Remembering Jack's Arrival

The day before Jack's birthday, I thought I would share the story of Jack's arrival, since it all began one year ago today.One year ago today...

I had scheduled a half day of vacation for my birthday. I worked from home in the morning, just attending a few virtual meetings and getting some work done. I was 11 days away from my due date. 5 days earlier, at my last doctor visit, we were advised that the baby was nowhere near ready to come and I should anticipate going beyond my due date. Both Stuart and I had expressed some concern about that due to the baby's size. (My doctor estimated that Jack was already about 8 lbs.) She agreed to schedule an ultrasound the next week to see if she could get a more accurate read on his size to see if I might need to be induced at some point. (I was really fearful of giving birth to a 10 lb baby!)

I had a leisurely afternoon, taking a long shower, doing my hair, having a pedicure, all in anticipation of going out for a birthday dinner with Stuart. We were going out for Mexican food. (My favorite and something Stuart doesn't care for at all, so it was a special treat.) We were having a great time at the restaurant, and Stuart was being very complimentary (I think you have to be with a woman who is 8 and 1/2 months pregnant; it's the law or something.) We even joked with the waiter about the tableside guacamole and asked him to make it extra spicy to help encourage me to go into labor. We talked with a family at the next table briefly about the anticipation of the baby to come. I decided to go to the bathroom before our dinner arrived since I knew I would have to go soon enough anyway and I didn't want to interrupt our meal. On the way to the bathroom, my water broke! (The waiter apparently did a great job with that guacamole!) I was in the bathroom for a very long time, trying to clean up, but it really was difficult as I didn't realize the flow of water just wouldn't stop...no one told me about that! Apparently, while I was gone, the couple at the next table expressed concern to Stuart that I had been in the bathroom for awhile. When I came out I calmly told Stuart that my water had broken and we would have to go. Stuart was extremely excited and told everyone around what had happened and why we had to leave. (Even strangers at other tables as we walked out the door!) This was about 6pm.

As a side note: the restaurant charged us for dinner we had ordered that had not arrived. We never even got to eat it! Needless to say, that wasn't very nice of them!

Anyway, I had only had a contraction or two, but nothing severe and finally convinced Stuart that we had time to drive home and get our bags before going to the hospital. Stuart was hysterical at the house, running around in a frenzy. (He had been through this before and I hadn't so it was comical that I was the calm one!)

At the hospital, I was told that my contractions were only 10 minutes apart (I really couldn't feel them, I swear!) so they asked us to walk around the hospital all night to get things moving along. Even as they got more frequent, they really weren't bad. Finally, after about 4 hours, they decided to give me pitocin to speed up the contractions. Woah baby! I felt the contractions then! They wanted to wait on the epidural until I was further along, but after hearing me for about 2 hours after getting the pitocin, they decided the epidural was in order! Can I say how much I loved the epidural?! (Of course, it did make me throw up the guacamole, so that wasn't fun!) Stuart and I both slept through most of my labor that night. (as much as I could anyway, it is surprisingly hard to sleep when your legs are completely numb.)

The next morning they said I was only dilated to 4 cm and still had quite a bit of time. For some reason, however, moving from 4 to 10 took no time at all and I was ready to go at about 10am. My doctor happened to be down the hall for a scheduled c-section with another patient. They let her know that I was ready to push. She said it was my first and it would take awhile, so she was going back to the office and would return for the delivery. They turned down the epidural just enough so I could feel pressure, but no pain. (I have to say how great they were at this hospital. I couldn't have had a more pain-free delivery.) In fact, I would tell the nurse when I thought I was having a contraction, and she would confirm it on the monitor for each push. The pushing went so well, that after 20 minutes, they asked me to stop so they could get the doctor back to the hospital. So, we waited for the doctor before I resumed. (all in all, less than 45 minutes of pushing!) I had heard horror stories about pushing, with the epidural being too weak, allowing you to feel everything or too strong and you couldn't really push well, but they did a great job there!

Baby Jack arrived at 11:05am. He was beautiful, little cone head and all. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and one of his arms, so he was a little blue, but perfect.

It was certainly my most memorable birthday!