number 4 whenever she was (I should have waited to tell her that until it had been a couple of weeks or months as she gave me the stink eye look....ha ha). So there you have it...my side of the story. We came home Sunday nite. Welcome Grant (with big hugs and tonz of kisses) to our family. Thank you Anna you did awesome! I love you! -Mike

The birthing team

(Thanks Angie for the pics!)