David's Birth

On Tuesday, January 28th, I was super excited to go to my doctor's appointment because we were going to schedule an induction for that Friday the 31st. My doctor had been promising me that date for months so my mom booked a plane ticket to come the 30th. (She had a small window of time to visit between my brother, James, coming home from his mission and his homecoming talk.) I figured that the baby would most likely come before that because Jack came early, but if not, the induction would be worth it because I could take advantage of my mom helping me out for a week. At my appointment my doctor told me that my body had not started to progress, that it would be unwise to be induced on Friday, and that my baby most likely wouldn't come for a while. I was shocked! When I was pregnant with Jack, I had slowly progressed for three weeks before I went into labor, so I was confused and frustrated because I needed my body to have my baby while my mom was in Birmingham, dang it!

I walked out of the doctor's office just as the snow started to fall and I safely made it home just before the crazy southern snowpocalypse began. We couldn't leave our apartment for two and a half days, which gave me no distractions from the stressful fact that my body was not going to go into labor when I wanted it to. (Granted, I was incredibly grateful I didn't go into labor on Tuesday or Wednesday because I would have most likely given birth on the side of the highway). We did a lot of sitting around those two days, and I'm pretty sure I tried every natural induction method possible. I walked a total of 6 miles in the snow around our apartment's parking lot and I even tried Natalli's "lunge, step, step, squat dance" around the house. (Thanks for the tip, Natalli! I'm sure that helped ;) Luckily, traffic started clearing up Thursday afternoon and we had no problems picking up my mom from the airport.

That night, I had this texting conversation with my friend, Kana.

Kana: Tonight Siri informed me that Chinese New Year is tomorrow. Is it bad that I really want your child to come tomorrow?

Me: I hope!!! I could throw a Chinese themed birthday party for the rest of my life!! It will be Bruce Lee if it's born tomorrow!

It turns out Chinese New Year was just the motivation my body needed! By 2 am, I was having contractions 4-6 minutes apart so we decided to go to the hospital.

At 12:48 pm, our baby BOY was born! I'm so glad that we waited to find out what we were having. We didn't end up naming him Bruce Lee for Chinese New Year, or Hugo Sayid after LOST, or the actual name that we had been planning on naming our baby since we found out I was pregnant. When I saw our baby boy for the first time, I knew that his name was David Maughan, a name that we hadn't even considered. David is blessed with an incredible heritage and is named after some amazing people. Both of our fathers are named David and my grandma's maiden name is Maughan. David is also named after some other Maughans that hold a special place in my heart. I have blogged about them here and here.

My mom came with Jack to the hospital about an hour after David was born. I am sooooo grateful that David came when he did because I had a full week of my mom helping with Jack and completely spoiling us. Plus... CHINESE NEW YEAR!!!!! Maybe I'm Asian after all.

And more pictures...

The best gift my mom ever gave us:

David will most likely look like this in 80 years as well:
 

Jack loving David to death: