The day you were born

This is what happened the day you were born:

On the morning of August 23rd Daddy and I went to the hospital for my scheduled induction. We left the house around 7:00 a.m. and by 8:30 a.m. I was laying in a hospital bed with my water broke and already on pitocin. I was already 3 cm dilated and almost completely effaced so we expected that everything would progress pretty smoothly. The contractions started coming pretty regular, they definitely did not feel like menstrual cramps, the pain was not comparable to any other pain I have had, but it was bearable. Grandma came into the labor room probably around 4:00 p.m, and that's when the contractions started getting really bad, I would have been able to breathe through the pain if they weren't piggy backing each other, but since it was one right after the other, I started feeling sick to my stomach and thought I was going to throw up several times. By this time I decided I wanted the epidural, so they sent the in the dr and by 5:00 p.m. I had just a little pain, for some reason the epi wasn't working in one side. Now, when they had checked me at 3:45 I was 4 cm dilated, which is why they said the epi was a go ahead without checking me first. Right after the epi was in (which by the way did not hurt going in) they checked me again and I had progressed in an hour to 8 cm!! Had I know that I might have tried to tough it out and not gotten the meds. After that everything slowed down for awhile. Between 5:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. I dilated to 10 cm and baby was at station 2, we were ready to push. I was sincerely enjoying the whole experience, even the bad contractions weren't nearly as bad as I had imagined them and I was just so overjoyed at the prospect at meeting my little man. Also, as a side note, I was one of those people who was mortified at the thought of lots of people seeing my goods down yonder, I thought I would feel all modest... yeah, when it came down to it, my legs were in the air, wide open andI didn't give a rats behind who saw me. Okay, back to pushing. I gave a couple practice pushes and my doctor was satisfied that I was using the right muscles and so she gave the go ahead for my epidural to be lowered so I could feel the contractions better. As soon as that happened we were good to go. I pushed for close to three hours, the doc had checked me a few times during this, and then she dropped a bomb on me. I still hadn't progressed, baby was still at station 2 and she was certain I was pushing correctly, and I know I was giving it all I had. She said I could go for another half an hour and after that we would have to discuss a c-section. I was definitely not graceful about telling her I didn't want a section, so she said just do my best and we would talk in half an hour. So I pushed with all of my might for the next half hour, cried my eyes out, prayed to God to please let me push my baby out naturally, and then his heart rate dropped to 60. Gavin had been having a bit of a struggle the whole day. His heart rate would drop into the low 100's with every contraction, but they weren't overly concerned, but when he dropped to 60 and wasn't coming back up, all hell broke loose. Ladies, I wasn't the calm cool collected woman I would love to say I was. I panicked, I was grasping for Robs hand, I was crying hysterically, I was terrified something was going to happen to my little boy and I was scared for myself as well. I'm almost ashamed at how hysterical I got. They gave me a shot of morphine in the arm and wheeled me into the OR. Gavin was born at 10:06 p.m. He had the cord wrapped around his neck twice. I am so grateful he was healthy and that we got him out on time. I don't know what I woudl have done if he wasn't okay. He weighed in at an even 7lbs and was 19 1/2 inches long. When I got into the recovery room they brought him to me and I was able to try to breastfeed, he made my heart burst and latched on right away and fed with no problems. Here are some pictures of his first night out in the world.