"Colin is Born Part III" or "For Real"

Once I had the epidural I rested for a little while and my water broke for real, I had been convinced that I had a slow leak the whole night.

That's also when they started having trouble getting his heart rate on the monitor. Apparently he dropped two stations when my water broke so his heart was no where near the monitor anymore.

Between 9 and 9:30 they decided to check me again. I had progressed pretty quickly from 5 to 7cm and it had been a while since I was checked. It was a good thing they did 'cause he was definitely ready. The midwife Tanya came in to do the check. And she asked me if it was alright if she delivered my baby. It seems kind of funny that she would ask but that's totally what the midwives are about. And it makes me really glad that we chose them for this birth. So the fourth midwife we saw (Emily D. had popped in for a second at one point) was the one who helped Colin be born.

At one point the nurse Trish sat on the bed and explained how we would push. When she got up to take care of something my leg shot straight down the bed. I was definitely pretty numb. But it was funny 'cause it looked like I was kicking something.

They got everything ready and they asked how it all went with Kaida's birth. JR was bragging how I got her out in 5 pushes and that I only needed one stitch. I told him he was giving me a big reputation to live up to. But whatever, I rocked it anyway.
So unlike Kaida's birth where they pretended to get everything ready and had me do some pushes and when I made progress faster than they expected they hurried to really get ready, they got ready all the way to start with.
I asked for the mirror. It's hard to see what's going on while you're actually pushing but it's nice to be able to see the progress in between.

We did a practice push and everyone said "Whoa!" 'cause apparently that practice push made his head show. Tanya had me feel for it and it was really right there. I could feel a little bit to push this time so that was good. But my only indication that I was having a contraction was that it made me feel more hungry for a minute. Definitely didn't feel like a contraction though. Everyone thought that was funny. But hey, it worked.
I guess there were three more pushes after the practice push and he was born. His one arm was up under his chin and he stretched that out as soon as he could and then the other arm was down at his side so when he came out he had his arms spread wide.
They thought he looked like he was flying, JR thought he was saying "Ta-Da! I'm here!"

I pulled him up onto my chest and JR cut his cord. We got to stay like that for quite a while before they wanted to suck him and weigh him and get him warmed up.

6 pounds, 13 ounces, 20.5 inches long. 9:58 am.

Tanya delivered the placenta and said everything looked good and that I didn't have any tears or scratches. Everyone was impressed by my "stetchy bottom", I feel like I should be proud but that's a little strange.

He latched on like a champ and we actually nursed twice while waiting to go to our post partum room.

It was great.

After he was born I joked that he was one push faster than Kaida so we'd have to keep having kids until I'm down to no pushes at all. JR said that there must be a correlation between increased gestation and decreased pushing (+ 2 weeks of growing time = -1 push) so to get down to zero pushes they'll have cooked for so long that they'll just crawl out on their own.

It's good that JR was sick and he hurt his leg when he fell in the bathtub. When he's sick/injured he is fantastic at making me laugh. It made for quite the horrific/enjoyable evening.

I can't wait to read Bethany's version of our birth story. An outside point of view must be totally different.




Colin is Born Part I

Colin is Born Part II

"Colin is Born Part II" or "Ouch!"

I feel like we had moved to L&D by 3:30 and once we were there I was in almost the same situation I was with Kaida's birth, where I was pretty limited in my movement. No blood pressure cuff this time though, so that was good.
My contractions calmed down a bit, to around 3 minutes again, so that was better. For a while.
I'm a little annoyed that we didn't get to labor at home longer, but we figure we wouldn't have been able to do more than another hour there anyway with the way my contractions progressed

Before the midwives had their shift change at 6 (?) Pamela (the midwife we started with) checked me again. I was 5 cm. So that was a little disheartening.
She told us that Emily D. would be the next Midwife on shift.

In the next hour or so I started to lose control during the contractions. I had trouble finding a position that would let me relax enough to breathe through them. And my back started to hurt during the contractions so I needed to have either JR or Bethany put counter pressure on it.
I'm going to tell you, it is incredibly hard to run away from your own uterus, although I definitely tried several times. And I started to swear at the contractions too. I called one a Bastard. And JR said he was pretty sure I needed the epidural when I started yelling "No, No, No!" at them.
I asked for the Midwives to check me again around 7:00. Emily H. came in to check me because she was covering while the other Emily was in a meeting. At that point I was 7cm.
After a while I decided to get the epidural. Good decision... in the long run.

This time around the anesthesiologists were pretty quick to get there. Unfortunately they sent the "C" team. JR thinks it took between a half hour and an hour for them to actually get the epidural in. First a girl student tried. This time when they said "You might feel some pressure." they weren't kidding. It felt like they were trying to push me off the bed.
After she tried a couple times a guy student tried. He was not successful either. They kept telling me to push my back out further. Guess what, that was not the issue.
Eventually the teacher came over and told me to shift my hips a little bit and he popped that sucker right in. Teaching hospitals, you win some you lose some. (The pain medication I took after he was born was mostly for the back ache they gave me, so I think that's pretty funny)

During the epidural procedure I actually had a pretty good handle on the contractions. I think sitting cross legged helped, plus I wasn't allowed to move so there really was no other option than to be in control. I almost thought of telling them to give it up at one point but then I had another bad contraction so I decided to let them keep going.

It also took longer for this epidural to kick in than the last one did. But eventually I was not feeling the contractions at all again. Maybe around 8:30.

Colin is Born Part III

Colin is Born Part I

"Colin is Born Part I" or "So Much Puke!"

As previously stated Kaida was sick on Monday and she continued to puke at least once a day until Thursday (Luckily Mom was on duty for the Wednesday and Thursday sickness). Anyway, backing up, I was pretty tired come Tuesday night since she had been up during the previous couple nights a lot, and a sick toddler doesn't leave much time for napping.
So I went to bed early on Tuesday, I think before 9:00. I went to sleep pretty easily and when JR came to bed at 10:30 he woke me up enough for me to realize I wasn't feeling too great.
I went to camp out in the bathroom but didn't throw up until just after 11:00 when my mom came up for bed. After that I felt a lot better so I went back to sleep. At midnight when Kaida woke up I sent JR to her. He got her back in the crib and went to use the bathroom where he promptly passed out into the bathtub making a huge racket as he fell. That was about 12:15.
Then I realized that I was not feeling so hot again, Kaida was screaming, and JR was praying to the porcelain goddess. For some reason Mom and I took Kaida downstairs to change her. Maybe we thought she was messy, or we were just trying to get her to calm down, I can't remember. It was there that I felt something strange in my cervical area. When I went to the bathroom I had a little bit of spotting so I called the Midwives who said, ok start watching things closely.
Once everyone had calmed down a bit, Kaida included, we started timing the contractions that had actually started to feel like contractions right after I called the midwives.
The first several were five minutes apart around 1:00 am. After, maybe 3 or 4 of those they switched to about 3 minutes apart. So at about 1:30 I called the midwives and our Doula and we started to get ready to go. At this point I was still only kind of convinced that I was in labor since it didn't make sense to me that the contractions started out so close together and were getting closer so fast.
But as we finished packing up our bags and they started to be every minute or minute and a half I was pretty convinced. Mom definitely thought I was going to have him in the car on the way to the hospital.

It's all quite amusing when I look back on it.

We put the bags in the car (that had the remote starter installed earlier that day) and JR went to put the key in when it turned itself off. He had pressed the brake which is the remote start's safety measure to keep the car from being stolen. Mom was all "Don't worry, just start it up again." But the way she said it sort of sounded like "Get that car started and out of this driveway in the next 30 seconds or I'm going to do it for you."

We got to the hospital in pretty good time. Eight minutes from exit to exit, so maybe 20 minutes total, or not even.
We had grabbed a couple puke buckets to take with us in the car just in case. I was thinking of JR. It was me I needed to worry about though.
We pulled into the parking lot and had almost made it to the gate where you get your ticket when I made use of one of the buckets.

Once JR found a place to dump that we headed into the emergency room entrance, I think it was about 2:15 at that point. The nurse who came to escort us to the admission area seemed nervous since we had to stop several times for my contractions (it's a pretty short walk and elevator ride). She said "Oh wow, they seem to be about a minute to a minute and a half apart." Thank you, I hadn't noticed :-/.

But luckily that inspired them to get us checked in and into triage pretty damn quick! The receptionist even came back to our room to finish the paperwork off rather than having us sit there to fill it out.
Ha-Ha! Fooled you guys, that baby didn't come for 7 more hours.

Our Doula, Bethany, arrived while we were in triage so that was good. I really like her and she helped keep everything calm.
Anyway, while in triage they found some protein in my urine which ended up being from the spotting I was having. My blood pressure was ok though. They catheterized me to get a clean urine sample (trust me when I say it's hard to do a clean catch while having contractions) and that one was free of protein.
Then I threw up again. Bethany cleaned it up 'cause she's awesome.
So the midwife suggested, and we all decided, that I should probably have an IV. We didn't know if it was Kaida's stomach bug or just my body telling all systems to evacuate since a baby was coming. Either way I was bound to be a little dehydrated.

Through all of this JR is still actually sick and running to the bathroom every half hour or so

When they checked me in triage I was 4 cm dilated. And they moved me on down the hall to labor and delivery.

Colin is Born Part II

Colin is Born Part III

Tuesday

She puked twice in the middle of the night, woke up early, and napped for barely an hour. I am now very tired.

And still pregnant.

Gross

Kaida was a little sick today. And by a little sick I mean she started puking at 6 am and continued pretty steadily until quarter to 11 in the morning.

She went through 6 outfits and I required 3 and a half. Of course I've been making all her old burp cloths into diaper doublers so there weren't anywhere near as many floating around as were really required.
Plus she eventually thought it was the burp cloth's fault. "Everytime I start to feel sick Mommy sticks a burp cloth in my face and suddenly I'm covered in puke"

I didn't even think of trying to get her to use the puke bucket until after the last time she puked. But she thought it was hilarious when I showed her what it was for. So we practiced "puking" in it a couple times. Stick your head in the bucket and say "Blaaaaah".

I guess it's a good thing it was laundry day. There was eventually an entire load of things that were puked on, plus other miscellaneous items scattered throughout the other loads.

Colin has the right idea. Stay inside where you're safe from the screaming, throwing up sister.

Oh yeah, I'm still Pregnant.

Touchdown!

When Kaida sees sports on TV she always yells either Football or Touchdown! And puts her arms up to signal a touchdown. It doesn't matter which sport she sees, it doesn't have to be football. Although we're trying to teach her to not cheer for Basketball.

Anyway now she's started expanding the times when she cheers. Anytime she sees the Steelers logo. And yeseterday a woman at Qdoba was wearing a Jersey and she started yelling Football! It's very impressive that she knows that all those things go with football.

Speaking of Qdoba, I barely fit in the booth yesterday. My belly was definitely touching the table.

Even my nose is fat.

Still Pregnant.

Yesterday I realized that I've been pregnant for more than half of Kaida's life.

P.S. I'm still pregnant.