the birth story

Last Monday at this time I was having pretty much no contractions at all. I was uncomfortable, but resigned to the thought that I'd probably have another week to go.

I went to bed at midnight, and then up for a potty break at 1am. I settled back into sleep only to slightly move my legs a half hour later and feel an incredible gush of water burst from my body. Instantly awake, I reached across and started shaking Scott's arm. "Honey, my water just broke!" It took a couple shakes and then I heard a groggy, "Did it really??"

Umm...no. I just thought we'd do a trial run. LOL He woke up fully and we started getting ready for the hospital. I had only fully packed my bag the day before -- great timing, huh? We fumbled around a bit, trying to remember everything. I really wasn't in a hurry since I still wasn't having contractions. I took a shower, updated my blog and made sure Scott had the list of people to call or email.

Finally, I admitted I should call the doctor. She resisted my attempts to talk her into letting me stay home a couple more hours, and ordered me to the hospital. We arrived there at 3am. I finally began having a contraction here and there. Still not very strong. They sent me to a delivery room and had me change into the very attractive gown, and I overheard one nurse asking the other if they were admitting me. She answered that she wasn't sure, they needed to determine if my water really had broken. Hello...I didn't go in for a little seepage, this was a flood.

She checked me and quickly agreed it had indeed broken. At my doctor's appointment the week before, I was barely 1 cm dilated and since I'd not had many contractions, I expected to be at a 2 or 3 at most. So I was very surprised when she announced I was at 6 cm!

They let me get up and walk around awhile. This brought on a few more contractions, but they still weren't terribly painful. After an hour, they checked me again and I was at 7 cm. Usually once I hit 6 or 7 I go extremely fast up to 10 but this one was taking awhile.

My Dr. arrived, and she was scheduled to go off work at 7am so they decided to give me pitocin to hurry things along. And since I was progressing so slowly I agreed to an epidural. In past labors, the pitocin has brought on very painful contractions so I wanted to be prepared.

Once they hooked me up to pitocin and got the epidural in, the monitor stopped registering anything -- contractions or heartbeat. After fumbling with it for awhile, they decided to hook him up to an internal monitor. I could feel him moving around, so I wasn't too worried. However, soon after they got him hooked up, his heartbeat slowed way down.

They flipped me to my other side and put oxygen on me. His heart rate thankfully picked back up to normal. Poor guy! I went along like that until 9 cm. Unfortunately, the epidural did not take at all on my left side. I had that happen before, but since I had such a great epidural last labor, I thought I'd try again. Now I really wish I hadn't. So the contractions got increasingly more painful but I still wasn't quite at 10.

Finally I asked to roll to my back since nothing was happening on my side. Sure enough, the second I did that the doctor said the head slipped down more and I was at 10 and ready to push. For the last 3 labors, I have pushed maybe 2 times each. But this baby continued to be different. It probably took a good 8-10 pushes and he was out. It turns out he was face-up, which was what made the labor take longer.

They laid him on my stomach and oh, he was so beautiful!! No signs of Down Syndrome at all, praise the Lord! He nursed well from the beginning and also had a hearty wail.

The doctor exclaimed over his cord -- he had a perfect knot tied in it. See, this proves he was so very active in my tummy!

We had a very peaceful first day until he scared by throwing up bile. But it all ended well and I'm so thankful to have my precious baby home and our family complete.