"The Story"

Beware, it's a little long!

As most of you know, we thought this little guy was going to be born pretty early. At 36 weeks I was dilated to a 3, the baby seemed to be dropping and my cervix was thinning. My OB told me to take it easy to try and keep him in until at least 37 weeks so he wouldn't be premature. My work was very accommodating and allowed me to work half days and had the nurse covering my maternity leave come in for training so I didn't have to do as much work. At 37 weeks I was dilated to a 4 and 80% effaced. The doctor said she expected to see me in the hospital in the next few days. I continued to take it easy so he could grow. We were starting to get anxious at this point and wondering when he would make his appearance. At 38 weeks (Tuesday) I was dilated to a 5. My OB said she thought I would probably have him that night and was faxing my chart info the the hospital so they would be ready for me. She told me not to worry about scheduling an appt for the next week. When Matthew got home we took a long walk and I was having a lot of contractions and back pain. We waited a few hours then took Brayli to my parents house to stay the night just in case. By Thursday I still hadn't had him so I called and scheduled a 39 week appt for the following Tues. I made it to my appt and was dilated to a 6!!!! We talked about inducing the next day. Then the Dr said the earliest the hospital would allow her to induce would be at midnight when I was considered 39 weeks. She offered to go in that night and said she functions best between 10pm and 4am. We thought what the heck, may as well. She basically guaranteed we'd have a baby by 3am. (Her previous predictions had been wrong though but she ended up only being a couple hours off.) We took Brayli to my parents around 7 then went back home so I could eat a light dinner and take a nap.

11:14 We stopped to get Taco Bell for Matthew. (I took one bite.) Then we stopped at his work to get his laptop. I wanted to go park at the hospital and let him eat there but he decided to park and some soccer fields by his work instead.

11:33 Matthew put the car in reverse and a spot light came on. We had the interior light on so Matthew could eat and didn't realize there was a POLICE CAR behind us! I was starting to stress out and told Matthew he should have listened to me and parked at the hospital. The cop came up very slowly and asked what brought us to the park at such a late hour? Matthew told him we were actually on our way to the hospital to have a baby but stopped to eat first. The cop said, "Well go have a baby then!" and let us go. Wow! That was lucky!

11:50 We got to the hospital and they thought we weren't coming until the next night but got things going pretty quickly.

12:20 Dr Hughes broke my water. They were expecting things to happen quickly and started getting the scale and baby bed warm and ready.

12:45 I got sublingual Cytotec to help induce labor.

3:00 Contractions finally getting stronger and more frequent. I was dilated to almost an 8 and they said it was too late for the IV pain med so it was either all natural, an intrathecal (shot in my back), or epidural. The intrathecal only lasts a couple hours so we decided to just do the epidural just in case labor lasted longer.

4:15 At an 8. Started Pitocin to help speed things up.

5:00ish My monitor kept alarming because my heart rate was dropping. It was still in normal range so the nurse just silenced the alarm. I still looked at the monitor every time it took my blood pressure though. Around 5:00 I noticed the babies heart rate was jumping all over the place and thought maybe I had just bumped the monitor on my belly. The nurse walked in shortly after and informed me what I saw was really happening. His heart rate was dropping into the 60's. We needed to get the baby out fast to avoid complications for him.

5:15ish The doctor came in and we were ready to push. Babies heart rate continued bouncing around. The doctor looked worried and asked the nurse to get forceps and a vacuum. Of course Matthew and I got a little nervous and it made me push EXTREMELY hard to get him here safely. We ended up only needing the vacuum and NOT forceps luckily.

5:29 BROXON MATTHEW WALKER was born after about 4 contractions. He was a little blue and didn't cry right away which was a little scary but he figured it out pretty quickly and pinked right up. His head wasn't even cone shaped from the vacuum! We were so happy to see that he was okay. The doctor said his cord was really short and he was tethered in. That is probably the reason why I was dilating so early but never when into labor on my own.

He is now 10 days old and the postnatal fatigue finally hit me. I've been in pajamas all day and we ordered pizza for dinner. Brayli is such a great big sister and helper. She tells me when he is crying and says, "go get him," "go change him," etc, etc. She LOVES "Baby Brox" and so do we!

Kimi and I attempted to take newborn pics while dinner was cooking the other night. We got a few keepers but he wanted to be awake and kept going cross-eyed on us. This is one of my favorites.