The Story

Well it has almost been 2 full weeks since we welcomed Baby Jack into the world. He is so cute and things are getting easier each day. I feel like I have so much to catch everyone up on so I will try my best to start from the beginning. On Tuesday May 20th I went to my morning Doctor's appointment. The checked me out and found I was 1 centimeter dilated STILL. I was sent on my merry way and told it could be anywhere from 1-4 more weeks. I went to work and had a normal day and came home that night and Greg and I had dinner. He was so cute because he had bought me a gift for Jack's arrival and was dying to give it to me early to make sure I liked it. I opened it after a guessing game and it was a purse. This was really cute to me that Greg thought to do this and picked something out. That night we were sleeping (well one of us was), and every 20 minutes or so I kept having very mild cramps. They had happened before and I assumed they were Braxton Hicks, but this time they were coming frequently vs. just a few times a day. I kept trying to sleep and they were getting closer together. I woke up Greg and told him and we started timing them. They went from being 20 minutes apart to 10 then 8 and then 5. We had the computer out and were googling to find out if this could be labor pains because to be completely honest it was not painful and nothing like I expected. Greg kept asking me to describe them and rank the pain on a scale of 1-10. It was about a 4 or 5. I am not trying to sound heroic but I really did not think labor pains were bad at all nor was the birth. I never even cried except for when I got scared about the possibility of a C-section. Anyway- So once they got to be 5 minutes apart we decided to go to the hospital and have them check me out. This was now about 4:30 in the morning. We grabbed our things and headed to Presbyterian Hospital. When we pulled up Greg tried to drop me off up front and I remember feeling silly because I was not feeling bad and told him I wanted to walk. We parked and then went inside after debating on whether or not to bring in the bag. (We thought they would laugh at us since we were not sure this was the real thing.) When we got inside the nurses asked what we needed as we walked up. We told them we thought I might be in labor. They asked if I had called my Doctor and we felt silly because we had not even thought to do that. They said they would check me out but you could tell they also thought it was a false alarm. When they checked me out and found I was 6 centimeters dilated they almost fell out and said I should have come in doubled over in pain and said we may be having a baby in 3-4 hours. We were in shock and truly thinking this labor thing was a cinch! :) They admitted me immediately and hooked up all sorts of monitors to me. I loved one of my nurses. Her name was Melissa and she actually had traveled before with our parent company before going perm at her current job. (I am a DOR of recruitment so my team places travel nurses into temporary jobs across the United States. This is what Melissa had done prior so we quickly bonded!) :) She was so awesome and precious! Anyway- They asked if I wanted an epidural and I said sure although I was very nervous about someone poking around on my back. It wasn't that bad but I was scared and my eyes got teary eyed at the thought. I was amazed at how fast things were moving. The epidural was interesting. I didn't realize you could control how much you received. You can hit a button to make it stronger if you need to. I really liked this because I am paranoid about too much medicine and so I kept it at a low intake since I was not feeling pain already. I wanted to save it incase I needed it at the end! :) So after about 3 hours of monitoring things they told us it would now be 12:00 when Jack would make his appearance. 12:00 turned into 3:00 and 3:00 into 6:00. Then they came in to check me out again and informed us that I needed to have a C-section. I just lost it. This was the one thing I was not prepared for. I did not want to have this done and was so upset. Greg and I discussed it and we decided if that was what had to be done for Jack to be safe we would be troopers. The Dr. said she would give me 1 more hour to see if I was dilated any further and if not she had to move forward. Finally when she came to check she said we were ready to move forward without the C-Section. Things happened quickly and although I could still feel slight contractions it was not painful. The delivery room was laughing at me because I was talking throughout the process in between all the pushing ans contractions. (Why wouldn't you? It keeps your mind off things!) When they said they saw the baby's head and it had black hair Greg said he didn't know where that came from. I jokingly told him maybe it wasn't his! :) Everyone started laughing and Greg was so embarrassed. Of course I was kidding! :) At one point I felt so dehydrated I was having Greg get me water and ice and it seemed like I could not drink enough. Greg was really sweet. He was being a good coach and cheering me on. I did look at him at one point and told him I loved him dearly but I didn't need to hear any more "Come on baby's!" :) LOL He was perfect though and is now a wonderful daddy and of course husband. During the whole process there was an emergency downstairs and my Dr. had to leave!!! At this point my nurse Melissa was back on her night shift again and she had been with me the whole time. She almost had to deliver the baby because it wasn't until about the last 20 minutes that another Dr. they had paged finally arrived and helped out. When he came in he scrubbed in immediately when he saw how far along we were. I will tell you this- no one had told me how long the "pushing process" is. Everyone kept saying I was almost there so I thought it would be quick. The way I have thought to explain it is-you signed up for a 1 mile race and start running and when you are about to finish you find out it is in fact 26 miles. This was how I felt. They were telling me I was almost done and how fabulous I was doing and when I asked how much longer they said "Well most people take 3 hours with their first baby but you will probably only push for 2 hours." I almost died! We ended up getting to meet Jack after 1 hour and 45 minutes of pushing with a grand total of 20 hours of labor. CRAZY! It was not bad though. Just scary because we were worried about his stress levels. At the last 15 minutes someone came in and asked for the Dr. to come to another room for an emergency. I literally looked at him and politely told him that we paged him and I was also an emergency and asked if he could please finish the process before leaving like the last Dr. He smiled and told me to focus on my job and he would work on his and then he told me they were going to vacuum little Jack out. I asked him the risk and that is when he told me to be quiet. I did just as he asked and minutes later Jack was welcomed into the world. :) He was so cute! He got cleaned up and they left us alone with him to hang out.. Greg was so cute with him. I couldn't quit looking at him myself. That night Melissa came and took him and gave us some time to sleep. The next day the Dr. who delivered him came back in and called me the comedian.. :) He checked out Jack and myself and said we all seemed to be doing well. We had a fabulous day nurse named Mandy and she helped us out tons as well. I even got her number when I left so we can get together in the future. Once we got home we had zero sleep and went to the ER twice in the first week. Once was a false alarm and the second was because they were worried he was dehydrated but he is ok. Anyway- I will write more later because Greg needs me right now. Have a great day!