Wells' birth story

This blog is like a journal to me and one day I hope to at least print out sections of the blog into a baby book for Wells.  I started to document the whole hospital/labor process in a "note" on my phone so that I wouldn't forget anything.  Once I stopped writing everything down (AKA: labor got intense) I was able to piece everything together through text messages Ben sent to family updating them along the way.  So here is how everything went (feel free to skip this post if you care nothing about birth stories)!

Wednesday August 1, 2012

We had our last doctor's appointment at 2:30pm where we found out that I was still 70-80% effaced and 1cm dilated, just like we had been at the last appointment.  This made me doubt our induction for just a short time before deciding and being confident that whether we waited to induce on Monday (my due date) or did it that night, we could still have the same result (still have a big baby with the potential for a c-section either way).  So we were set to go to the hospital at 6pm with an induction scheduled to start at 7pm. 

We left to doctor's office excited and short on time.  We got my prescription filled, picked up Harper and all of our bags from home, combined ourselves into 1 car, and headed back to Mobile.  Around 5:15 we dropped Harper off at Ben's brother Adam's house so that he could babysit while we were at the hospital. 

Ben's family met us at Adam's house to say good-bye and wish us well.

And we took our last "family" picture as just the 2 of us.

We picked up dinner from Tropical Smoothie on our way to the hospital and made it to registration by 6:15 and were checked into our room, L&D Room 6, before 7:00.

Debra was our night nurse and after a plethora of questions, IV started, blood taken, and getting all set up, I started taking Cytotec (a small drink of clear medicine every hour all night long to start labor).  Ben tried to glance at the contraction pages and they exploded and he had to fold them all back up... a little comedic relief.  

I took Ambien to sleep, and I really slept pretty well until 5am when I took my last dose of Cytotec, found out that I was 1.5cm dilated and he was much lower, and then I was off to take a shower and start our day!  

Thursday, August 2, 2012

My shower resulted in our bathroom flooding (apparently the drain wasn't working but I didn't realize it until my shower was over and the whole bathroom had an inch of water in it and it was leaking into the room).  With this, they decided that we needed to change rooms and we were transferred to L&D Room 3.  With the shift change, our new nurse for 7am-7pm shift was Cindy.  Once I got setup in the new room and started getting Pitocin I was definitely starting to feel my contractions.  

At 9am Dr Helen checked in on me and I was still 1.5cm and she broke my water.  Soon after this the contractions became painful but bearable.  By 10:30am I was having contractions every 4 minutes and was uncomfortable but I wasn't ready to get an epidural yet so I got a little Nubain for the pain.  At 11:15am I was 3 to 4cm dilated and 90% effaced.  Several family members came to visit and Ben went downstairs to get some lunch with Natalie and Stephen.  At 11:30am Dr Helen checked in and they decided to turn up the pitocin which resulted in me having contractions every 2 min... by the time Ben got back from lunch I was getting teary eyed the pain was so intense and I was worried that I waited too long to get an epidural.  

At 12noon I requested the epidural and the anesthesiologist came at 12:30pm to do it.  The relief was pretty immediate and I was then 5cm dilated.  More family comes by and I am a happy girl.  My sweet sister Rachel flew in from Houston when she found out I'd be induced and she made it in plenty of time to be there for all the excitement!

At 2pm they check again and I'm 6cm dilated and we were able to get some rest (not sleep, just quiet)... At 4:25pm I was 8cm dilated, 9 cm during a contraction, and we tell family that things should start happening around 5pm with the progression I was making.  All of a sudden my back started hurting on the left side, and then it moved to the front and I realized that my epidural wasn't working on the Left side of my body at all and I could feel all the contractions again!  At 4:50pm I was 10cm dilated (and in a lot of pain).  

Shortly after 5pm the nurse gets me to try pushing through a contraction (that I could feel) for the 1st time to see how it goes.... and it didn't go very well.  Unbeknownst to me, Wells' heart rate dropped drastically when I pushed this 1st time and he wasn't handling it well at all.  Ben & the nurse got me to turn to my side off of my back and they suddenly put an oxygen mask on me, and were closely watching Wells' vitals.  I caught on to what was happening and got incredibly worried and honestly thought that this meant I would be told any minute that I needed a c-section.  Cindy was reassuring that we were going to have this baby and the anesthesiologist finally came back in and was able to fix my epidural on the left side and all was comfortable again.  

At about 5:45pm we tried pushing again and apparently Wells was handling things just fine because I pushed for the next hour and a half!  While it was a long and tiring process, Ben was such an incredible coach, he was so encouraging, Cindy (nurse) was amazing and stayed past her shift change to stay with us through his birth, and Dr Helen was there the entire time... Even though I had my doubts along the way at actually being able to birth this "huge" baby as everyone was saying he would be, I stuck with it and was so relieved when I knew that we were so close.  

At 7:19pm my life changed forever as our beautiful son entered this world

Everyone immediately commented on how healthy he was and that he was scoring a 9/10 APGAR score, which rarely ever happens, and this momma's worries went away.  I honestly had scared myself in the back of my mind that something was going to go wrong, but he was absolutely perfect and the tears were flowing.  They took him to clean him up and get all his stats and we immediately could tell that he had healthy lungs.  

I wasn't even shocked when they said that he was 9 POUNDS 2 OUNCES!  It was actually right on the exact weight that I guessed he would be but I feared that he would be bigger.

Actually, he's not that chubby or rolly, but he is extremely long!  22" with incredibly long legs, feet, toes, arms, hands, etc... 

We had a few moments with our little angel before we called all of our family to come meet him!  

The flashbulbs went off and as you saw in the last post of all his visitors, everyone passed him around and loved on him.  They weren't excited or anything (*sarcasm*)...

Everyone agreed that he looked just like Ben.... his mouth and eyes looked like Ben's twin.... we think maybe his nose could be mine.  :)  I was most shocked at how much hair he had!  All of my nieces and nephews were born with little to no blonde hair (except for Emory) and Wells had so much light brown hair!  

Our little room was so full of love and I just couldn't believe the last 24 hours we had.   

Ben introduced Wells to 'brown puppy,' his childhood stuffed animal who was his absolute favorite and very important to him.  

and with that, our hearts were full and we called it a day!  Wells' Birth Day was perfect and we were exhausted, but the real adventure had only just begun...