Lucas….a birth story

Several people have asked about Lucas’s birth story. It’s a long one, and our birth plan was kind of thrown out the window – though, we did go into the induction day with an open mind and just wanting him to be healthy.

Early last week, I kept complaining about my hips hurting. The pain was pretty intense Tuesday night and I woke up on Wednesday morning around 4 a.m. not being able to sleep through the pain. Apparently, the pain was actually contractions, but it wasn’t what I had imagined contractions to be.

One last photo as a pregnant woman!


We got to the hospital at 7, checked in and we were taken to our labor and delivery room by 7:15. What was funny was the room we were in was the one we had seen on the hospital tour and it had a not so great view – the instructor told us that the rarely use this room because of the view. Turns out last week was a very busy week for babies. And this was one of the only clean rooms when we checked in.

I was hooked up and started pitocin by 8:30 a.m. My doctor came by and checked me and I was 3 cm dilated – up from the 2 on Monday. So I was already in early stages of labor before ever arriving at the hospital. My feelings were confirmed when they told me when I should be feeling contractions, and that had been what woke me up at 4 a.m. So if we hadn’t had the induction date set, I think we would have had the baby within the next two or so days.

We were up, moving around and working through contractions with no problems. Around 10, the doctor came in and broke my water – I just didn’t realize how intense that plus the pitocin would make the contractions. Around noon, they checked again andhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif I was up to 4 cm dilated. They then estimated I would dilate about 1 cm per hour. By 1:00, I knew I couldn’t go the next 6 hours in that much pain, so I requested the drug to take the edge off the contractions.

Fifteen minutes later, I was requesting the anesthesiologist and an epidural.

The epidural was placed close to 2 p.m. and things felt good then. They checked me at 4, and I was only at 5 cm. The doctor told me that she would check back in an hour and if I hadn’t progressed, we may have to discuss other “alternatives.” At that point, my mom had been with us for a few hours, and she had mentioned I needed to laugh the baby down. So I had her looking up anything funny on her tablet. When we didn’t find anything worth watching, I told her to pull up damnyouautocorrect.com. That seemed to do the trick. Within one hour, I had dilated from 5 to 9.

By 6 we were pushing. I’d had to get more meds for the knife-like pains I was having in my leg. And by 7, the doctor was getting concerned because the baby wasn’t descending like he should have. By 8:00, she was talking c-section because he wasn’t descending enough, his heart rate was dropping and he couldn’t get around my pubic bone. At 8:30, the c-section was mentioned again and while she gave us the option of continuing on with pushing, Kenny and I knew that our best option was the c-section.

At that point, a team of doctors and nurses moved in on me like vultures. I was in the operating room by 9. Kenny was brought in a few minutes later. The doctor had mentioned they needed some music, and mentioned Pandora – and then asked me if I had a preference. I told her that the baby (who everyone was still calling McLittle at this point) liked Michael Jackson, so a Michael Jackson channel was chosen.

Lucas was born to ‘Thriller’ playing in the background. It was kind of perfect.

They showed us the baby over the curtain, and then whisked him away. We then had the longest two minutes of our lives as we watched doctors try to get him to breathe and cry. There was a television monitor set up at the top of a wall where we could see them at work. Eventually, they took Kenny over to him, and the baby cried (barely.) They weighed him (8 pounds, 7 ounces), measured him (20 inches long) and wrapped him up to bring him over to me.

About 45 minutes later, I was taken into a recovery room. Our parents were able to come back one at a time, and a few photos were taken (I actually appear in the background of a few, which I discovered tonight. I look like death. One photo was taken of me with Lucas when we were moved out of recovery.) We were moved to the mom and baby room after 11, and the fun really began!