A Delivery Story: My Little Man

This is taken from my personal blog...it has more pictures and probably a few more details than you might want to read....

 

My due date with My Little Man was August 18th. On July 30th, I went to the doctor. No progress, but I did ask him if I could be induced. He told me I was still 2 weeks away from an induction, but that we could still set one up. He had his nurse call the hospital and put my name on the list for an elective induction. There are several reasons why I wanted an elective induction, but we won't get into that here. I have been induced with my other two kids and they were both really good experiences.

Anyway, lucky for me, Dr. Cope obliged and scheduled the induction for one day after I reached 39 weeks. (they can't induce until you're 39 weeks and they only do elective inductions on Tuesdays and Thursdays) It's kind of surreal to pick the day your child will be born, but I have actually done this with all of them, just the other two's birthdays were not picked 2 weeks in advance!

The next week I went back for another check-up and this doctor told me he wanted to see more progress before they induced me. So for the entire next week, I was paranoid that I would not be induced, that people would have traveled great distances just to be told there would be no baby!

But, thankfully, the doctor who saw me the next week was willing to induce me. She called the hospital to make sure everything was still a "go" and sent me on my way home. I was ecstatic! She made my day!

The next morning, we got up at 6am and called the hospital. They said I could come down between 7:30 and 8am. So once again, Qswald went back to sleep and I stayed up and ate "something light" when what a really wanted was a Chick-fil-A Chicken Biscuit!

I checked in at the hospital and went upstairs to the fifth floor of the High Point Regional Medical Center. You have to be buzzed in to enter the Labor and Delivery rooms! It makes you feel very safe! My nurse was Donna, and she was wonderful! She gave me my IV of antibiotics and my pitocin at 8:15 am. The doctor came in at 8:30 and broke my water. When my water breaks, the party really begins.

(his job is hard, too, you know! ha)

10:30am: got my epidural. When I had My Princess, the epidural only numbed 1/2 of my body. It was quite an interesting experience only having 1/2 my body numb. But this time, it worked and worked well. My legs (both of them) went numb and on up the rest of my body.

11pm: My nurse checked my progress...only a 3! I thought for sure I would be there FOREVER and I thought I was such a wimp to need my epidural at a 3, but it's a good thing I did--or I would not have been able to have one at all!

11:30am: my family arrived in the delivery room.

12pm: My nurse checked my progress again...a 6! I had dilated 3 cm in 1 hour! I was rockin'!

12:30pm: the doctor came in to tell me she was going to the office to do some of her scheduled appointments.

1pm: I got checked again, dilated to a 9! The nurse called the doctor and told her to get back over here!

1:15: the doctor is back, I'm already in the stirrups and she's putting on her "gear". I told her she jinxed it, she said, she was barely able to sit down at her desk when she was called to come back!

Around 1:30pm I begin to push. I did two "practice" pushes and 3 "real" pushes and at 1:39pm My Little Man was here! The first push I thought, once again, I would be there FOREVER! I started to quietly tear up, afraid I wasn't ready. With each push I got more and more teary eyed. I just wanted this baby here! By the time they pulled him out I was a mess. It was such a cool experience, knowing how long I had wanted this baby in our family (a whole lot longer than the 9 months I was pregnant!) and he was finally here!

(s

8lbs 4 oz of pure love!

I love this picture of his first bath...he looks so peaceful!

A few funny moments in the delivery room.

The doctor was a very patient woman and counted slowly, after the first "real" push I looked at her and said, "Dr. Sansing, you're counting too slowly." She responded, "I am southern after all!"

When My Little Man came out and after Kevin cut the umbilical cord, the doctor looked at us and said, "He looks like he has red hair!" Jokingly Kevin responded, "Well, who's his daddy?" But we've all decided that his hair is just a light brown...and that he does resemble his daddy!

I was so certain this baby was a girl (before we had the ultrasound) that right after he was born, I had to make sure that he really was a he by asking Kevin, "It's a boy, right?" silly me