My doctor had been monitoring me for Pre-Ecclampsia for a few weeks before my due date. My blood pressure had been slowly creeping up and she was concerned about it. I was going to the hospital twice a week for non-stress tests, which all looked good. At 38 weeks, the doctor decided it was best if they induced me early, but my insurance required me to work up through Nov. 3, so we scheduled the induction for Nov. 4. In the meantime, I called my insurance again and they told me that I only needed to work until the 1st, which took a load off of my shoulders. I had my normal prenatal on Thursday, the 3rd and my blood pressure had spiked up higher than any previous appt, so we decided it was best to start the induction that day, instead of waiting until Friday. I was super surprised by this, as was my boss when I got back to work and told him I had to go to the hospital asap! I arranged for my mom to pick up Jacob from daycare, had lunch with my boss and headed home to get my bags. I got to the hospital a little after 1 PM. Dustin was scheduled to work until 5, so he was frantically trying to find someone to work for him so he could meet me at the hospital. It took a while to get checked in, but they started me on Pitocin about 2:30.
Dustin and I took a Hypnobirthing class, which is a form of deep relaxation to use during labor. My intention with the hypnobirthing was not to labor without medication, but to help me handle the contractions before medication. I do think that if I were able to labor without medication, hypnobirthing would be the way to do it, but that's another story. I knew that the pitocin would make my labor more intense, so Dustin and I started our relaxation right away. The nurse told me that we would wait until my contractions were in a regular pattern then the resident would come in and break my water. I figured this would take a while...boy was I wrong! It took about an hour or so. The relaxation worked really well for this part of my labor, it worked best when Dustin was there helping me. The resident doctor was not able to come break my water, so my regular doctor came over from the clinic to break it for me. I knew that this would make the contractions worse, but I had been handling it ok, so on we went. I wouldn't say the contractions were painless, I didn't really notice them because I wasn't paying attention to them. I would look at the monitors and 3 contractions had gone by, I really only noticed 1 of them. I think that's pretty cool. After my water was broken, the contractions got really intense. I was able to keep my upper body relaxed, but I started to notice my legs were shaking and extremely tense. I knew that if I wasn't able to relax my lower body, I would not be able to have this baby without an epidural. After a few tries, I had Dustin get the nurse. I was dilated 5 cm by this point. I asked for the epidural. When I had Jacob, I was bawling because of pain and didn't even feel the epidural. Since I was calm this time, the epidural was the most painful thing I had experienced. I didn't know this before, but epidurals are effected by gravity, the medicine flows down to the side of your body that is down. I was feeling a lot of pain in my hip, I figured it was because it wasn't the side that was down. The nurse was supposed to come in and help me move every 1/2 hr, the first time she came in to move me, I was having a lot of pain, so she had me push the button for more meds. She decided to check me again and I was at a 9.5! Holy cow, I was shocked! She ran out to call my doctor and I pushed the pain button again. It took everyone about 1/2 hr to get ready for the baby to come. I didn't want to do forced pushing, so I decided to do my own version of it. I was starting my 3rd contraction when my doctor yells "stop pushing!" and Derek flew into the world. I could tell immediately that he was smaller than Jacob, but I wasn't prepared for how small.
Derek had a knot in his umbilical cord. My doctor loosened it up a bit so he could get some more blood before they cut the cord. I had said for months that I didn't feel like this baby moved enough in the womb. I figured I was just too busy to notice, chasing a 3 yr old and working full time as I was. When I stopped to count his movements, there were plenty of them, so my doctor wasn't worried. After I found out about the knot in his cord, I truly feel that the Lord was holding my baby, tell him not to move too much. If that knot had tightened too much, he would have died. I am so grateful for this healthy little boy, he has brought a spirit into our home and family that we could never replace.
I couldn't believe that I only had a 4 hour labor, it was so fast that I barely had time to get used to the idea that I was having my baby that day. I am glad it was fast though. Derek had very little swelling, no weird head shapes and I recovered extremely fast. Since Derek was so small, he had borderline blood sugar, so they kept us in the hospital 2 days to monitor his blood sugar levels. Everything checked out well and we were able to go home around lunch on Saturday. I really missed Jacob, so we were able to spend some time together. Compared with Derek, Jacob seemed like a giant! A really noisy giant. I spent the first few days shushing Jacob around the baby, but then I realized that Derek was not jumping to Jacobs noises, he wasn't even fazed. I stopped worrying after that. We are so happy to have Derek come into our family and we are excited to celebrate the holidays together.
