We are so happy that our little Max is finally here! To say
we are in love is a huge understatement, and words cannot express how grateful
we are to be his parents.
What follows is the obligatory birth story, so if you’re not
into that, feel free to just skip to the bottom and look at the photos…that’s what you want to see,
right? I’m just writing it out for my own sake, and for any family that may want
to know all of the details, so sorry for the length of this post.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the world's greatest pregnancy. I was so grateful to be pregnant, for sure, and I know that many will never have that opportunity. I loved feeling
him move within me, and I loved knowing that there was a child of God, one of
His spirits, growing inside of me. I had been plagued with migraines for the
majority of my pregnancy, and somewhere around 20 weeks or so I think a
combination of a pulled muscle along with where Max was positioned caused me
extreme pain in my left hip joint. I thought my leg was going to come out of
the socket and I had wicked pains in that hip/leg for the rest of my pregnancy
that made it difficult to walk, get out of bed, move, function, etc. My Doctor
was also watching me closely for signs of Pre-eclampsia and towards the end of
my pregnancy I was doing weekly non stress tests. Thankfully the baby was
healthy as can be, but I was grateful that my due date was only a couple of
weeks out.
About two and a half weeks ago I had another terrible
migraine. I was so nauseated that I couldn’t keep anything down and nothing
seemed to help. My doctor wanted me to do more labs just to make sure
everything was ok. I waited anxiously for the results hoping that everything
looked good. I had not heard anything by Friday, so I called them just to see
if they had gotten the results back. The Doctor called on Friday afternoon to
tell me that my numbers had gone up from the last time I did the pre-eclampsia labs (back in
September), and that he needed me to get to the hospital as soon as I could to
be induced.
This is the point where I started to freak out. I was still
at work, and hadn’t even trained my replacement yet! I hadn’t packed my bags
yet! Mark was at work still! I was going to have a baby! There were so many
thoughts going through my head and it was hard to process everything. We had
just had a Christmas luncheon in the clinic and we celebrated my co-worker
Kalli’s last day, but how did I know that it would be my last day too? I had
been at the MTC for 4 wonderful years, and I couldn’t believe that I was
leaving like this. I was absurdly emotional, to say the least, blubbering my
good-byes to everyone and feeling really guilty to be leaving like that.
Mark got home before I did and he packed up our bags. I
showered and we grabbed some dinner on the way to the hospital. When we got
there we found out that no one knew we were coming, which was the opposite of
what I was told on the phone, and they were crazy busy as it was, so they put
us in a triage room while they did a non stress test and checked me out. I was
at a 1 and 70% effaced, so it wasn’t the worst-case scenario, but I still had a
long ways to go. The on-call Doctor came in and gave me the option to stay, get
things started and have a pretty sleepless night, or go home and start things
the next morning. I was already
exhausted from working all day, so I chose to go home and get some sleep while
I could, and I’m glad I did.
We showed up the next morning and got the process going
around 10am. They stared me on cytotec, a pill that dilates the cervix. After
being on that for 5 hours they checked me again, and I was only at a 2. Bummer!
So I got another dose of cytotec, and they would see how things were
progressing after 4 more hours. Luckily the nurse was able to find some food
for me, since I hadn’t eaten in a long while and I was starving.
At 7pm, the Doctor came to check me again and I was still
only at a 2, so he decided to insert a catheter to help dilate me, which would
fall out once I was at a 3. I was pretty bummed at this point, but I trusted
the Doctor to do what was best to help things progress. After the catheter was
inserted it promptly came out once I stood up to walk around. The Doctor came
back in to insert another catheter and realized that I was at a 3. He must have
stripped my membranes and stirred things up the last time he checked me. I was
really grateful, because I was not looking forward to another catheter. At this
point he broke my water and they started the pitocin and antibiotics, since my
group B strep had come back positive.
After being on the pitocin for about an hour the
contractions were coming on strong and fast. I knew they would only get worse,
and I thought, who am I kidding? Just get the epidural. So I did. And for a
couple of hours it was great. By 11:30 I was only at a 4, and I could feel the
contractions again. I kept pressing my epidural button to get more, but nothing
was happening. The anesthesiologist came and gave me a stronger dose that felt
like the first and it pretty much knocked me out for the time being.
About 2 hours later the contractions woke me up again. Holy
cow were they intense! I pressed the epidural dose button again and again, only
to find that nothing was happening again. I could move my legs pretty well, so
I knew that something was wrong with this epidural. The anesthesiologist came
back and decided to re-do the epidural. Not a pleasant experience.
After re-doing the epidural I could barely move my legs.
After the first one I could move them enough to have the Doctor check me and
move around in bed, but after this one, there was no hope for me to move on my
own. Such a weird feeling! The Doctor checked me and I had finally gotten to 5
cm. I turned over onto my side and tried to get some rest.
Three hours later, at 6:30am, I woke up and felt weird. Like
I knew it was time. I could feel my heart start to beat faster and all of the
nerves in my body were suddenly on edge. I was about to call for the nurse when
she came in. She checked me and said, “It’s time for you to have this baby!”
Commence freak out. It all happened within a minute and I started to cry
because I was so scared about what I was about to do. The nurse reassured me that
all would be well. There was suddenly all manner of commotion in our room. Mark
had to wake up and I was shouting commands at him to get his phone and my
camera so he could take pictures while the nurses were paging the Doctor (who
I’m sure was sleeping while I was!) and turning on those giant bright
lights.
The Doctor came, got everything ready, and it was finally
time to start pushing. Apparently Mark was a little dehydrated and suddenly
thought that he was going to pass out and he couldn’t hold my leg anymore. Ha.
My first thought was “Seriously?” I think that’s what I ended up saying to him.
I’m pushing a tiny human out of my body, and concentrating on my breathing and you’re the one who’s going to pass out?
He sat down in between contractions, but still managed to be helpful.
25 minutes of pushing later Max was born. The Doctor put him
on my chest, and my first thought was, “It’s a mini-Mark!” He looked just like
his father, and he was so perfect, this tiny child of God. He didn’t start
crying right away, he was just whimpering a little so they took him from me and
had to clean out his lungs. They weighed him and brought him back to me and he
was still having problems breathing so they took him again after Mark took a
few pictures of us. The nurses took him up to the nursery and had to call a
respiratory specialist just to make sure everything was ok. I was still being
stitched up and going through after-birth stuff so Mark called me from the
nursery to tell me that everything was alright, and that his lungs were great.
That was a relief!
Soon after, we were moved down to the recovery room. Mark
got our little Max from the nursery to join us, and we’ve been in adoration of
him ever since. I can't believe that it's already been 2 weeks since he was born, and I feel like he's already changed so much from when he was first born. He is so sweet and we are enjoying his presence in our home. We have definitely learned that there is a huge learning curve when bringing home a newborn, and it has been quite the adjustment over at our home. It's by far the hardest but most rewarding thing I have ever done, but we are learning lots of patience and his gassy smiles, baby hiccups and baby sneezes have made it all worth it.
