I'm Baaaack!

Hi ladies! Sorry to keep you all waiting.

YES, I finally have my little man in my arms instead of in my tummy, and he is so precious.

Birth story:

Sunday morning (9/23) at 5:15am I woke up to got to the bathroom. I was a bit crampy as usual, but since that was normal for my semi nightly bathroom trips, I didn't think anything of it. Well, on the way to the bathroom my water broke. I was terrified and excited because I knew it was my shot at the VBAC I wanted. I hopped in and took a quick shower while DH woke up DS, and called SIL for her official baby duty. Then we called L&D to let them know we were on our way. Between my shower and getting ready I felt a few mild contractions, but nothing major.

about 6:15 we arrived at L&D and went to triage, they put us in an exam room and we waited about 20min to be hooked up to the monitors, and another 15-20 minutes for a CNM to come in and examine me. The monitors showed steady contractions about 4min apart, but they weren't a big deal to me. the nurses kept telling me I was doing a great job handling them, which boosted my morale. I figured they wouldn't say that if it didn't look like they were strong contractions, right? So, CNM checks me, and I'm dilated to 3-4cm! She  took the swab to check if my water did actually rupture. She came back a while later and told me that my contractions and dilation alone were enough to admit me so they were prepping a room. But she also confirmed that the slide showed amniotic fluid.

So....game on! I was officially in labor! They had me walk over to my room, and immediately hooked me back up to the monitors and got an IV line in for fluids. By 9 am the contractions were very regular and only 2-3min apart, and getting stronger. by 9:30 I was in tears and with the frequency of the contractions I was not getting much down time in between, so I asked for the epidural. By 10am, I was golden. The epi didn't slow down the contractions at all, but I barely felt them...only pressure, and a bit of a back ache. The nurse guessed we'd have the baby around 4pm at the rate we were going. by noon I was at 6cm, and at 2pm I was between 8-9. At 4pm I was fully dilated, but baby had not dropped down into my pelvis. At 4:30 I developed a fever, so I was started on antibiotics. at 5:05 the nurse had me start laboring down to see if I could push the baby down. At 6:30 I hadn't made any progress despite my attempts (which they said I was pushing properly). At this point, the docs (the one that had been watching me and the new one coming on shift) and nurses all agreed I should do the RCS. They said that as long as I had been in labor and attempting to push with no progress I could still keep trying, but I was at the stage where I had already put in so much energy just tryong to get the baby to move down that it most likely wouldn't be effective any more.

I looked at DH and we both just kind of nodded. 13 hours of labor(no food since the night before) and the baby wasn't even dropping, it was time to get him out. It wasn't what I wanted, but at 7:19pm little man was born. 9lbs 2oz, and 22in long! No wonder he wouldn't get into my pelvis, he wouldn't fit!

DH went off with LO while the surgeons finished up with me, and when
I was wheeled into the recovery room, DH was waiting for me, having skin on skin time with LO, JUST like I had requested in my birth plan. Then they gave the baby to me for skin on skin time. since he was so big they checked his blood sugar levels several times, and it was dropping, they suddenly asked me if I had tried to feed him yet, and in my new mommy daze I had totally forgotten to put him to breast, so we did that, and his sugars levelled.

Now we;re home and recouping well. all are healthy and hapy and he is such a marvelously quiet baby, he only fusses when he's hungry, and he nirses like a champ. We couldn't be happier.