Birth Story :: Part Three

Welcome to part three of the birth story, this should hopefully be the last installment.  My little tamale is sleeping, so I should have some time to finish. Although, his head is buried in my armpit (crazy boy), so I'm not sure how long he'll want to be there.  And once again, I don't have pictures of this, and you probably wouldn't want to see them anyway, so I'm adding other cute pictures along the way...

 Us at his first doctors appointment.

We left off that I was finally given permission to push.  Now, I had decided that when it came to pushing, I just wanted Joshua in the room.  Joshua's mom had been on skype with us basically the whole time and my mom had been in the room.  Both had been so great through the whole thing, I really couldn't imagine kicking them out.  I know it's not for everyone to have family in the room, but it just felt right. When my mom very sweetly asked if I wanted her to wait outside (we all know it killed her to ask, I'm sure she was hoping I'd forget to kick her out :), I said "no."  It was great to have their support and encouragement through the whole thing.

Our little man, we're in love! :)

Anyway, Dr. O (the whole reason we had my water broken) had to leave to pick up her child, so we ended up having Dr. Probasco for the pushing part.  We had seen her for one visit before, and weren't huge fans.  She was nice, but we didn't really click.  Honestly, at that point Dr. Doolittle could have subbed in and I wouldn't have cared, I just wanted to push him out and meet him.  Dr. P was terrific despite our initial impression, she was quite the pushing Nazi coach!  My contractions came one on top of each other, and I think everyone just wanted Judah to finally make his appearance, so they didn't really let me rest.  At first I thought I wasn't making any progress because only Cindy and Dr. P were in the room.  We had meconium staining, so I was expecting an army of scrub-clad people to rush in. Everyone was encouraging and told me that I was a pushing champ.  In all the tactfulness that being in labor gave me I told them they were lying.  If I was really making progress there would be a ton of people in the room and Dr. P would change into her surgical gear stuff.  Now, this was only like 10 minutes in to pushing, so I may have been a little bit impatient.  I just couldn't imagine all the crazy work I was doing was not effective, they could at least get one more nurse in there to make me feel better for back up. Well, the next time I pushed Dr. P said that if I pushed like that one more time, she'd change and call in the calvary.  Yes, apparently they resort to bribery even if you're in labor.  It worked.  I pushed crazy hard, she finally changed clothes while I kept pushing and the perinatologist came in. 

Just got home from the hospital!

Now, at this point there was crowning (I don't know if you say I was crowning or he was crowning, all I know that there was crowning.) How did I know there was crowning?  Well, my mom looked down and in all her grace said, "ew, what is that?!?!"  Umm... What is what?  What is going on? Dr. P replied that it was just the head.  Now, as a new mom that can't see what is going on, that was not very reassuring, especially when my mom added, "Is that normal?"  Is what normal?  IS WHAT NORMAL?  Apparently the head doesn't quite look like a head when it's emerging.  Dr. P assured me that he looked fine and the head was normal.  I will add that this was the only blunder my mother made, one I'm sure many have made before her.  For those of you that may one day be in this situation though, I will just say, it would probably just be best to wait to ask questions until the end... :)  I did another couple of hard pushes and out he slid.  My first clue that he was bigger than they were expecting was seeing the doctor fumble my son.  Fortunately she didn't drop him, but there was definitely a little fumble in there.  What do you say to that? "Please don't drop him, I just worked so hard to get him here, thank you very much?"  At 7:00pm on the dot (a very timely fellow if I do say so myself), Judah came out screaming and healthy.  So, in total: I pushed about 3 times per contraction for about 8 contractions for about 15 minutes.  Not too shabby for a 12 pound hunk.

All of us with our hospital brands still on.

They put him right on my chest, I couldn't believe he was finally here.  He was absolutely perfect.  He was so sweet and had the cutest chubby cheeks you ever did see.  We were smitten from the start.  Joshua stood by me, it was a perfect moment.  I felt really shaky, so I gave him to his daddy. Dr. P then told me I had lost a ton of blood and had torn quite a bit.  Bummer.  She said that she needed to get me to the OR to sew me up. Double Bummer.  I told her that I wanted to stay in the room with Judah, so she said that I could, she just couldn't numb me up like she needed to.  Triple bummer.  But, I was able to stay with the Joshua and Judah, and even got to hold him for a while.  It was hard because I was so weak and shaky, and getting stitched up was pretty painful.  My blood pressure dropped a lot and my hemoglobin tanked, so they told me that I need a transfusion.

They had to take Judah to the nursery, he was breathing too fast.  Joshua went with him while our friends, Andy and Melissa stayed with me.  They brought me Jimmy John's, which was really great after a long time of not eating.  I was so out of it, it took about 5 minutes for Melissa to realize the mumbling coming out of my mouth was a request for my sandwich.  I started to feel a little better after eating and taking a nap.  After 30 minutes Joshua brought Judah back up, Judah was totally fine.  I finally got the blood around midnight and really felt better after that.  They kept me overnight in the labor and delivery room for observation.  We spent our first night as a family of 3.  We just kept looking at him, we couldn't believe he was ours.  What a wonderful gift!  

Little feet

While this was definitely the most painful experiences of my life, it was perfect.  I am so blessed to have Joshua, who fought for what was best for me and Judah the whole day.  He was so encouraging, supportive, and helpful.  I couldn't have done it without him. I'm thankful we took the birthing class that we did.  Without the epidural, I was really able to feel to push and was able to push him out really quickly which greatly lowered our chances of him getting stuck in shoulder dystocia. We also were really blessed with our health care providers who never even talked about a C-section the entire day.  I am so grateful that I was able to have him naturally and safely. Thank you Lord.  Most of all, we're so thankful to have a healthy beautiful baby boy.  He is the sweetest gift we could have asked for.  

Well, thanks for reading, I really enjoyed recounting most of what happened. :)  We're all set up for Christmas at our house.  I can't wait to start baking Christmas goodies.  Hy-Vee has coupons for $.99 baking goods like flour, powdered sugar, chocolate chips, and brown sugar. We picked up stuff, so now all I have to do is wait to have time to bake.  I have a lot of school stuff wrapping up here, so I'll do that first then hit the kitchen!

Hope you have a great rest of the weekend!

Birth Story :: Part Two

I'm just going to jump right into the rest of the story here, read the last blog for the first part of the story.  I'm basically just writing this until the little munchkin sleeping on me wakes up, so we'll see where we get to...

So, we decided to head to the hospital, the whirlpool was calling my name. We got to the hospital around 9:15am and did the whole check-in thing which was fun.  I think the receptionists play the game, "Pretend that lady isn't in labor."  Like really, you want me to sign something during a contraction?  Okay...  We finally got to our room and met our nurse, who I won't name.  Now, I should preface this by saying that we'd be told time and time again that your nurse makes all the difference.  So, we'd been praying for a wonderful nurse.  Imagine our horror and disappointment when our nurse walks in, takes one look at me and says, "wow, that's a big baby in there, you'll probably be a c-section."  Umm... nice to meet you also?  My very sweet husband tried to smooth things over and make me not panic by diplomatically saying, "Well, we are really wanting to do this naturally and avoid a c-section."  Instead of backing down this "gem" of a nurse said, "Well, you're not going to get everything you want today."  I handled this really well, and started crying.  Joshua reassured me that it was going to be okay.  We'd give her a little while to warm up, and if not, we could change nurses.  I bet you can't tell which one of us is the level-headed one in the relationship, hey?  So, I decided to be positive and not worry about the nurse, who was actually very nice, just not on the same page as we were.  I just wanted to get into the tub.  The nurse insisted that she had to place the IV before I got into the tub.  Fine, I agreed since she said she wouldn't do an IV, just a saline block in case they needed to give me something later.  Unfortunately she couldn't get the IV in, apparently there was a valve or something in the vein she was trying.  I was really uncomfortable, so we asked if she could try again after the bath.  She used her token phrase, "absolutely not."  Really?  You're not even giving me anything this is a "just in case" thing and I'm not going to start pushing in the tub... At this point Joshua pushed a little harder so that I could just get in the tub.  This was not going the way I'd always pictured.  This was awful.  We met resistance at every turn and we weren't even throwing out our truly hippy requests yet...  Well, the nurse threated to call our doctor, Dr. Oleson.  We thought that was a splendid idea, so off she went to tattle on the laboring lady that wanted to get in the bath tub.  Our doctor said that it was totally fine to get the IV after the tub, praise the Lord!  I think our nurse told the doctor that I was refusing the IV, because she came in while I was in the tub to very kindly explain that she actually really did need me to IV just in case.  We told her that we were totally fine with that, we just wanted to get in the tub first.  Dr. Oleson really was so nice and such a help.  Joshua told her that we felt we were on the nurses bad side (understatement of the month).  Dr. Oleson said she'd take care of it.  5 minutes later Cindy walks in.  Cindy was the nicest, sweetest, most supportive nurse in the whole world.  No more nurse ratchet, what a blessing!  After that the day seemed much happier.  

I guess I should say that when I got to the hospital I was at a 4-5, which was exciting.  But, at the hospital things kind of came to a screeching halt.  The contractions got harder, but spaced out more.  Instead of 3 minutes apart they jumped back up to about 5 minutes apart, bummer.  We stayed there for quite some time. Dr. O offered to break my water, but we were really wanting to hold off on that as long as possible in case I stalled later.  So, I just kept changing positions and chugging along for quite sometime.  I was having back labor pretty badly, so Cindy told me to get on my hands and knees to try to turn the little mister.  But, the little mister was very content sunny side up, such a rebel...  At around 2pm I think I started transitioning.  The contractions got a lot closer together and because extremely painful.  But, we weren't wanting an epidural because it would be safer for our big guy if I could feel to push, so I just kept trying to relax through contractions.  Joshua was really great and supportive this whole time.  

I think around 3pm they checked me and I was finally a 7-8 and they asked if I wanted my water broken.  We said no at first, but then agreed since Dr. O was leaving at 5pm and we wanted her to deliver our baby.  Well, after my water broke the pain was out of control. The contractions were on top of one another and really painful.  At 5:15pm I was still dilated to an 8 and didn't know how much longer I could take the pain.  Cindy said it could still be hours before pushing.  Umexcusemecomeagain?  So, I politely and calmly requested fentanyl. (Okay, I maybe not so calmly.)  Joshua asked if I could do just one more contraction.  Nope.  So, Cindy went to get me the drugs, which takes longer that I would have thought, so I actually had to last through quite a few more contractions.  After I got the fentanyl, the contractions still really hurt, but I was doppier between them so time past quicker.  Fentanyl only lasts an hour, but I was actually happy when it wore off because I didn't like the doppy feeling and it made me throw up.  Around 6:30pm I REALLY felt the urge to push.  Like my body was pushing for me.  They checked me and I was 9.5 and just had a tiny lip of cervix left.  I was told to not push, ha.  That didn't work, but I did try to not push.  Finally around 6:45 I was given the go ahead to push.

Okay, I should probably feed my son now.  Although, maybe if I didn't feed him so much he'd stop growing so quick.  I can't believe how big he is now.  It really does go fast.  He's a month old today!  

Oh, one last thing.  If you were wondering why none of the pictures went with the text, it's because I just threw cute pictures in to keep you interested.  Taking pictures wasn't really a priority for me during labor, so I didn't have anything to spruce up this blog....

He likes to help mommy carry her grocery items.  What a gentleman!  :)