Week of Aug 11

Baby week!  Baby week!  BABY WEEEEEK!!!  :-)

Sunday - August 11 came and went and no baby.  Caleb had been predicting the 11th since May.  I did get some of my first noticeable contractions Sunday night though.  Nothing more than menstrual cramps accompanied by a tight belly, but definitely noticeable.

Monday through Thursday are mostly a blur. I spent most of the time napping (or playing wheel of fortune on the wii) and trying to take it easy since I knew these would be my last few days with no baby.  I did end up going to the doctor on Monday morning because I was afraid that my water might have been leaking.  I was relatively sure that everything was ok, but we decided it would be best for me to go in and just get a double check that everything was fine.  It was!

The rest of the week I started getting more and more contractions each day but they weren't consistent and almost not even strong enough to be able to tell when they were starting and stopping, so I never bothered timing them.

Before I continue about actually going into labor, I feel as though I must make a disclaimer.  This is my own personal blog which means that I share my own thoughts and opinions here.  You in no way have to agree with me and my personal decisions and opinions.  Also, now that I have become a parent, I welcome any advice, but also know that I don't have to agree with your personal decisions on how you parented your kids or how you feel I should parent mine.  Each child is different and God gave each of us our own motherly instincts for our specific children and for that I am grateful.  If we're clear on this, feel free to continue reading.  :-)

Fast forward to Thursday night into Friday morning.  I woke up around 1:30 as usual Friday morning and went to the bathroom and everything was just dandy.  I woke up again around 3:30 and had to go to the bathroom again.  Like a normal night, by time I got back into bed I was hungry.  I tried to go back to sleep since food always seemed to wake my baby up and then keep me up for the next couple of hours.  Around 4 I went ahead and got up and ate some pop tarts.  While I was eating them I noticed that my contractions were starting to get stronger than they ever had been.  I went back to bed and Caleb scooted over and snuggled me.  I warned him that my contractions were getting worse.  By 5 am I had had about 3 strong contractions that were definitely between 8-10 minutes apart.  I woke Caleb up and told him that I was going to get up and take a shower so that I could at least wash my hair and straighten it in case this was the real deal.  Once I got up my contractions started getting to 6-8 minutes apart and much stronger.  I got out of the shower and told Caleb he needed to get up and get ready to leave.  I couldn't even dry my hair because I couldn't stand long enough through contractions. I sat on the couch trying to breathe through each one as Caleb tried to get everything ready to go.  We got in the van and we headed to the hospital.  Caleb wanted to time my contractions on the way there and by time we got to the hospital around 7 am my contractions were 4 minutes apart.  In my child birth class they said we could either go straight to labor and delivery or go to the emergency room because they freak out in the ER if they see a pregnant woman come in.  That seemed to be the case.  The emergency room was empty and the girl working at the counter suddenly got big eyes and said "Oh, I think you need to go upstairs!" She forgot to even get my name and information. 

I got to labor and delivery and they took me into the triage room to monitor me.  The first nurse came in to put the monitors on me.  She didn't seem too sure of herself in what she was doing.  She was trying to get the monitor on that shows the strength of the contractions and she's pushing around on my belly trying to feel how the baby was positioned.  She had to ask me if he was head down or not.  I was right in the middle of a contraction and she started pushing around really hard and I was about to smack her in the face.  I wanted to say "can't you see that I'm in the middle of a contraction?!?!?"   Fortunately she was a night nurse and was about to get off. By this point my contractions were about 3 minutes apart. The next nurse came in and she took a look at my monitor and said "Oh, nothing real consistent yet, huh?"  I told her that they sure felt consistent.  She said "Well, sorry!"  (Caleb doesn't remember her saying that, but I almost wanted to smack her too. I definitely remember her saying that)  Once she stayed in the room for a little bit and could tell when I was having contractions, she realized that the first nurse had put my monitor on wrong and it wasn't picking them up right.  She got it on right and they were showing up pretty consistent.  I had told Caleb that I wanted them to just knock me out and do a C-section and let me know when its all over.  I was being somewhat serious but I knew nobody would let me. The nurse checked me and I was up to 4 centimeters. Yay!! I got admitted and into a labor and delivery room.  I told them that I wanted an epidural so they got me in line for one but said it was going to be about 45 minutes before I could get it.  The nurse encouraged me to get up and walk around since laboring on the back is the worst way to labor.  My contractions got to be about 2 minutes apart at that time so I didn't let Caleb get too far away from me so I could lean on him to get through each contraction.   I walked around the room for awhile and I think it was really only about 15 minutes until the anesthesiologist came in because the nurse said I could only be off of the monitors for 15 minutes and I didn't have to go back on them before the epidural.  While they were getting me prepped I had one more contraction and then bam.  Peace on earth, good will to men. Relief.  No more contractions.  Why do some women voluntarily choose to not have an epidural??  At that point I was so relieved and finally got to start visiting with the nurses and doctors instead of breathing through agonizing pain.  Child birth became an enjoyable experience.  Once I got the epidural my contractions slowed down and weren't as strong so they started me on some Pitocin and everything picked back up again.  Around 1:30 my doctor came in and broke my water.  Talk about a weird sensation.  Even though I was numbed up I could still feel it.  I could still feel the pressure of  each contraction and with each one there was a gush of water and nothing I could do about it.  Once most of the amniotic fluid was out, I didn't feel the contractions at all.  Around 3 pm I really wanted something to eat.  Caleb went and got me some Jello.  Right after my first bite my nurse came in and told me to put the jello down for a minute.  I looked over at my monitors and the baby's heart rate had dropped into the 40s and I could see that my contractions were off of the charts in strength.  She shut my Pitocin off really fast and called in for back up.  She checked me real quick to see how far I had progressed and found out that I was to about 9 1/2 centimeters.  The Pitocin had kicked in so hard that the baby dropped really fast and that dropped his heart rate.  She flipped me over onto my other side and with the cut-off of the Pitocin, his heart rate evened back out.  The nurse told me she would come back and check me a little bit later and hopefully I would be to 10 centimeters.  I asked if I could eat some jello and she said I could only have another popsicle just in case things didn't stay as they should.  She said as soon as I deliver I can eat whatever I want.  Fast forward TWO HOURS later, the nurse finally came in and told me  I was to 10 centimeters.  I'm pretty sure I could have told her that.  I wasn't too happy that it had taken her that long to come back, but it turns out that 4 babies all decided to be born about the same time so my doctor was a little overwhelmed.  His heart rate was staying steady so it's not like he was in distress or anything.

This is the monitor our eyes were glued to most of the day.  The top part shows the baby's heart rate that needs to stay within the blue area.  The bottom part shows my contractions and the strength of them.  The strength of these is about the worst that I ever felt.  I can't even imagine what they would have felt like when they were off the charts.

The nurse started pushing with me until my doctor came in.  It took quite awhile for my pushing to really start doing a whole lot because since my Pitocin was still turned off.  My contractions were almost 3 minutes apart and not real consistent.  My doctor finally got there and turned my Pitocin back on and that helped out a lot.  I ended up pushing for about a total of an hour before he finally came out.  They handed him to me and I still couldn't help but think, "wait a minute, where did this baby come from??"  The miracle of birth is so amazing.  Just every little thing about him being developed so perfectly in my body, my body knowing exactly what to do to get him out, and even his natural instincts.  How can anyone look at a newborn baby and not believe in God?  How else could such an amazing thing happen? With the help of a nurse, he nursed like a champ within the first hour of being born.

 

I did it!

Our family got to come in and visit shortly after he was born.  The nurse came in and gave him a bath that made him smell oh so good!  I asked them when I would get to move into a post-partum room and they told me that their rooms were filled up and we would have to spend the night in a labor and delivery room.  I wasn't too thrilled because the beds were super uncomfortable, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.  Around 11 we were about to go to bed and I finally was able to go to the bathroom again which meant that I could get my IV line out because I wasn't going to need any extra fluids.  It took the nurse quite awhile to come in so we got all ready for bed so we could call it a night as soon as she took the IV out.  She finally came in and said "Oh good, you guys are awake!  You are going to move to a post-partum room!"  I asked her how a room suddenly opened up at 11 pm and apparently it was open the whole time but it was just a staffing issue.  So now we had to get up and get all of our stuff together to move to a different floor.  Although, the little bit of sleep that I got on the more comfortable bed in our new room made it worth the move.

The next day my parents and sister came and spent most of the day with us and passed Liam all around.  Some other people from church came to visit and it was nice to have people to talk to in order to pass the time away.  Saturday night we had to watch these videos that are required before you can be discharged.  They were about things like car seats and shaken baby syndrome and stuff.  There was one about breast feeding that I actually enjoyed watching since I still didn't know if I knew what in the world I was doing.  During the other videos our eyes tended to watch all of the faces our little tot kept making instead of the tv. 

Saturday night I was up for quite a while for Liam to nurse.  All I could do was sit and look around the room while I waited for him to finish.  This new version of a white board was right across from my bed.

Then I noticed this:

I'm not quite sure what a vistor is, but I hope Caleb counted as one.  I thought of him as more of a visitor, but who am I to determine the difference.  I guess someone's spell check wasn't working when they made that sign.  It bugged me the rest of the time we were there.

All in all, I'm not ready to have another baby any time soon, but I'm so glad to have gotten to experience the true miracle of life.  My little boy is so perfect and I can't get enough of him day or night.  I am so blessed that God has entrusted me to be his mother.