One week ago today, my baby boy came into this world. Jacob Sam was born on 6/1/12 at 10:38pm weighing 7 pounds and 20.5 inches long. He is perfect, but he did not come into this world easily!
Thursday 5/31, I checked into the hospital at 6pm. They started my IV (it took three tries, for some reason my normally fabulous veins kept "blowing out" and it did NOT feel good). I ordered dinner and they put in the vaginal suppository to help start dilation. I should have been a little crampy overnight as I began to dilate but pretty much right away I started getting contractions 3 minutes apart. At first they didn't hurt at all, just like the braxton hicks, but by 10pm they started getting more intense. They had given me an Ambien to help me sleep and that didn't help at all, the contractions were too hard. They were unable to start an epidural on me until 5am the next day because I had just taken my last Heparin shot, so from 10pm to 5am I was in QUITE a bit of discomfort. I called my mom to come over for my epidural and my parents arrived about 4:30am. The nurses thought due to how quickly I was progressing, it should be a pretty quick delivery, that was great news! The epidural was a little uncomfortable and weird having something put into your spine, but compared to my 3 blown out IV's, it was nothing! I was pretty comfortable for several hours waiting to finish dilating, but started having too much sensation in my left leg and a really specific pain in my left hip/thigh that was very hard to explain. Meanwhile my right leg was completely numb, I couldn't wiggle my toes or anything. They sent in the anesthesiologist who tried to pull out the epidural a little bit in hopes of fixing the pain. That did not work, so they ended up having to redo the epidural. I was very upset because epidurals scare me and having to go through that once was bad enough. But given how bad my pain was everyone talked me into redoing it. It ended up being a great decision and I was much more comfortable. Just at the very end of labor did I start having that left hip pain again, but it was more bearable that the first time. Plus I got movement back in my legs. So now it was about 6pm and I was dilated to 9cm but my body stalled out. My OB said that it was taking too long for that last cm and she recommended a c-section. I started crying and was trying to get on board. After 24 hours in labor I didn't want to have to "give up". She agreed to let me push for a few times to see if we could get the baby's head to stretch out the last cm and on my LAST try we did it! She told me she wouldn't let me push more than 2 hours, well I ended up pushing for over 3 hours. They thought they might need to vacuum him out because he was getting stuck on my tailbone but once they gave me more drugs in my epidural I was intent on getting out the baby on my own. Finally he arrived at 10:38pm. When I looked up after he was born and saw the clock I was shocked how late it was - even though it felt like it had taken forever, I was surprised it had been so long. But Jacob was here!
When Jacob came out they let me grab him the rest of the way out and hold him on my stomach. His cord was wrapped twice around his neck, but once they got that off and rubbed him a bit he pinked up. He did not cry though! I was so worried because they say they want to hear them cry right away so I kept asking if he was okay. As a result he did not do great on his APGAR scores, he got a 6 and an 8. The nurses gave him his vitamin K and Hep B shot and he STILL didn't cry! Finally when they gave him his bath he started crying, it was good to hear that little squawk!
I was surprised that all of the family had waited around the whole labor, most of them had been there all day expecting the baby to come earlier in the day. Brian, Ali, mom, and Brian's mom were in the delivery room with me, and we ended up needing everyone's help with how long the labor went on. Everyone came in and said a quick hello to me and baby and then headed out. At this point it was 27 hours of labor and me and Brian were exhausted!
We stayed in the hospital for a few days and came home on Sunday. While in the hospital, we took part in a Code Pink drill. Since Brian works in the ER, he knows all of the security guards and once they found out we were having a baby there, they asked us if we would be willing to participate in this drill, where we pretend our baby has been kidnapped to see how the floor responds. I was not too thrilled about it, but they used a doll to represent Jacob and took Jacob into a room with a nurse, so he was very safe. The bad part was after the drill, we were infamous. All the nurses and lactation specialists all knew it was us and gave us some teasing about it because we gave them hell for awhile :)
We were sent home with Bilirubin lights for Jacob as he had developed Jaundice. Our first two days home with him were a blur of exhaustion that I had never felt before. Even now, my days and nights all run together and are broken up by his feedings every two to three hours, but I'm getting more used to the sleep deprivation.
The other great news is last Wednesday 6/6, my nephew Landon was born at the same hospital (Sky Ridge). So these two little cousins will be 5 days apart in age and they are both boys, so hopefully they will get along well and be best friends. I never had any cousins close in age to me or that lived in town even, so that will be neat. The other cousins that live in town: Owen, Kate, and Emma are also all very excited about the new babies, so it will be fun for them all to be in town together.
There is so much more to post, but I will leave it here for now and try to be better keeping up in here now that I am on leave with all my time to focus on this new baby in our lives. More to come!
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