Ethan James Birth Story – Dec 30th, 2018
I woke up late Sat night at about 11:45pm with painful
contractions. I got up a bit trying to
figure out what to do with myself. I
laid back down and started counting the time between contractions and after an
hour of them being 1 minute in length and 5 minutes apart I decided it was time
to wake up Ben. Then I re-packed my
hospital bag since I had previously included all sorts of Christmas outfits 😊 Then I called my doctor and let her know I
was heading into the hospital. We left
the house at 1:30am and drove over. We
were admitted into Triage and of course the contractions slowed down. When I was checked I was 4 cm dilated around
2:30am. They said I wasn’t super far
along, but given it was my third things could go fast. Additionally, since I was group Strep B
positive they wanted to get the antibiotics in my at least 4 hours before
delivery. They hooked up an IV tap to do
so. After they got it in, I looked over
at Ben and his face was white and he said he felt faint. I told the doc and they laid him on the
ground and got him a Sierra Mist to drink.
Haha. After about 10 minutes he
seemed a lot better. They did a quick
ultrasound to make sure baby was still head down, which he was. Then we got set up in a labor and delivery
room at 3:30am. They got the antibiotics
administered I was informed to just try to rest since they didn’t want to force
anything along before 7:30am since that would be 4 hours after the
antibiotics. I rested for a little bit,
but by 6am, the contractions were coming closer together and super painful. They were starting to come on top of each
other. At 6:15am Dr. Okorn came in and
said since they were doubling up, it could indicate a less than ideal
head/birth position so to even them out she said it was time to break my water. They broke my water and I was 7cm
dilated. I was having very intense
contractions and back labor. My whole
body was shaking. Since I didn’t have
much of a ramp up to this intense laboring, it was difficult, and I was so
exhausted already. I decided to get an
epidural. They put it in at 6:35am. By 6:45am I felt the need to push, they
checked me and I was 9.5cm. By 7:30am I
was pushing. It was nearly impossible to
push effectively because everything was numb.
I was having a really difficult time.
I could feel the pressure of the contractions, but could not direct my
efforts to push him out. At 7:45am, they
turned off the epidural so I could feel it.
That helped a lot, but it was still a totally different experience with
the epidural since so much was numb. His
head was in the birth canal for a while hanging out. Finally I was able to push him out at
8:11am. He immediately pooped, and it
got everywhere! It took him what felt
like forever to cry, but eventually he did.
He’s a healthy and happy boy!
8:11 8lbs 6.2 oz 21in long 13.75 head
