Noah's Birth Story

i know its late, but I've been updating lots of stuff in keepsake books and my blog that I forgot to update stuff on here.

I started having contractions at 2pm on January 27, 2015. They were about 10-15 min apart, and I could definitely tell that these were the real thing. My husband was still at work but would be done at 3 so I didn't bother him. I got out the exercise ball and bounced on it till he got home, and he was pretty excited when I told him I thought this was it. I laboured at home on my ball and in the shower until my contractions were three minutes apart. My contractions basically stayed at 10-15 min apart till suddenly around 7pm they were about 3-5 min apart and then all of a sudden they shortened to 1-3 min apart and we headed to the hospital (which for us was only a few blocks away) at 9pm.

We got to emerge and headed up to the delivery wing to get checked, we were 4 cm, so they put us in a room. My contractions were definitely close together and strong at this point. I bounced on a ball and walked around a bit. My husband helped rub my back and my friend, who was doing her preceptor for her RN came to be my second person. I went in the shower where my friend provided counter pressure during contractions...my husband wasn't quite sure what to do, but stepped in when needed. They broke my water at about 1am and I still wasn't dilated anymore. The contractions were super intense though after they broke my water, it was harder to focus. I went back in the shower which did help a bit. I was getting super nauseous and throwing up, so I took some ginger ale. I lasted about thirty minutes on the ball, and as much as I didn't want to labor lying down, I was so tired I went and tried to labor with my hands up on the incline if the bed while kneeling, but I was shaking so much and tired, I ended up lying on my left side, and then just on my back. I was shaking so much through and between contractions, I couldn't relax. They checked me at 3:00am and I was still only 4-5cm. I could not relax to dilate anymore. We tried morphine, but it did nothing...so we opted for the epidural in hopes that it would help me relax.

I am afraid of needles, and so is my husband. He couldn't be in the room, but my friend was able to be in there.. It was so hard to stay still as I was still shaking...and I had my contractions so close together that I had one while the anesthesiologist was putting it in. It definitely hurt, and I hated getting it...but it was so worth it to not be shaking. I was able to rest for a little bit.

At four am the hospital had a planned power outage. Which was fine...nothing exciting was happening.

At 4:30am I felt some intense pressure, bordering on painful even with the epidural. I felt like I needed to push. The nurse checked me and I was 10 cm!! I pushed a total of six times and my LO was delivered! My husband saw a little more than he wanted to see from the head of the bed, but didn't fall over. We were so excited the labor was over! However, he was not breathing. They cut the cord, and moved him to the baby station. Remember that power outage? Well the oxygen and the incubator was working, but there was one piece of equipment I guess that they didn't need to resuscitate my baby with that wasn't working, and one of the nurses was saying over and over, it's not working. So I of course was sobbing and in tears, and it was the longest five minutes of my life, until Noah started crying.

I was definitely a mess when they passed him to me. He was so perfect though with his grumpy old man face. 7 lbs 7 oz. and 21.5 in long. He was born at 5:14am. I can't describe how elated and tired and emotional I felt! It was definitely worth everything we'd gone through to get to meet this little person ☺️

I ended up with a first degree year, but that was it and we were discharged on the 29th. Noah picked up on breastfeeding very well. We wanted to stay an extra night, but we had a shared room and our roommates baby was jaundiced so it was super bright from the incubator thing, and when her baby or my baby weren't crying, she was snoring like a foghorn! Suffice it to say, when she said she was staying another night, we were out of there.

It was so great to take our little guy home and we had so many friends and family supporting us.