Our New Arrival

It's been over a month since I posted anything, shame on me :P Probably had a lot to do with the fact that I was so very pregnant sitting in a computer chair for long was killer. But here I am now, once again at the computer and with some wonderful news! Our sweet baby James decided to finally arrive! I went into labor at 4:50 a.m. on Saturday, August 13th, 2011 when my water broke. And can I just tell you, the movies deceive you, when you're water breaks its not just a big gush and then you're fine and dandy. No, that stuff keeps gushing. I rode all the way to the hospital with a towel between my legs.

We arrived to the hospital, and so far I wasn't really experiencing any other signs of active labor, my water just kept gushing. When we arrived we got up stairs to Labor & Delivery and what do you know, the hospital had just entered a Code Pink, and the doors were locked! We couldn't be allowed in until the Code Pink was over. Code Pink is when one of the security bracelets on the babies gets messed with, it's to keep people from walking off with a baby that isn't theirs or isn't ready to leave the hospital. So while this Code Pink was going on I sat outside the door in a wheel chair just soaking this towel and my pajama shorts. Thank goodness I wasn't in any pain or I would have been mega cranky. Since I wasn't in any pain I just kept laughing (laughing to keep away my nervousness).

We finally were allowed in, the Code Pink only took about 15 minutes, and they whisked me away to Triage where they checked out the goods. Made sure I was truly leaking amniotic fluid (which was a mega duh for me, but they have to check). Once they determined that my water had indeed broken, they admitted me to the hospital. They had to put an IV in me. Well the tech who was doing my IV tried to put it in the side of my left wrist and blew my vein. This is the lovely bruise that I now have as the result of that:

So after blowing that vein the lady moved and put the IV into my other wrist, but it was right in the side of my wrist and made it hard to do anything with my right hand. So once I was moved into my labor room I requested that they move it to a spot higher up my arm. Boy was that the best decision I could have made! The tech who moved my IV did a great job, it didn't hurt and she put it far enough up my left arm that I hardly knew it was there.

So I ended up being in labor for a total of 13 hours. I toughed through the contractions without any pain meds up until about noon, and then I requested some IV medication. They gave me something and it didn't take the pain away but it made me very sleeping. So baby and I both got a little break for a bit and I took a nice nap. It was crazy, it was definitely a drugged sleep because after the initial pass out, I started to become aware of things, i could hear what people were saying in the room, and could breath my way through my contractions, but I couldn't open my eyes nor could I respond to anything.

Once that medication wore off I came back and my contractions were getting stronger. To the point of tears. So it was I think around 4? maybe closer to 5? that I finally requested an epidural. Sitting for the epidural was the most painful thing in the world, when your body is contracting to push a baby against your cervix it is not meant to sit in an upright hunched over position. Once the epidural was in and taking affect though I felt great. Little did I know though, the epidural was set to high. All I noticed was suddenly a bunch of people started coming in the room and they kept taking my blood pressure over and over again. Apparently my blood pressure had gone from a normal 120/80 (just a random normal blood pressure I don't know the exacts) to suddenly that 80 side of the blood pressure dropping to 19. I should have even been conscious. Granted I was very out of it, and had no idea what was going on. It was at this point the baby's heart rate dropped too, and they were only minutes away from rushing me to the OR for an emergency C-Section. Luckily though they checked my cervix at that point and baby was right there, ready to come out. So they turned down the epidural, which made my blood pressure come back up, and I began pushing.

At 6:09 p.m. my little one came into the world screaming, with eyes wide open. He was perfect, absolutely beautiful and stole my heart right then and there. My first reaction when they put him on my tummy to towel him off was to burst into tears. I had never in my life seen something more beautiful than my little baby boy.

We were in the hospital till Monday afternoon, and boy were we glad to leave. There was very little sleep to be had in the hospital, even when baby was sleeping a doctor or a nurse was coming in every ten minutes to talk to me or check my vitals or check baby's vitals. So once we finally got home and could relax a bit it all seemed to just work. Yes, baby's are fussy and there still isn't much sleep to be had, but it's all sorts of wonderful and I wouldn't trade any of it for the world. Every day I love this little guy more and more, I am one proud mamma.