The Birth Story

Okay, I am finally getting around to writing the birth story of our sweet little boy, Lucas. I always knew motherhood would be exhausting but, holy cow it's exhausting! Pretty much everyday I have felt like a zombie mom, with milk and formula all over me and my hair a complete mess. Such is the life of a new mom I guess!

Warning: It's VERY long...and detailed! So here we go...

The Thursday before Lucas was born, we went in for my 39 week appointment. I talked to my doctor about maybe speeding things along because my mom was coming into town on Sunday and my family is notorious for having big babies (Brynn was 10 lbs!). The doctor felt my stomach and said that he was measuring a little bit big so they went ahead and scheduled a time to be induced at the hospital the following Tuesday. He said that our son was definitely following with the family trait. We were both excited about an actual date when we would get to meet our little man! I had an ultrasound before we left and the technician said I had a lot of amniotic fluid which is why he seemed so big and that he was probably measuring around 7 lbs.

Skip ahead to Sunday, my mom flew into town around 3:45 that afternoon and we picked up my cousin Kelli for dinner that evening. As we were all sitting around, I started feeling like I had menstrual cramps around 8 pm and they were coming and going. My mom looked over at me and asked what was wrong and informed me that that is labor! How was I supposed to know?! Ha. I figured we had some time before it would get to be 5 minute intervals for an hour, but boy was I wrong. My contractions came hard and fast. We headed to the hospital not even thirty minutes after the contractions started and they were much closer than 5 minutes apart.

Smiling in between painful contractions...let's go!

When we got to the hospital, we went up to the front desk to check-in and I was in between contractions so I was still able to talk to the girl there. She probably figured I wasn't actually in labor because she slowly proceeded to take us to an examination room and the nurse didn't even come in for another ten minutes (or at least it seemed so!). When she finally walked in, I was in so much pain and she took us immediately to a delivery room.

Drugged and waiting. :)

I swear when you are in that much pain, everyone seems to be doing their job slowly. The nurse asked if I was an epidural kind of girl and I immediately said yes, any drugs you can give me. First, the nurse gave me a drug to help with the pain before the epidural was put in. It helped a ton. Before it started working, however, every time I had a contraction, she would try to get me to do that "hee-hee-hoo" breathing technique. Um, that just doesn't work when you're in that much pain. She probably was getting frustrated with me, but I didn't really care.

The epidural surprisingly didn't hurt at all. The guy kept saying that this was going to be cold or sting, but it didn't. I'm guessing the drugs the nurse had given me helped with that. At first the epidural wasn't working, so he had to put it in again. Let me tell you, that epidural was amazing. I was dilated to about a 4 at this point so now it was time to wait. I couldn't sleep at all.

An hour later I was at a 6 and after about another hour or so I started really feeling the baby pushing down with each contraction. Around 3 am I was at a 9 and it was almost time to start pushing. I still couldn't sleep because the baby's heartbeat kept dropping and coming back up. Once I actually started pushing, the baby's heartbeat would drop and then come back up, but sometimes we had to give him a break. (We found out later that the cord was partially around his neck). The nurse started getting a little worried and called the doctor in.

My doctor came in and had me push for a bit. He then told us that the baby was slightly transverse and that he wasn't fitting through the canal. He said that he thought there was an 80% chance I would need to have a c-section, but he said that the baby was doing okay for now so he'd be willing to wait for an hour and see if the baby decided to move into the right position. We decided to wait and I prayed so hard that we wouldn't have to have a c-section. Instead of waiting an hour, we waited almost 2 hours because the baby was still doing well. I still couldn't sleep as I listened to his heartbeat drop and come back up. The pressure of him pushing was also very uncomfortable.

Finally my doctor came in around 6:30 am and I pushed some more. Everything became scary very quickly as my doctor declared an emergency c-section. Lots of nurses were in the room getting me prepped to go into the OR. I was scared and worried about our baby. My doctor was frustrated with everyone because they weren't working together well and were slower than he would have liked.

As they were wheeling me to the OR, I started crying. Would I even have a little boy today? I started to feel guilty for deciding to wait and take my chances. Once we were in the room, my doctor was yelling at everyone to hurry up. Thankfully the anesthesiologist was calm and really nice to me. They allowed Jake into the room also once they knew that the baby was stable. I still cried throughout the entire operation. Everything happened so quickly and soon enough I heard our little one screaming at 6:58 am. I was so grateful that he was okay! If anything had happened I know I would have felt responsible for not deciding to just go ahead with the c-section.

There was some meconium in the womb so they didn't even let us see him before they passed him through to the other room to get him cleaned up and make sure he was healthy. Jake was so comforting throughout the whole thing and told me that everything looked good and that our little guy was fine. He then went to see our baby with my mom.

I was sown up and taken to a recovery room. After a little bit, Jake and my mom brought our baby into the room. They put him in my arms and the tears came again. He was so beautiful! I couldn't believe that this day had finally come. We had made this adorable child! We named him Lucas, but were still deciding between two middle names. After a little while we decided on Paul because Jake's Grandpa Andersen's birthday was on March 12th (so close!) and his middle name is Paul also.

The nurses had me try to breastfeed him but I didn't have anything to give. My mom went back to our apartment to sleep and Jake and I tried to sleep as well. Lucas started screaming, however, and we could not get him to calm down. Around 1 pm, my nurse came in and we explained to her that we didn't know why Lucas was crying. I was bawling at this point. After being awake for almost 30 hours, I was completely exhausted. I just wanted to sleep! My nurse just stood there while I cried and offered pretty much NO help. We ended up having her 3 different times throughout my stay and she was not helpful at all. I was frustrated.

Soon after we were taken to the room I would be staying in for the next few days and the nurses took Lucas to the nursery so that we could sleep. FINALLY. We were only able to sleep for about 4 hours before they brought him in to eat. Feeding him was a problem for our entire stay. My milk took several days to come in so we had to feed him formula on me through a syringe or with a bottle. Some of the nurses were really helpful with the feedings but others were not. It was depressing to me that I couldn't feed my baby easily.

We stayed in the hospital for 3 days while I recovered. We had several visitors including our Bishop and his wife, the Roberts, and the Bryans. Lucas was such a good baby and still is! We just love him!

Amy

Sean