Life is Showing us a Party!: June 2010

Its been 2 weeks. I suppose it's time to tell my story. Sit back and relax - because like all birthing stories this is long and I'll make it as dramatic as I possibly can :-)

At 2:45 am on Sunday May 23 I woke up from an otherwise restful sleep. Nothing in particular woke me up but because I was awake I decided I might as well go to the bathroom. I did so and as soon as I was done I realized that something more was going on. I heard water dripping. Odd, I thought. Why was water dripping and where was it coming from? Yup- my water had broken, thankfully over the toilet (I am so sorry if this is too much info). I sat there and just laughed. The reason I laughed is so silly but here is the story. Daniel and I are huge LOST fans. We love it and are addicted. As are our good friends Tammy and John. The season finale was scheduled for Sunday May 23. We were so excited. After watching the last episode before the finale we all joked about how it would be terrible if our baby decided to come on May 23 because we would still have to figure out a way to watch the last episode 'live'. We were saying how Tammy and John would come to the hospital at watch it while I was delivering if they had to. So come May 23 and my water breaks I just laughed. My baby was listening.

I wake up Daniel. He shoots up and gets so excited. However, we are very new at this and so uneducated that we had no idea what to do next. Haha- we just looked at each other and said 'what now?'. Contractions had started and my doctor said not to come to the hospital until they were 5 minutes apart, she never said what to do if my water broke... So what did we do? We went back to bed. My contractions were an even 10 minutes apart so I figured we had tons of time. Even though we were apparently idiots for doing this I am glad we did. It was nice to be in my own bed and be able to eat.

When 9:00 rolls around we figure we should think about going to the hospital. My contractions were still 10 min apart, but my water had broken - we thought that might be a point of interest. I got up to get in the shower and boom my contractions started coming every 4 minutes. I got a little nervous. I thought they would gradually go from 10 to 4 - but no, they skipped all of that. So we start hurrying a little faster to the hospital. We get there and get all checked in.

Here is the last picture of my and my baby belly. I'm ready. It takes a while to get all situated and settled in. I had to get a bag of IV fluid and antibiotics before they would give me the epidural - bring on the swelling of EVERYTHING! Thankfully though I could still tolerate the contractions at this point. Eventually the lady came in to give me the epidural. Talk about an uncomfortable position they have you sit in! And she had to try 3 times to get it into the right place so I was sitting crouched over having contractions and 'relaxing' for what felt like an eternity! But I loved the anesthesiologist and the nurse that was helping- so that made it better.

After that was in (as we all know) things became a little brighter. I was able to hear the birds chirping and smell the sweet smells of rain kissed flowers :-) It was glorious. Now all we had to do was wait. I hate waiting.

They started the pitosin (or however it's spelled) and we were off. I was progressing pretty well and the baby was tolerating the contractions like a champ. Then the stupid nurse... she was trying to get a better measurement of exactly how hard my contractions were. So she was trying to put this tool thing next to the baby. It took her forever to place it for some reason and in all honesty things went down hill from there. From then on whenever I had a contraction baby's heart rate went really low. So much for sleeping. Have you ever tried to sleep when you hear your childs heart beat go from 120 bpm to 70 bpm? Not fun. It scared me!

So they took me off pitosin, threw this oxygen mask on me and told me to roll onto my side and pull one knee up. I felt like they were trying to get me to do a difficult pose in yoga. I'm just not very agile at this point. But things didn't change. Even with the smallest of contractions his heart rate would just plummet. After the contraction it would race back up again, which was good. However, it still wasn't good that it would go so low.

THEN there was the 't' drug that made life miserable. When I would have a contraction my uterus wouldn't let up. I would have super long contractions and as we know the baby's heart rate would go down so having a long contraction was frowned upon at this point. So the nurse gave me this drug that started with a 't' to loosen my contractions. It was the worst drug I have ever been given. It made me shake uncontrollably. It was like I was shivering. Oh my gosh it was terrible. I had to have 2 doses and the nurse said she couldn't remember the last time she had to give 2 doses of the stuff. Blah!

This all happened from about 2 until 6 pm. The doctor had been monitoring my progress from home (docs are getting so lazy:-)) and then she felt it was time to take a more hands on approach. While she was en route my nurse told me flat out that I was probably going to have to have a c-section because of this doctor. I had been dreading a c-section but for the health of the baby I'll do anything.

Here we are after they cleaned him up. He was born at 7:16 on 23 May 2010. Daniel was so excited. I heard him just laughing in the background while they were sewing me up.

Here is our little bundle of joy. He was still nameless at this point. It took us 3 days to finally decide on a name. We had dozens of options and couldn't decide on one. Finally the day we left we decided on Alex Heninger Jacobs.