I cannot believe that our baby boy is finally here! We welcomed our son, Alexander Luca Cappellucci, on August 4, 2021 at 4:07 PM at 37 weeks and 5 days pregnant. We were shocked he decided to make his early arrival but we are SO thrilled he did! He weighed 7 pounds 5oz and is perfect in every way. When I was pregnant, I loved reading various birth stories imagining what mine would be like. I am thrilled to finally share my story on how Alexander was brought into the world…
On August 2, my parents arrived from NC to our home in Salt Lake City. Their plans were to come out for a couple weeks prior to his arrival so they were here for when he decided to show up. Little did we know that their timing would be perfect. We headed out for dinner on August 3 to celebrate my dad’s birthday. After dinner, we decided to watch a movie as a family and shortly into the movie I began to feel a little bit nauseous. I excused it as eating too much delicious Italian food for dinner-haha- and brushed it off and went to bed. Little did I know the next day was going to be SO exciting!
I slept as good as anyone can at 37 weeks pregnant and to my surprise, I woke up at 5am to contractions! I was unsure if this was the real thing and I remember sitting in bed timing my contractions to see if they got stronger and closer together. Sure enough-they did!
I woke Chase up shorty after and told him that I thought today was the day we would be meeting our son! I couldn’t believe it! I decided to get in the shower and start my day-knowing that if we were heading to the hospital soon it would be nice to squeeze in a quick shower before heading over. While getting ready, contractions continued to get stronger and as I was finalizing my hospital bag my water broke! This was around 6:30am-so 1 1/2 hours since my contractions started. When this happened we knew it was go time!
We shortly left for the hospital after this and arrived by 7am. We got checked in and by this point my contractions were very intense! I told the nurse that I wanted an epidural as soon as possible and she decided to check me and see how I was progressing. I was only dilated to a 1 at this point. She said that they typically like to wait until you are dilated to a 3 or 4 to get the epidural and she said she would check back in an hour to see how things were progressing. When she checked back, she was pleased with how things were progressing and went ahead and ordered the epidural! Thank goodness! This was around 9:30am.
Now, let me say I was TERRIFIED to get the epidural, but I was even more worried to labor without it. When it came time to get the epidural, Chase was right there with me and it was not bad at all! I had a wonderful anesthesiologist who walked through every step with me and made me feel comfortable. I also want to add that for me the pinch I felt from receiving the epidural was nothing compared to the pain I felt from the contractions! Within 30 minutes I was pain free! The epidural was working and I did not feel a thing. It was 20000% worth it!
Shortly after receiving the epidural things started to move along fairly quickly. I knew that we had such a short amount of time before Alexander would be making his arrival and Chase and I enjoyed the last moments of it being just the two of us. We prayed, listened to Alexander’s heartbeat on the monitor, and talked about what we were most excited about becoming parents.
By 3pm, I was dilated to 10cm and it was time to start pushing! I started pushing a little after 3pm and Alexander Luca Cappellucci was born at 4:07pm!
We have never been more in love! I cannot believe he is ours and we are so excited to experience parenthood. Thank you all for the prayers and well wishes that have been sent our way. We cannot wait to share more of our parenthood journey with all of you.
With Love,
Riley, Chase, and Alexander Cappellucci
