Tuesday, November 22, 2016

oh dear. beau is here.


everyone seems interested in the different birth stories of these little humans coming into the world so i thought i'd share beau's story. a mild version of his story. for your benefit.

beau was a lazy bum. or a comfy bum. either way he was two weeks late. i joke that he was already taking after his father by being so late.

because he was late, i had to go in every other day for a screening to make sure he was moving around and that he had enough fluid around him. my due date was october 15th. on october 25th, i went in for my test and they noticed a decrease in fluid. they said there was too little to let me go home and i'd have to be induced that day.

at 8:45am i headed up to labor and delivery.

after getting admitted and settled, they started the induction. they used a foley bulb to induce me. when it comes out, you're meant to be 4cm dilated. because it wasn't inserted properly, i was at 2cm when it came out they pulled it out. it was 4pm. i spent six hours with that bulb to be at a 2.

they started the pitocin after the bulb came out. the nurse asked me if i knew anything about pitocin and i said, "just that it hurts." the nurse told me that it will only be painful after my water breaks because there will not longer be a cushion between me and the baby's head. twenty minutes later, my water broke. "i'm leaking" are the exact words i told the nurse. every contraction was more painful after that.

i got sick a lot. i cried a lot. i asked to go home a lot. & finally i gave in and got the epidural. at first, it was amazing.

then the pain started coming back. that little button they give you to push for more pain meds is a joke. at midnight i was 3cm dilated. 3. i started wondering how long we were really going to be there. i was also wondering how long they let you go before they say, "okay, c-section time." i even asked the doctor for one and he laughed. they were talking about how the baby had little dips in his heart rate. they decided to stop the pitocin around 2am to see if it fixed the heart rate problem. if it didn't get better, they said i'd have a c-section. if it did, the pitocin would go back on. i was really hoping they would just do the c-section and get it over with because the pain was really coming back.

around 3am i just started crying uncontrollably. it was a mix of the pain, which had gotten really sharp in the middle of my stomach, and the fact that this was probably the slowest progressing labor i could have imagined. they called the anesthesiologist back in to give me another dose of the epidural and the obstetrician came in to do an ultrasound to make sure nothing bad was happening. everything looked good but they were still concerned about that sharp pain. the doctor checked me again and looked shocked. he said i was at a 10! i went from a three to a ten in half an hour. so crazy.

with the epidural in full effect and knowing the baby was really on his way, i stopped being dramatic. they sat me up in bed to "let gravity do its thing" and i just waited.

around 4:30 we started doing practice pushes and by 5:13 little beau hudson was here!

he was is perfect & adorable & sweet & ahhhh.

my world has been flipped upside down since then. and i love it.

all my love,
E