Judah is here! PIP

JellyTwoPointO · July 2013

After all the preterm labor scares.... my rainbow baby is here.

Short version: Judah Ari was born on 7/11/13 at 10:11 pm, weighing 7 lbs 11 oz and was 21 1/4 inches long. He was born after 16 hours of labor and 11 minutes of pushing.

Long version: Tuesday I had a bout of horrible prodromal labor and my contractions were consistently 5-8 minutes apart, so we went to the hospital, but even with consistent contractions that were very painful, my cervix did not progress so we were sent home. After hours and hours, the contractions died down and on Wednesday, I felt so good -- as if that prodromal labor hadn't happened at all. Thursday morning, the 11th, at almost 6:00 am exactly I started having cramps that quickly intensified into contractions. I knew that this was "it." They came on very hard, very fast, and it was overwhelming. I woke my husband up and we arrived at the hospital at about 8:30 am where they said I'd progressed from being 1.5 cm dilated to being a 4. I had horrible back labor and I wasn't able to think or work through the contractions efficiently. So at 6 cm, I got an epidural and am so thankful that I did. Judah was a station 2 almost the entire labor and was trying to come through the cervix before I was fully dilated, and having the epidural helped me be able to breathe and work through the contractions as they came. After 16 hours of laboring, at 10:00 pm, I began pushing. In the middle of pushing, the doctor yelled at me to stop because the cord was wrapped around Judah's neck. He was able to carefully unwrap the cord and I finished pushing Judah out. He was born at 10:11 pm. His face was very blue and it took an excruciatingly long minute before he cried, but when he did, my husband and I burst into tears of relief and joy. We waited till the placenta was delivered to cut the cord, something my doctor said he hadn't seen done in a long time and was very excited about.

Judah is healthy and doing very well. We're working on breast feeding and his latch and just bonding together. His daddy has been an AMAZING support to me and a wonderful father. It melts my heart every time I see my husband with my son. Thank you ALL for the prayers through this journey to our rainbow baby. It's been full of ups and downs from the very beginning, but it was worth every second because it led us to our sweet, sweet boy.