We are parents now! Our baby boy Lachlan was born yesterday! If you want to read the nitty gritty of the birth story, here it is.
First of all, you have to understand that I had an irrational fear of not knowing when I was really in labor. It sounds silly I know, and everyone just kept telling me that I would "just know". This didn't help my fearfulness. On Sunday the 11th, I started super early labor. Meaning, I was kind of crampy and had more Braxton Hicks than normal. I hadn't let my hopes get up that I was going to have him early until this point. Every day that week, it progressed a little more. But even I could tell that I wasn't really in labor, but my body was taking its own sweet time getting there. Then, a week later on Sunday the 18th, we went on our usual Sunday walk, and after we came home I noticed that I had was having really hard Braxton Hicks really close together. Even though they didn't hurt, they were 3 minutes apart for over 2 hours. It was Sunday evening, so our doctor's office wasn't open. We called the ER, and they told us to come in. I had a handy-dandy app that was keeping track of my contractions for me, and they got 2-3 minutes apart. But it all seemed too easy - just like my fear. I was barely in pain.
I almost felt silly being sent up from the ER in a wheelchair. When they asked me to rate my pain, I honestly could only tell them a 1 or a 2. When I checked in, I was still barely dilated to a 1 - what I had been for the past 2 weeks. So I was pretty frustrated. I got to soak in the bathtub, which was nice because we didn't have one at home. They let me stay for 2 hours, but I didn't progress at all, my pain level didn't get any higher, and I barely stayed in the bathtub. My contractions stayed consistent though. Then we got sent home. I felt pretty sheep-ish walking out of the hospital at midnight that night. And then I was pretty grumpy in school the next day because we didn't get home til late (our hospital is 45 min. away - another reason that we felt like we needed to hurry and go that night, just in case). They told us to keep our scheduled doctor's appointment for Wednesday morning.
I was feeling so discouraged on Monday and Tuesday. Those were the last 2 days of class before Thanksgiving. It all worked out well, because Bear had a test on Monday and I had one on Tuesday, but I was so ready to have the baby out. There was no more room, and I was uncomfortable no matter what I was doing. And I was getting tired of the continuous Braxton Hicks that were seeming to do nothing. My fear of not knowing when I was going into labor was coming true. I had Bear give me a blessing on Monday, and it said that the labor would come quickly. I almost had to take a Facebook break because I couldn't handle all pictures and statuses of other people's cute babies. Bear made me watch an episode of "16 and Pregnant" to make me feel better about myself, but it just made me feel worse. I walked at least 2 miles on a track and then went window shopping after that, so I walked almost nonstop for 3 hours. Then we went out for spicy Thai food. Nothing.
We got up early for our morning appointment. We repacked our hospital bag to take with us, hoping that they'd tell me I had progressed and that I could check in across the street at the hospital again. Nope. I was still barely at a 1. So we went to Roanoke. We walked around the mall, did Where's Waldo books at Barnes and Noble, ate dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings, and watched the new Lincoln movie (which we loved). My parents got in really late that night.
My sister was still in Utah at BYU, but the rest of my immediate family showed up at our house Thanksgiving morning, and my mom helped me make a Thanksgiving dinner. I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing though. We had a nice, relaxing day together and I got to eat a real Thanksgiving dinner. It made me really uncomfortable though because I had no room haha! My mom brought me a breast pump and some raspberry leaf tea, which I started drinking Thanksgiving night.
The day after Thanksgiving, we went to Charlottesville, and we took my family to Chick-fil-A for their first time. Bear took the kids to a movie, and I went to Monticello with my parents. Everywhere was crazy busy because it was Black Friday. We got to Monticello at 2:30, and we wouldn't have been able to get in til 5:30. So we just went to the gift shop, the movie, display, and took pictures with the Jefferson We statue.
Well, to actually get to the birth story, I woke up at 4:30 in morning to go to the bathroom, but wasn't able to get back to sleep after that because I was having painful contractions every 5 minutes. It was getting to the point that I had to get out of bed and move everytime that I had one, but I wanted to let Bear sleep. So I kept getting in the shower because the warm water really helped, and I kept moving around. My water broke at 7 am. And now that it's all said and done, I'm so glad that this was all happening at home and not in class...it wouldn't have been pretty. Once my water broke, I got Bear up, and the hospital told us to come in again. We told my parents and we went over to their hotel room to use their bathtub. After sitting in there a while, we decided to go to the hospital. My mom has really long labors, so she told me that I should wait at home as long as I could, but I was in too much pain. Even though we had felt so sheep-ish and silly when our doctor told us that we shouldn't have gone to the ER that one Sunday because that's just their protocol and they have to cover themselves, I'm so glad that we went through all of it. Because we knew exactly where to drive up to, how long it was going to take, and all of my information was already taken care of. Even though we had registered at the hospital a few weeks earlier, they still had a lot of questions for me when I came in that Sunday. And at this point, I definitely knew that I was in labor. These were no Braxton Hick contractions!
When I was checked in, I was at a 4. This was at 10 am. I wanted to get in the bathtub right away. I had planned to go natural with no epidural, but after being in the tub for an hour, I caved. The tub that had been helpful up until that point wasn't even helping anymore. I told them that I wouldn't get out of the bathtub unless I could get an epidural right away. Luckily, the epidural guy wasn't tied up and was able to do it right away. My contractions were 2 min. apart at this point, and I was already at an 8. I progressed really quickly. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to hold still for him long enough to put the epidural in because I was in so much pain. In a way, I felt silly for caving at what seemed like the very end. Because they almost didn't get it in time - I went straight to a 10 after they put the epidural in. And I probably could've made it if I had been like a normal person that only pushes for 15 min. But I pushed for 3 hours. And I wouldn't have been able to make it without that epidural. Because I progressed so quickly, my dad and the kids thought that they weren't going to make it in time. But then they ended up waiting around for 3 hours.
After I got the epidural in, I felt so much better. It took away the pain, but I was still able to move my legs around and feel where I needed to push. The baby's heart rate kept going down and they had to keep putting me on oxygen, which was scary, but then it would come back up again. I guessed that he was going to be 8-8.5 lbs. And that he was going to be really long, because he was seriously up in my lungs. Well the wonderful epidural didn't help my exhaustion at the end of the 3 hours. The doctor went past his 3 hour pushing limit for me. Which I'm glad that he did, because the other options were forceps or a c-section. And he was afraid to use the forceps. Because there was no room for them apparently. According to my mom, it was really scary, but I was out of it. I had to really be encouraged, and I just felt like everyone was lying to me when they said, "only a few more pushes!" etc. They thought he was posterior because of how long it took for him to come down, but he just couldn't get past my pelvic bone. He had a really bad cone-head. He chipped my tailbone and gave me a third-degree tear (a fourth degree is where you tear through your rectum to give you some perspective). Even though forceps seemed like a better option at the time, I'm glad that they didn't now, with how much pain I'm in without them being used).
So anyways, he was born at 3:54 pm Eastern time, 19 1/2 inches, 8 lbs 11 oz. The nurses kept commenting on how healthy his skin looked. He was tongue-tied, so they clipped it, and he has a receding chin, so nursing might be tricky, but I'm going to try my best. Thank you for all of your kind words and congratulations! We're excited to take him home and recover.
