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Sunday, May 14, 2017

Joey's Birth Story

Happy Mother's Day! This year is so special because I get to celebrate with my baby boy! Since this boy made me a mother, I thought I would share his birth story with you all today!

I will be the first person to admit, being pregnant and delivery is HARD. Your body will go through a lot and you will think you can't do it. But that is why I decided to write this post today. Because you CAN do it! And after it's all done, you will have the most precious baby that is all yours. 

I do want to add that this is my experience and opinions. Everyone's body is different and some may have more difficult to easier pregnancies. This is a long post, so I apologize in advance!

My due date was April 1.. but that date came and went and still no baby boy! At this point I was going to the OB appointments every week. While leaving my appointment the day before my due date the nurses joked, saying they hoped not to see me next week for a scheduled appointment (just in case I went past my due date). Well Thursday April 6 came around, which was my next scheduled appointment and still no sign of baby. I went into the office very tired and frustrated and all the nurses could tell. By this time my ankles were no longer able to be seen and they were now full on 'kankles'. After my exam the doctor decided the best thing to do was to induce me. She was on call that weekend, so she scheduled me to go to the hospital at 8pm Friday April 7. This is when I started to cry in the exam room. I don't know if it was all the emotions knowing that sometime this weekend our baby would be here and all the pregnancy pains would be over and he would finally be in our arms? Or the fear of the actual labor and the unknown?  Either way, Joe and I left the office finally with a plan. We made our necessary calls to our families to let them know. Joe went back to work and I of course went home and cleaned the house. I mean come on.. what else was I suppose to do!

Friday morning started off like every other. Joe went to work because there was no reason for him to stay home. I repacked my hospital bag 3 times, thinking I forgot things (which I packed way more then I needed!) We had an early dinner that night since lord knows when I would actually eat again. Even though it was lent and I was not suppose to eat meat, I had a chicken cheesesteak. I said a prayer for it since I felt so bad, but I think God would forgive me under the circumstances. My parents picked up Charger to keep him at their house for the weekend. Of course I cried when he left.. we'll blame it on the hormones.

We left for the hospital around 7:30pm even though it's 5 minutes away.. ya know just to be on time. Well once we got to labor and delivery, we sat an waited. We waited for 45 minutes before they brought us back to the triage. Once they put us in the room they looked for my paperwork which we completed weeks prior, but they couldn't find it. So I had to complete it all again. At this point I was so annoyed because my biggest pet peeve is people being late and not prepared. It's now about 10pm when they actually began the process. I had an exam and still no dilation. They hooked me up with an IV, three different monitors and blood pressure cuff and then we just wait. Joe was able to sleep for a few hours but there was no way I could sleep. Around 2 am is when I started to feel the contractions. These were unlike the braxton hicks contractions. These were so much more uncomfortable and felt like I had to get up and walk around. As the night went on they only got worse. They gave me oxycotin for the pain. Boy did that send me for a loop. Everything in the room I saw was leopard print and it made me feel like I was drunk. I did not like that at all. But at least it made me sleep for about 2 hours. Around 6am I had another exam and they decided to move me to the delivery room.

Once in the delivery room it was once again the waiting game. I tried to hold off as long as possible to get the epidural since I would have to stay in bed once they did it, but around 1pm I decided it was time. I had an exam about every two hours and it was taking forever to dilate. I was at a rate of 1cm per hour. The nurses tried sitting me up to eat lunch but Joey's vitals spiked so I passed on the broth and opted just for ginger ale. Sometime during this day I also spiked a fever. It wasn't going down, so they had to put me on anti-biotics. 

Around 9pm during the exam I heard the best news yet! I was at 10cm and the doctor said it was time to start pushing. This is when fear really set in, because I've only heard horror stories. The first pushes I thought to myself, 'Man this is a piece of cake' well fast forward to an hour and forty five minutes later of pushing, there was many tears, saying 'I can't do it anymore' and ice pops consumed. Finally the doctor yelled.. STOP PUSHING. Apparently that was a really good push and his shoulder popped out. There was lots of rushing around by the doctors and nurses. They told me I needed just a couple more pushes and he would be here. I'm not quite sure how many more there really were, but with a baseball game on the tv and (talk about irony) our wedding song- Thomas Rhett: Die a Happy Man came on the pandora station, Joseph Michael was born into this world. 

Immediately after he was born they put him on my chest for skin to skin. But it didn't last long since my blood pressure spiked to an unsafe rate. They handed him off to Joe and hooked me up to about 5 monitors. They were able to get it down a little with some meds and oxygen. Since I was on anti-biotics during the labor, Joey had to be put on them too. I was so sad about it, because I felt like it was my fault. They brought him to the NICU to get the smallest IV I've ever seen. They brought him back to me around 3am, and I'm not gonna lie I just stared at him until doctors came in at 6am. I had to keep the blood pressure cuff on throughout the night and it went off every 15 minutes. So there was no sleeping for me!  

I was discharged on Monday night, but I stayed with Joey until Tuesday. Since he was put on anti-biotics so late, he had to stay in their care for 48 hours. Thankfully the nurses arranged for me to stay in my same room with him under a 'night watch' and Joey didn't have to stay in the NICU. All his tests came back negative and he was released Tuesday afternoon!






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