My showers were wonderful. Mom and Kendra threw me one close to our house for my family and friends. Evan got so many clothes it was unreal! I got lots of useful things and even got our glider from my parents. That filled his room up very quickly...aside from his furniture that we waited a little too long for my comfort to get! The nice thing about this is that Dustin's office all went in and got us a gift card to JC Penny which covered nearly half the cost of the set! Then the teachers at school threw me a shower and pitched in for his car seat/stroller combo. That was totally unexpected! How generous! I also had a shower given to me by Becky and some of my circle of friends that I have this year combined with last years that got moved to another building, and a kindergarten teacher had her class throw me a shower...both of these showers I was given toys, clothing, and even a "wee-blocker" to prevent the pee fountains! haha. Lots of fun!! I was not expecting the generosity of people and was a little overwhelmed. How nice of people I surround myself with!!!
The rest of my pregnancy was trying to scramble to get his room finished and get things ready at school for my long term sub. Boy is that a lot of work! My head is still spinning as I think of things I forgot to do for my sub!!! Thank goodness for modern technology- the phone, and the internet! Life savers! Dustin worked so hard on the wood work (with a little help getting started from my dad) and he did almost all of the painting! I am so proud of him, the room looks amazing (at least in my opinion!) Here are some pictures of his room finished:
My due date was April 5th. I was crossing my fingers that Evan would join our family for Easter, but his presence was quietly hiding within my belly still that night. The next day we had my weekly dr. appointment. Dustin went with me, of course, to figure out the next course of action.Obviously, we didn't want to do an early induction, but at this point we know he's full term. The downside of this appointment was that my blood pressure was high and my proteins were high, so they wanted me to go to the hospital and get tested for preclampsia. Was this supposed to be of comfort?? If they showed any signs, they were going to have to induce me that night for the safety of both me and the baby. (Luckily, everything came out fine...except that I was scared out of my mind!) On the flip-side, the dr. said that if I did not have the baby that night, she felt the best idea would be to induce me later that week. Because that wasn't really what we wanted the birth to be like, we did our best to put it off. Her on call days are Wednesdays, but she happens to be at the hospital we wanted to go to on Thursdays. After further discussion she pointed out that if it were earlier in the pregnancy, she'd be fine with waiting, but at this point, knowing for sure he is over due (my original due date if my body functioned like a typical womans, would have been March 31, but I felt, and his first ultra sound showed that he would be due April 5th), we would just be waiting for something to go wrong...such as this preclampsia I was showing signs of.
My induction was scheduled for Wednesday, April 7th at 9pm. Dustin did some research for me, and after reading all of these other women's stories I was expecting to go in there and take it easy for the night, get a good nights rest, wake up and get to work........... not so much.
After dropping Tango off at my parents, Dustin and I went to grab a bite to eat for dinner. I needed something to calm my nerves and I'd heard they'd starve me at the hospital. It didn't really work. We went to Fazoli's where they somehow forgot to process our order so we sat for entirely too long before Dustin finally said something. They felt bad (the manager was the one that took our order, and she saw my overly sized belly, I'm sure it doesn't feel too good to be starving a very preggo lady!) And decided to make it up to us by giving Dustin an extra slice of pizza, a ton of breadsticks, and changing my fettuccine alfredo for a family size. What was I going to do with a family sized portion!?!? I was so nervous I barely even put a dent in it. Needless to say we had a ton of leftovers which we put in the trunk to smuggle in later if need be. Flash forward to the future, we ...no, I... discovered this still in the trunk last week (three weeks later) .... gross.
We got to the hospital a half hour late. Is it normal to be late for your own baby's birth? They didn't seem too bothered. In fact, apparently a lot of babies decided they wanted to be born that night and they didn't have enough nurses on hand to do much, so we sat in the waiting room until about 11:30 at night. Did I mention that I'm normally in bed by this time?
Finally, they get us to my room, ask some questions, get my IV in and all that jazz. I'm thinking, "OK, time to get some rest, gotta get up early for a long day tomorrow!" 12:30 in the morning rolls around and they tell me they are going to start dilating me with this balloon (which they show to me and it's nearly 2 feet long. No, I'm not kidding, I wish I was.) WHAT?!? Luckily they don't put much of it actually inside. Thank the holy Lord! But we will say that not nice things were rolling through my head. Not to mention, this was probably as close to as painful as labor as you're gonna get. Not cool. I thought I was supposed to be sleeping!!! NURSE!!! Yep, roll in the meds. ahhhh... nothing beats loopy and sleepy! not even 2 hours later (this can take up to 6 hours) I'm 4 centimeters- rolling right along! Sweet, maybe I'll have my baby sooner than I thought...and what about that well needed rest? The meds let me go in and out of bits of sleep, that was nice, what was not nice was the nurses and dr.'s coming in and waking me up to check my progress. Boooo!
Around 4 am my doctor called in just to check on me. I wonder if she was worried, or if she was woken up by someone else, as it was her on call night....Sweet nonetheless.
5am. I am finally 5 centimeters, time to break my water. Oh how scary, this is for real now! Of course, Dustin is sleeping and the dr. is chuckling at him for his sleep mask and all haha...almost immediately I go into full on hard labor. All I really remember was doing my breathing exercises alone and getting really ticked off about it...when out of nowhere during a contraction I hear Dustin's sleepy voice saying "you're doing great, dear". Probably not great timing. I replied, in what I can only imagine was my "friendliest voice" : "yeah, you are too." I think he took the hint, he was by my side after that ;o)
I don't think it was much longer after that when I demanded an epidural. To all of you women who plan on having a baby, this really is the way to go! You don't get any prizes for sucking up this pain, why bother trying? The epidural didn't hurt too bad. That or labor was just worse and distracted me enough. After that it was smooth sailing! I couldn't feel a single thing. Sure, the nurses had to flop my legs around for me, but that sure as heck beats the feeling of your whole body squeezing your guts out! Plus, I was again able to get a few more short naps in here and there.
About every half hour to hour nurses and dr.s checked in on me to see if I had made any progress. Nothing. 9am, nothing, 11 am, nothing.
What was going on? Is my baby OK? His heart is still beating on the monitor, what's the deal? I thought I'd have my baby in my arms by now! The nurse at this point informs me that my dr. has been in touch and she feels they may have to start thinking about a C-section (the very last thing I wanted) she shows me his heartrate and how it shows that he's getting really tired of this process, and the dr. is slightly concerned about this, but is willing to give it a little longer.
My dr. walks into my room to check on my progress, I felt better knowing she was there, unfortunately she didn't have great news for me. Still no progress. Sure enough, it was time to give in. He wouldn't come down any further. He hadn't in the past month. They said they could dilate me more, but there'd be no point if he wouldn't decend. C-section it is. They scheduled it at 1:30, and I was able to sleep a little more. They had me all unhooked from the monitors and ready to go at 1:30, but for some reason my dr. was late. My parents came in to see me before they wheeled me off for the surgery. I was not feeling so good. Sure enough as soon as they left the room, I got sick. They gave me some medication for the uneasy stomach feeling, obviously, it didn't work. As they took me to the O.R., I remember saying "wheee" to try to hide the fact that I was sooo scared! As soon as I got to the O.R. and they were hooking me back up, I had to get sick again. Once the monitors started running they said "no wonder you were so sick, your blood pressure really dropped." Great. Once they gave me some medication to bring my blood pressure back up, they gave me some more stomach medication, and more numbing medicine to numb me higher, then they let Dustin in. My saving grace. Everything is sort of a blur from here. I remember the cloth hanging between my face and my belly as blue. Or was it green? Either way, I couldn't feel anything from my ribs down except pushing, pulling, and yes, pain. How? Don't ask me. It wasn't the pain of the surgery (thank God!) just the pain of three people trying to get my little guy out safely. Dustin, my angel sent from above, spent the whole time six inches from my face talking to me and trying to keep my mind off of what was going on. I love him. The next thing I knew I heard them talking about a big baby. Whatever. Who knows what they mean by that. Then I hear "wow! 10 pounds!" "You've got to be kidding me!" no, really, I seriously thought they were! But they weren't. 10 lbs, and 22 inches. Time of birth 2:18pm. They washed him up a little bit and let Dustin hold him next to me. I wish I could have seen straight. I couldn't really see much. I saw he had hair, but that's all I remember aside from them snapping a quick picture and at some point jerking myself awake thinking what on earth was I thinking drifting off. Actually, I don't know at what point that was....
After that they took him off to test his sugars, they were worried about them with his size and all. They were fine. I don't remember the ride back to the recovery room. I do remember it felt like forever that I sat alone in silence not knowing what was going on with my baby. Dustin finally came in and told me about his blonde hair, and bright pretty blue eyes, I couldn't wait to get my hands on him. He was so beautiful! The nurse told me how good it was that I went for a C section, and told me some of the things that might have happened had I not. Glad I did.
He is perfect. Every pound, and every inch. I couldn't love him more! We look forward to sharing our stories with you as he grows. I've told him of all the exciting adventures he will get to go on- the zoo, waterparks, beaches....He's really excited! :o) So are his parents.
Evan James - April 8, 2010:
My 2 most precious gifts from God... 
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ReplyDeleteDena, Thank you so much for sharing your birth story! Tamara
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