Ezekiel Joseph Boulton - Part 1 Anxiously Waiting

We welcomed a new little member of our family to earth this week.  Like the others he has completely blown me away with his perfect tiny body and sweet spirit, but his birth was by far the easiest.  I know I came home and wrote things down very quickly after their births so as not to leave anything out, but I believe that for the most part, there's not a whole lot to tell with this one.  Here is the pre-story.


I went in on Wednesday, the 16th for my 38 week appointment.  I was nervous going alone, meeting with an OB I didn't know that well, and wasn't particularly fond of, but I also didn't feel like asking Byron to use any of his time off for something as small as this appointment, so I went alone anyway.

The appointment went well enough, I was measuring a little big, which is normal for me, but I was uncomfortable as all get out, had side affects they couldn't explain,was only getting 3 or 4 hours of sleep every night and was ready to be done.  I was hoping to hear that I was just on this side of going into labor and cried when I seemed to have not progressed at all from the 3cm dilation I had been the week before, except he was now a -1 instead of a -2.  Yay he had dropped!...a miniscule amount...



Dr. Palmisano took pity on me and offered to schedule me to be induced for the following week.  I was nervous, I had heard both good and bad things about being induced and was not sure I wouldn't be headed for the worst if I chose that route.  I asked her if I could have until the end of the day to think about it and she said okay.  I called Byron on my way out of the office, talked to my parents, prayed like crazy, and called to confirm the appointment for the following Tuesday.  September 22nd.

For the next several days I kept thinking that if I could bring myself to muscle through the back pain and other discomforts that I could do what I had done with the other boys, walk 6-8 hours in a 24 hour period and just go into labor, but with everything we already had going on, I couldn't make myself do it.  I was already exhausted and didn't want to be out of the loop like I had been for Caleb's birth when Ezekiel was born.

Saturday afternoon I was having regular contractions, coming every 8-10 minutes or so and lasting at least a minute each, but when I went into triage to be checked out, they completely stopped (they caught 1 contraction in the 25 minutes they monitored me.)  She checked again and I hadn't changed at all since Wednesday so I went home somewhat relieved, and a lot disappointed.  I thought again about walking myself into labor, and decided I could wait until Tuesday, but it wasn't easy.  I was tired of all the questions from all of my friends and other members of the ward about how I was feeling, when I was due, and telling me they hoped for my sake it would be over soon.  I was tired, cranky, and didn't want to go through it all again.  I seriously contemplated not going to church the next day, but decided that I needed the lessons more than I disliked the questions and went anyway.

My friend Stephanie, who had moved into the ward a month earlier, but had given birth to her own bundle of joy and hadn't come yet, finally made it to church so I stayed close to her and let her and her new baby boy have the spotlight.  I left church happy and feeling like everything was going just as it should be, even if I was nervous about all the things that could go wrong with being induced, and anxiously awaiting Tuesday.

My baby bump - 37 weeks

My baby bump 39 weeks and 1 day