Thatcher's Birth Story

On Thursday August 20th, I went to work like it was any normal day. By 11:30 I was having pretty regular contractions that were getting closer together and more painful. Around 12:45, they were pretty pretty consistent in all of the areas that the hospital wanted in order to come in for a labor check. I decided to go up and talk to my boss and tell her that I may need to leave. By the time I got up the stairs, they were getting more and more strong and closer together so she decided that it might be best to go to the hospital to be checked. She drove me to the hospital and I was all checked in to be monitored by about 1:30. After being there for about 2 1/2 hours, the nurse said I wasn't progressing how they would like so she was sure that I was in early labor and I should just go home and wait it out. She told me this process could be anywhere from a few hours, to a few days...all I could think was that if this lasted a few days, I would never let Thatcher live it down.

Josh and I went to dinner and had some spicy Thai food. Once we got home, I bounced on my ball for a bit and then we went for a walk. During our walk, my contractions were still getting stronger and then at 6:40 (right on the dot), my water broke! We went home and loaded the car and got to the hospital and all checked in by about 7:30. Once we were hooked up to the monitor, they checked me and there still wasn't much progress from earlier that afternoon. The doctor on call said to labor it through the night and then we could do pitocin if needed. Since I was pretty positive (and hoping) we were having a c-section, I pushed off the pitocin because what was the point of getting it? Luckily, I had a fabulous nurse who totally was on my side and helped me to push off the doctor. By about midnight, my contractions were to the point where they were bringing tears to my eyes so I went ahead and asked for the IV narcotics to try and curb the pain. They ended up giving me Stadol, which worked great for about 2 hours, then they were back with a vengeance. By about 3:15 I had an epidural placed, which worked wonders.

While the epidural worked great, it brought on its' own set of problems. My blood pressure began to drop really low. I started getting dizzy, lightheaded, and nauseated. They kept trying to pump meds to bring it up, but it wasn't really working. The next thing I remember after that was waking up to about 6 nurses over the top of me, one with an oxygen mask, and one telling me they were going to place an internal monitor on Thatcher (his heart rate started dropping really low so they wanted to watch him more carefully). After we were both stable, I was able to sleep for about 2 hours or so before it was time for the nurses to make their change of shift rounds. At that point, they went ahead and pushed more meds, each time they did so, my blood pressure would drop and then we would go through the whole cycle of meds again... it would pretty miserable. Once I got the epidural and some sleep, I started to progress pretty quickly. At 3am I was still at a 2 (since about 2pm the previous afternoon). By 7 I was at a 5, and then by 10 I was at a 7. Around 9, we had made the plan to go ahead and do the c-section at 12pm and the doctor would be all set an ready. Since I was at a 7 at 10am, the nurse called the doctor and said we may need to bump up the time (which they did by 30 mins). The plan was made so now it was just time to wait.

Around 10:30, the nurse came in and started prepping me for the c-section. Around 11:20 the doctor arrived and we were all set to go. At 11:30 they wheeled us back and got everything all set up. Then at 12pm our little boy was born! He was born weighing 9lb 6oz at 20.5 inches long.

They cleaned him up and then brought him over to me, unfortunately, I was only able to hold him for about 30 seconds before my blood pressure began to tank again. I was freezing and shaking, dizzy, tingly, nauseated etc. I went in an out for the rest of the time they were sewing me back up. I could faintly hear Thatcher crying on one side and the doctor's talking on the other side. Once I was all stable and sewn back up, they wheeled us into our room. Once I was a little more awake, the doctor explained that I had a vessel, under the placenta, which had ruptured and I was losing blood. Since they were still working on getting the placenta out, they didn't realize that was where the blood was coming from. By the time they had, I had lost a lot of blood and that's why I was in and out.

After we were settled in the room, they also explained that Thatcher and I had developed some sort of infection so we were both heavily dosed with antibiotics. Once everything was explained, there was an endless supply of staff checking on us. Since Thatcher was on antibiotics, he kept having to go back to the nursery, making it so we each had our own nurse. We had a constant stream of help, which was nice! The rest of our stay went by relatively quickly, but we were so ready to get home!

36 and 37 weeks

Almost there! There hasn't really been too much going on in the past couple of weeks. Just waiting on our little man to make his debut!

Yesterday we got to "see" our boy again! He was a whopping 8lb15oz. His belly and shoulders are so big that they were off of the charts and they couldn't tell us exactly how they were measuring. He's definitely going to be a chunker! We didn't end up seeing the doctor we were supposed to so we had to wait for the doctor to call us back yesterday with the final decision for when to have baby boy! The doctor finally got back to us and we are scheduled for a c-section for next Wednesday August 26th at 9am! The end is in site! We have 1 week to go!!!! We are so excited and ready to meet our little man! By this time next week we will have him here with us!!! 

33, 34, and 35 weeks

Sorry I know I've been slacking on this. Life has been super busy! Not much has been going on, but I'll fill you in on what has happened.

33 weeks 

This is the week that we finished getting everything done. We finished buying what we still needed, we washed all of everything, and got everything organized. I also worked two weeks straight during this time...longest two weeks ever! 

34 weeks 

This week we had our maternity pictures done! They look amazing! I could not be more in love with them! There have been a few times where I look at them at tear up! It was so hard for me to choose just one that was my favorite, so I made a little collage of my top 15! 

I posted the rest on Facebook so be sure to check them out if you want to see them all! 

This was the week that we also got to see our boy again! He was weighing in at 7lbs 3oz. While I know these scans have a margin of error, he has been pretty consistent my whole pregnancy with the fact that he is getting more and more ahead on the growth chart. We will definitely be having a decent sized baby! At that appointment, the doctor discussed doing a c-section at 39 weeks if he hadn't already arrived. With his shoulders already measuring at 40w2d she was a little concerned about him getting stuck if we went another 4 weeks. She ordered another scan for us to have done at 37w5d and made a comment about if he had grown a lot between those 3 weeks, then maybe bumping that date up a little more. We are just taking it day-by-day, and I don't really feel like we will make it much passed 38 weeks anyway. 

35 weeks 

This week nothing too exciting happened, other than the fact that I slipped and fell flat on my butt. I was outside with the dogs in the rain and when I stepped off of the porch to coax Oliver inside, my feet went right out from underneath me. It hurt... Quite a bit. I shook it off and went to work. About an hour into work, I started having contractions. They started about 8 mins apart and then started getting closer together. Since I had fallen, I called the doctors office and asked them what they wanted me to do. They had me come in to be monitored and after about 2 hours they stopped. The doctor said to keep an eye on them, but whenever he was ready to come, they would just let him come! We could have a baby any day now! 

That's all! Nothing super duper. Just a few little things here and there! Our little man could be here any day, although I think he is going to wait until the week of the 17th (just a gut feeling I've had my whole pregnancy). Who knows though!