Sunday, January 24, 2016

The Day the Stork Dropped By

It has now been a week since our Little "E-Bug" Came into this world, and what a ride it had been since I can tell you. A gloriously Wonderful ride!

I wanted to go ahead and write all of this down while it was still fresh on my mind. I promise not to go into too many gory details, but if Birth Stories are not your thing, go ahead and skip this post. I've just waited a long time to tell this story.

I had been in pre- labor for two miserable weeks. I had been cramping on and off and had been dilated to 3cm one week, and the second to 4cm. The waiting game was killing me, as I was planning on going natural, the suspense made everything worse.

At 4:30 on Sunday morning January 17th, I felt my waters break. Apparently it was only a little, but at the time I didn't know that, I was just sure that's what it was.

A call to the doctor and we were on our way to the hospital.

Once there, it was confirmed that my waters had broken, but not completely, and I still wasn't in much pain. But no matter, Our son was on his way and we were given a room.

A little while later, our nurse Be-bopped in, proclaimed she was a doula, and would be so glad to help us on our way. It then took her three tries and help from another nurse to put my IV port in.

At 10:45 when my doctor got there, I still wasn't feeling much of anything, so they broke my waters the rest of the way and had me walking the halls. That was when things really started to ramp up. Intense contractions every 3-5 minutes. The only thing that helped was to stand and sway through them. So that meant no birth ball, no bed, no sitting, no rest. 

By 6:00 they were coming every 1:30-2 minutes, and when checked, I was still only at around 5-6cm. I also didn't have any energy left to push through a contraction. My doctor suggested pitocin, and I knew what was coming. I was ready for the Epidural. My nurse talked me out of it, but by the shift change at 7pm, I was done. I just wanted to hold my son at all costs. Our new nurse was wonderful, and understood I meant what I said. It took until 8:00 for the anesthetist to get there, get everything hooked up, and for the medicine to kick in.

The epidural wasn't easy either, I shook from the moment they put it in until baby was here. But the pain was gone and I could rest.

That phase didn't last long though! By 9:00 when they checked me, I was complete and ready to push. And at 9:38, he was here! All ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes of him! He weighed in at 7.14lbs and measured 20" long.

It's been a rough week physically for both of us, with healing issues on my part, which made breastfeeding difficult, and led to sleepless nights and weight loss on Baby's side. But we are both now on the mend and his weight is already improving!


I'll get back to blogging as soon as I can, until then I'll be enjoying my cuddles. :D

~Megan