Jason David is here!

Sorry it took me so long to write this post. New babies are a lot of work! I thought now would be a good time to tell you my birth story.

I was scheduled to be induced November 2nd. This has been my due date I had calculated from ovulation from the beginning so I was pretty happy that he would be born that day.

I checked into the hospital at 5:30am, which is a rediculously early time, but it's not like I got any sleep anyway because I was so excited/nervous. I got settled in the room and after 3 failed attempts they finally got an IV in my arm - my hands are still badly bruised from the blown veins :(. They started the pitocin at around 6:45 or so and I settled in to watch TV and wait. By around 9am I was getting restless and decided to take a walk. I walked around the LDR ward for about 30 minutes and I really think that helped speed things along. By 9:30 I was really feeling the contractions and asked for pain relief. The nurses consulted with my OB and he decided since I wanted to get the epidural that they might as well give it now. This was good news to me because I didn't want to be doped up on something else if it didn't do the trick. The only problem was they had to put a liter of fluid in me before they could start the epidural. That was a long 20 minutes but it gave me time to reflect on real contractions:

1. I felt stupid for thinking I was in labor on Monday...those contractions were uncomfortable but these HURT!!

2. People who elect to go drug-free are out of their minds! No offence and I have respect for you for wanting the full experience or whatever but WOW the contractions hurt enough, I couldn't imagine pushing the baby out without pain meds!

The anesthesiologist arrived at about 10am to put in my epidural. They had me sit on the edge of the bed arched over holding hands with Dan. There was quite a bit of pain, kind of like a bee sting like they said it was going to be. Once they got it in they were cleaning me up and taping up the catheter, Dan started to feel light-headed. Of course the chairs were on the other side of my bed but Dan warned them in enough time to get him to sit down. They offered to get him juice and I was worried that his blood sugar might be low and I told them that he was a diabetic and they said that they probably wouldn't have had him standing during this if they knew that. Dan recovered well and I was loaded up with meds and laid down and waited for them to work. They give you a loading dose of meds to start with that basically numb you from the waist down and they said it would be good time to attempt a nap. So Dan went to get lunch and I attempted a nap. I was very uncomfortable due to my legs and butt being numb and I was somewhat aware of my contractions but they didn't hurt anymore.

At 11am they checked my cervix and I had gone from 4cm at 9:30 to 9.5cm and about ready to push! They called my OB (Dr. Jackson) at this point and he wanted to see one more patient and let me labor down and he'll be there as soon as he can. I wasn't too concerned with how long that would take - I did the math in my head....my appointments with him last a whopping 10 minutes, tops and Wichita Clinic was about 15 minutes from the hospital so it wouldn't be long, right? The baby started to really drop and I was feeling like a good sneeze would shoot him right out. The room was all ready for delivery but where was Dr. Jackson? I was getting very impatient (shocker!) but he finally arrived at a little after noon. Once he was all ready it was time to start pushing! My epidural was still pretty strong at that point because I had progressed really fast so I didn't feel the contractions as well as I should so I had to rely pretty heavily on the monitor. It was very surreal pushing....I couldn't feel anything and of course I had never pushed a baby out before so it was all new to me. After pushing for about 10 contractions, Dr. Jackson realized I was going to tear if I didn't get an epesiotomy. This was bad news, but I kind of expected it...I know my body and I figured I had a big baby. Once that was done, I only had to push 4-5 more times and he was out! Officially born at 12:54! He was 8lbs 2oz and 20.5 inches long.

The whole thing was very surreal....I looked down and there he was! This baby all covered in goo with a torpedo-shaped head. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. They took him to the back to clean him up and I told Dan to go back with him. I had to be stitched up and I'm sure he wouldn't want to be there for that anyway. I was kind of bummed that it took so long for me to see my baby but I guess when you have to be worked on there isn't much you can do. I was surprised that the birth of my baby didn't make me cry. I'm a pretty emotional person and I cried when people on TV/movies had babies, I must have been overwelmed by the whole thing. Dan did cry though and since I may have seen him cry once in my life it was pretty powerful. He was here! Our baby was here! He was healthy and beautiful and all ours! I finally got to hold him and it was just so amazing. A lactation consultant came in soon after and gave me some instruction in that regard and Jason latched on like a champ and started sucking. I was so worried my baby would have trouble with that so I was so relieved that he was such a smart baby already! I stayed in the LDR room until my epidural wore off enough that I could stand and then we were transported to the postpardem rooms (around 3pm or so). Those are nice. They have a queen-sized bed and a bassinet for the baby since it's a room-in hospital and they don't really have a nursery that they babies are kept in. We had a nice evening with me recovering and Jason sleeping soundly most of the time. He had some nice big meconium stools including one that never ended. It was like a play-doh fun factory...we'd wipe and more would come, swear we went through like 20 wipes on that diaper change. He also did that boy thing were the pee went everywhere...on him, not us (hahaha). Things got rough when we tried to go to bed though, he wouldn't let us put him down in the bassinet and cried pretty much all night.

He and I got a clean bill of health the next day and as soon as his neoscreen was done when he was 24 hours old, we left the hospital. I'll write about his first week home later, I just wanted to get his birth story out there....and some of his first pictures :)

I told Dan to go take a video of the baby while I was being stitched up so I could see him, so this is Jason's first taping!