(to catch up on the events leading up to his arrival, here, here and here)
here is how it all went down. monday morning december 18th i woke up as normal, the hubs went to work and i got online to work from home. typically i had been working about 3-4 hours a day and in between my work sessions i'd read or watch tv, etc. i worked that morning for a bit and had lunch. by this time, the bedrest was keeping my pre-eclampsia in check so my bedrest restrictions had been laxed a bit. i was officially allowed to cook my own meals which i had been doing all along just not officially! (atleast the ones during the day, the hubs took good care of me in the evenings) anywho, i probably finished up my lunch about 12:45ish and as i walked from the living room to the kitchen to take my dishes to the sink, i felt a plunge of sorts and leakage that wasn't stopping. i went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet and knew i about 80% sure that my water had broke. first, i called the hubs...he was a bit nervous and said i should call the doctor's office. i knew the office was closed for lunch between 12pm-1pm (this is how i know about the exact time my water broke) so against his urging i waiting for them to open.
once i called i talked to the nurse who helped me verify that yes, my water had broke and no i just wasn't peeing all over myself. i wasn't having any contractions and i felt completely fine, so she wanted to check with the doctor on call and the hospital and she was going to give me a call back. i in turn called the hubs back and gave him the update. (this was becoming one of the most exciting things that had happened in our lives the play by play was extremely important here!)
upon call back from nurse, she said the hospital was a bit busy and since i wasn't having any contractions i should show up to the maternity ward around 7pm, unless of course i started having contractions that were less than five minutes apart. i was told i could take a shower and pretty much sit tight until that evening. well...the jolt of adrenaline i had was like i had drunk a whole case of diet coke in the matter of minutes and i considered myself no longer on bedrest...i started calling every single person i could think of that would need to know of my upcoming baby arrival and spent most of the afternoon walking around the house on the phone being excited and freaking out. the hubs stayed at work to tie up loose ends and around 4pm i headed to take a shower (best idea i had!). once hubs arrived home we ate some dinner (second best idea i had) and then made sure we had everything and eventually left for the hospital...we of course were a bit late and finally decided on our daughters name if the baby should happen to be a girl; nothing like waiting till the last minute :)
upon arrival i still had not even had one single contraction (i felt a little cheated by this...but my body made up for it with baby # 2 which you can read about here). since my waters had burst almost eight hours before arrival and i wasn't having any contractions (but i was dialated at maybe 2cm) they started me on pitocin and after about ten minutes the contractions started and after about an hour i was ready for the epidural. i know i sound like a weenie...but my birth plan was never to go naturally...so i say let's get the party started. it took them FOREVER to get everything situated and i think i am glad i asked for the epidural when i did, because it was a good hour or so before i finally got it and i grew increasingly uncomfortable and was having trouble making it through each coming contraction.
when it was finally time to get the epidural it was VERY, VERY hard for me to breathe through the contraction and sit still so that i could even get the dang thing. the relief was worth it.
by 10:30pm both our moms had arrived and we were all settling in for a long night. i was progressing, but it didn't look like i'd deliver until morning so the nurses tried to get me to rest. i can tell you, i didn't get any sleep that night. the hubs slept as best he could and the mom's kept me company as we chatted and tried to guess what the baby might be. in the middle of the night at some point i started vomitting, which i knew was a normal stage of labor, it stunk though and somewhere in that same time frame i started spiking a fever. if i was spiking a fever then my little baby was spiking a fever and that wasn't cool.
given its been five years now, i don't recall all of the specifics like it was yesterday but as the night wore on i stopped progressing because they had turned down the pitocin and there for the baby was experiencing distress and they gave me oxygen. also the fever wasn't normal and so there started to come some worry. thankfully by around 7am the midwife arrived and within 15-20 minutes later i was pushing.
i've heard stories where woman have pushed for hours and haven't gotten anywhere and i've heard the flip side where they've pushed for two minutes and poof here's the baby (i was this lady on baby # 2, three pushed and that boy was out)
i was somewhere in the middle, i think it was probably an overall 45-50 minutes of pushing. the hubs and my mom were on one side counting and holding a leg, my mother in law was on the other side in charge of a leg and the oxygen mask.
the first thing i pushed out was meconium (the baby had pooped inside the womb during the delivery which isn't good because they can ingest that into the lungs and thats not good) and as i finally pushed baby out, the cord was wrapped around the neck...someone quickly yelled it was a boy, but they immediately cut his cord (dad unforunately wasn't able to cut it) and took him to aspirate him and to make sure there was no sign of distress from the fever and the cord around his neck.
he was crying though.....he was crying ALOT and i think the hubs went over to him and they had placed him on his belly and the hubs started talking to him and he stopped crying.
somewhere in all of this we FINALLY announced his name and after a few minutes i finally got to hold him.
he was completely healthy and i fell in love with him the moment i set my eyes on him.
how he got to be this wonderful five year old boy is still a mystery to me and i love him more than i did that first day which i never thought to be possible.
he has taught me so much and my life has been forever changed because of him.
happy 5th birthday my beautiful baby boy!
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