a peek inside: The Bump {16} - Owen's Birth Story

I never really expected little Owen to arrive as early as he did. I wished he would but honestly thought he'd arrive after Thanksgiving. He sure seemed cozy enough in there to me! I couldn't help but get overly excited thinking about him arriving and then having to tell myself that we still had a couple of weeks left.

When I came in to the week prior to his birth, I began to have a slight feeling that I needed to prepare my work space for me to potentially not come back to for awhile without notice. Not quite sure if I actually did that so one of these days, I should go back and make sure I didn't leave a dirty dish in my file cabinet! What I didn't prepare for was all the house/fun duties at home. I was always so tired after work so I typically left major chores and any fun projects for the weekends. I had such grand plans for the day he was born - cleaning the house, doing tons of laundry, blogging, etc. I'm not too bummed out that this didn't happen and luckily for me, Gary and I have both been really good about keeping up with our chores even during Owen's first few days at home. (I'm not sure our sleep deprivation has actually set in yet...) And besides, we had a baby that day instead! I'd say that we accomplished quite a lot! (It's also a little crazy that he arrived so close to the day I wished he'd come - November 17)

Owen's Birth Story
The night before Owen was born, Gary and I joined his mom and dad for dinner at Rubaiyat. I'm glad we got a lovely meal in before our baby was born but let me tell you - I am still not happy about not eating the leftovers! Gspice wouldn't let me eat the three-day old leftovers in the fridge. We arrived home at about 7:30 p.m. and I tried to keep my feet up as they were the size of elephants (yes, they had gotten even bigger than tree trunks!) By 10 pm I decided it was time to sleep. Not 18 minutes later I awoke to my first contraction. It was painful enough to wake me up and I had to breath through it a little bit. I immediately found a contraction timer app and started counting. After determining they were 5 minutes apart, lasting 1 minute each, I tried calling Gary. No answer. Reallllly?????? I got my huge pregnant self out of bed, stomped down the stairs only to find him asleep on the couch! Don't worry, I woke him up and said something like, "You should answer your phone! I am having contractions!" Probably scared the pants off him :-) I decided to take a shower in case this was the real thing while Gary called the OB department. I'm not quite sure what they suggested exactly but we took some time to clean up the house and finish packing the hospital bags (which, let me tell you, I BARELY OPENED during the entire stay at the hospital). We decided to head to the hospital at 1:15 a.m. after taking one last pregnancy photo:

At this point, I had been up since 6:15 a.m. Friday morning. After a long day at work, only because I felt so pregnant and got a little cranky, I was already exhausted. You can see it in my eyes! Little did I know that Owen would take sooooo long before he was ready to actually come out!

Luckily for us, we were the only patients in OB for the day. I got the nice big delivery room and lots of attention, which was so nice. I felt very well taken care of and monitored. Sadly, after an initial exam, I wasn't dilated one bit. I remember looking at Gary and freaking out that they'd send me home. How could they when I was having these contractions! I took the next few hours relatively well - I walked for about 20-30 minutes and then sat in a rocking chair for about 2.5 hours. I watched/listed to TV and Parenthood S4 while breathing through regular contractions. At about 4:30 am, I was examined again, only this time I was at 6cm! CRAZY! I really didn't think the contractions were that bad. Our doctor was called immediately while I got officially admitted. The only downside to this part was having to be stuck three times before the IV took. I really don't like needles... My nurse also talked to me a little bit about getting an epidural, which throughout my entire pregnancy I really wanted and only wavered on that for a moment before saying, YES PLEASE. My doctor also said the same thing to the nurse so I skipped the whirlpool and got the epidural at 5:30 am.

The next few hours went by in a nice sleepy slumber until I got to see my doctor for the first time at 8 am. I believe I was 8cm at this point and we all thought that by 10 am I'd be 10cm and would labor down for two hours and have this little bundle by noon. Wishful thinking. Got checked at 10 am and had moved to 9cm. Got checked again at noon and was still at 9cm. This continued despite receiving some pitocin for the next 4.5 hours. Let me tell you, laboring this long - I watched basically the whole entire season 4 of Parenthood. Good thing I bought that for this very occasion!

At 4:30pm, my doctor returned and gave me a quick but meaningful talk about how if things didn't progress we may have to consider another avenue. He didn't have to even say the words C-Section and my body went into overdrive. Within the hour I was fully dilated and he wanted me to labor down for at least an hour before pushing. This is when I got particularly nervous, shaking and all. Gary was a sweetheart and helped calm me. What really got me through the next hour or so were the contractions. Unfortunately, by the 4:30-5 pm mark, my epidural felt like it had completely stopped working. I endured the last two hours with what I would guess to be about 15-20% affect of the epidural (on the flip side, I didn't have to feel any contractions for a solid 11 hours). The contractions were relatively bad and my breathing got more intense during this time.

During the intense breathing, I kept thinking that I could certainly start pushing if they wanted me to but still felt like I could resist the urge. Turns out I should have spoken up sooner - my doctor said that if this had been my second baby, I'd probably already have a baby! Me and pain, who knew we were such good friends. I started to push just after 6 pm and without all the nitty gritty, little Owen arrived at 6:29 pm.