Best day of my life-my birth story

I was 40 weeks and 5 days pregnant on February 6th, when I went out to eat Mexican with a few friends.I had been to the doctor's office that morning and had scheduled an inductin for Monday February 9th, but I REALLY didn't want that to happen so I was going to try everything that weekend to go into labor on my own. That night,  I poured hot salsa all over everything I ate. We got home around 8 and ate ice cream and watched tv. Around 10 I started to feel some gas pains...which I thought was normal from the Mexican food. Around 11, the gas pains started to hurt and no gas was coming out,so my husband and I decided to time the 'gas' on contractionmaster.com.

My husband was a little drunk from the beers at dinner, so he was no help with this and pretty much slept the whole time anyway. Around midnight I finally decided this was labor. From midnight to 2 am I took a shower, got dressed and packed some more stuff-the contractions were coming quick by then-about 3 minutes apart-and it took me forever to do these things! We finally got in the car and went to the hospital.

 I was so happy once I made it to the labor room around 2:30am. The nurse checked me and I was 7 cm dilated! I couldn't believe it. I asked for some medication-anything really-and the nurses just sort of ignored me.So I started to get all whiny and crying and one of the nurses just set me straight telling me that it was way too late for medicine and that I was going to be all right delivering my baby naturally. I was terrified for a minute, but then I realized that I had to do this to get the baby here. I felt like I was on a roller coaster-it was crazy!  My water broke right after that. The doctor who was on call had to drive to the hospital from home, so we had to wait a little bit to push.

The nurse was awesome and got me through the contractions-breathing was the key! Once the doctor got there (around 3:50 am), my husband held one leg and the nurse held the other, and I pushed so hard. I actually pushed through the pain, until it felt like relief or something. They were trying to tell me how to push, but instinct came over me and I just pushed the way I wanted. The doctor was like-shut up everyone and let her push-she is doing great! My son was born at 4:10 a.m. He weighed 8lbs 7oz and was 22 in long. I only had one stitich. I think I was in shock after this because I was shaking so bad once I finally got to hold him. I have never felt so happy in my life.

I NEVER planned on doing this without an epidural, but now that I did,I feel like I can't wait to do it again!Isn't that crazy?

The day Jake was born, they discovered that his glucose levels were very low. He stayed in the nursery for the next two days (my husband and I didn't leave his side) with an IV of saline and glucose. He was given many tests to see what was wrong-including a spinal tap to rule out menangitis. They pricked his foot every two hours to see if his glucose levels had stabilized. They didn't. They were inconsistently up and down for two days. On Monday night, the doctors at the hospital decided to move him to a different hospital with a NICU. We were terrified, but knew it was the right decision to move him. Jake had his first car ride in an ambulance and stayed at the NICU for 4 days. I never cried so much in my life. It was an awful feeling coming home without my baby and to see my baby go through so much. My heart still hurts thinking about it.  

Because of my 'easy' delivery and only 1 stitch, I wasn't too uncomfortable so I was able to travel back and forth each day to be with him at the NICU. On the 4th day, everything had stabilized and we were able to take him home! The doctors think I had undetected gestational diabetes (even with the test I had done at 6 months pregnant) and it caused my baby's pancreas to not be able to process glucose once he was born on his own.

Jake is 16 lbs 1 oz and 10 weeks old-he's doing great! Thanks for listening to my story!!