He's Here!!

I woke up at 3:30 AM on Friday morning feeling odd. Every few minutes I would have intense cramping that would go away after a few seconds. I got up and decided I couldn’t sleep anymore and camped out on the couch. I also had a consistent watery discharge. Around 6 am, I decided they were contractions and I should start to time them since they hadn’t gone away. They were lasting 30 seconds and coming every 7 minutes. The contractions got progressively stronger and closer together and by the afternoon they became painful enough that I couldn’t talk through them. We decided to continue to labor at home, so we spent the day in front of the television. When 10 pm came, the contractions were lasting over a minute long and were exceptionally painful. By midnight, we were heading to the hospital.

When we arrived at the hospital, I was contracting every 3 minutes that were lasting over a minute apart and were horrifically painful. The nurse checked my progress when we arrived and I had made none from my appointment on Monday. I was 70% effaced and 1 cm dilated. The nurse said because the baby wasn’t 37 weeks yet, they wouldn’t do anything to help the labor along and might stop it. I got really scared they would stop my labor and I would have to go through this again in a few weeks. Luckily, they thought I may have put a small leak in my water, so they decided to knock me out with some medication for a few hours (it was 2 am by this point and I was suffering through contractions the entire time) to see if I would progress if I was in less pain. If I didn’t progress, they would stop the labor and send me home. The medicine didn’t do anything to knock me out as the contractions were still so painful, but in 2 hours I had dilated to 4 cm and was 90% effaced.

I was admitted and scheduled my epidural. It took forever to get my epidural, but was well worth the wait. After having contractions for over 24 hours, I felt sick to my stomach and at about my physical limit for pain. By 8 am the epidural was smoothly in and I was comfortable. We sat back and waited for progress. Actually, we watched the Puppy Bowl on television. I was able to catch a few minutes of sleep here and there. By 2 pm I was stuck at 7 cm and 100% effaced, and the doctor decided to break the small forebag of water that the leak had caused and administer some pitocin. She said if I didn’t make any further progress within the hour that they would need to schedule a c section. When she came back an hour later, I was complete and ready to push. They inserted an internal contraction monitor to keep an eye on my contractions and had me push starting at 3:30 pm. It was a horrible pain in my tailbone. They instantly lost his heartrate and had me stop pushing and inserted an internal monitor. They refused to let me push for a half hour. That was the absolute worst.

At four, they had me on my left side pushing since my back hurt so badly. After 20 minutes of pushing in that position, the doctor forced me on my back and had me push that way. It was so painful! Preston arrived, face up and at an angle, exactly 42 minutes after I started pushing. I had 100% back labor due to his position. The doctor couldn’t believe we pushed him out so quickly from that position. He was born at 4:42 pm on January 1, 2011. He came out and instantly cried. My doctor had to cut me in order to help get him out. She called it a second degree tear. Since he was considered premature, they took him next door for testing. I didn’t get to see him for over an hour. I was so upset. However, by the time he came back I was already up going to the restroom and walking around after the labor. I felt great.

After 38 hours of total labor and 42 minutes of pushing, Preston Lawrence arrived weighing 6 lbs 15.5 oz and 20 inches in length. We couldn’t be more in love.