I’ve been thinking about writing this post for well over a week now. It’s true what they say: Time is a luxury when you have a newborn! Between nursing, changing diapers and just staring in wonder at our little bundle of joy, there hasn’t been much time for things like blogging… Or sleeping! But really… Who needs sleep when you can just stare at this beautiful guy:
So… now you know why I’m completely happy not getting more than two hours of sleep at a time! I’m also really trying to take in EVERYTHING, since the time is seriously flying! Another “thing that they say” that’s definitely true! The hours have felt like minutes, and we can tell that Jett is changing and getting a little bigger every day! So crazy!
So… his birth story!
It all began on Monday, January 2nd… First of all, I knew that something was a little different that afternoon as we walked around the Mall at Green HIlls. I was feeling a fair amount of pain every 10-15 minutes or so, and it was quite a chore for me to walk the short distances from Macy’s to the Apple store to Starbucks and back to our car in the Macy’s garage… I didn’t really think much of it, though, since my comfort level had slowly decreased throughout the last few weeks of my pregnancy.
Later that evening, Linny, Ali and Amy came over to make tacos and watch The Bachelor (don’t judge!)… By that time, I knew I was having contractions, but I didn’t really think too much of it because a) I thought they might be Braxton Hicks (Since I had no clue how much real contractions actually hurt) and b) they were still 10-15 minutes apart. So, we enjoyed our Mexican fiesta and reality television as I quietly tracked the contractions on an iPhone app (don’t you just love technology?!). I actually joked about how I told Jett that it’d be okay for him to go ahead and arrive that night so that I didn’t have to go back to the office on Tuesday since I had already finished everything I had hoped to before my maternity leave.
The contractions were still happening at around 10 p.m., but they hadn’t really changed, so I decided to go to bed and see how they were in the morning. My plan to sleep didn’t really work out though, as I woke up at least three or four times between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. because the contractions were really starting to hurt. By 2:30 a.m. they were getting closer together, too, and were now about seven minutes apart. At this point, Ryan was a little concerned and thought it’d be a good idea to head to the hospital. My response? “Okay, just let me take a shower because I really don’t want my hair to be dirty.” (You girls understand, right?) In the shower, the contractions were about a minute or so apart, which was a little alarming, but then they seemed to slow down when I sat or laid down.
We had our bags ready to go, and the car seat was installed, so after letting Charlie (our dog) out for a minute, we headed to the hospital. The ride there was fairly uneventful, besides the fact that the bumpy road + contractions wasn’t very much fun. Luckily, we only live about seven or eight minutes from the hospital, and there really isn’t much traffic at 4 a.m.
When we arrived at the hospital, I was pretty certain that they were going to tell us to go home (I mean, is this REALLY what it was supposed to feel like?!), and after the first nurse checked me out and found that I was only two centimeters dilated (STILL?!?!), I thought we’d be back home before dawn. However, my doctor had different plans - She decided that it’d be a good time to break my water since I was only two days away from my due date, and the contractions were legit. So, by 6:30 a.m., we were checked in and making ourselves at home in our labor and delivery room. EEK!
After the calls to our parents and close friends, we decided that we better try to rest a little since I had only gotten a couple hours of sleep and Ryan hadn’t gotten a wink. Linny and Ali joined us at the hospital and kept us company throughout the day. They were a good distraction and made everything seem a little more “normal”. I was able to carry on a normal conversation with the them, and just had to pause every five minutes or so for my contractions to pass.
In addition to breaking my water (which my doctor did at around 8:30 a.m.), I was given Pitocin, so my contractions were definitely speeding up. The nurse asked me when I wanted the epidural, and I told her I’d like to wait to “four or five centimeters”, since I had been told that getting the epidural early would slow down labor. By the time she told me I was “pretty much” at four centimeters, I quickly requested that the nurse call the anesthesiologist. NOW! The contractions weren’t unbearable, but it was definitely becoming harder to visualize my feet in the sand at the beach (a visualization that seemed to help at the beginning of labor), and I knew they’d just get worse since the nurse kept turning up the Pitocin (DAMN HER! is all I could think every time she walked over to my IV).
After the administration of the epidural (Which wasn’t as bad as I had thought it might be - or maybe my the contractions I had during the procedure really helped to take my mind off of what was happening…), I was feeling pretty good. It seemed to be working more on my left side than my right, but as soon as I laid on my right side, gravity helped the epidural to work more evenly.
My doctor and the nurses were pretty confident in thinking that I would continue dilating at the rate of one centimeter per hour, and delivering the baby that evening. Little did they know, Jett had other plans!
Around 1 p.m., I started to feel some pain, which was odd, since I had been pretty much pain free since the epidural was administered (Seriously… I could watch the peaks and valleys of the contractions on the monitor and not feel a thing!). So, I called the nurse. She was at lunch (thinking that we had HOURS to go), so another nurse came in to check me. She quickly discovered that I was dilated to 10 centimeters, which was a shock to all of us!
This kind of made me panic, since my nurse was at lunch, my doctor didn’t plan to return until the evening, and it seemed like this baby could just pop out at any minute (That’s what it seemed like to this first-time mom, at least!). At one point, Ryan actually went out of the room to try to find the nurse, or doctor, since I told him that I felt a really, really strong urge to push, which left me all alone in the room, thinking that I was going to have this baby all by myself (Again, something I suppose only a first-timer would think!).
Soon enough, the nurse and Ryan were at my side, each holding one leg and counting as I pushed. This was one of the most calm, pleasant experiences of the whole delivery process (The epidural topper probably had something to do with these feelings, I’m sure…). For a little while, it was just the three of us, and we were just sitting there chatting. I know Ryan was a little worried/nervous, but I felt quite serene. It was great, really. Not long after I started pushing, my doctor and a couple other nurses came in and after about a total of 35 minutes of pushing, I was holding my baby boy in my arms.
I had so many anxieties and worries leading up to the end of my pregnancy, but once they handed him to me, all of those feelings disappeared. I felt like I was “home”, like everything was now complete, and that I already knew this little guy who I was seeing for the first time. That’s the best I can describe how I felt the first time I saw him. It’s as if the missing part of my heart was handed to me, but I didn’t even know it was missing until I saw him. It was pretty incredible.
After the delivery, the three of us just hung out and tried out nursing for the next couple hours. Honestly, I didn’t realize it had been a couple hours, and when we did realize we had been in our bliss bubble for that long, we texted our family and friends in the waiting room to tell them that everything was perfect.
The couple days after Jett was born were quite a whirlwind… Right after he was born, the room was crazy with tests, his first bath, and family and friends wanting to hold this new precious family member. That first night was quite crazy… We had him room-in, and I don’t think I slept until they came to take him to the nursery for his pediatrician visit at 6 a.m. Between guests, a photo shoot, more tests and just trying to get the hang of nursing, our time in the hospital was quite busy!
On Thursday we came home, which was quite exciting! Jett really loved the car ride home, and he’s really settled right in to our little world! We couldn’t be happier - we are so in love with our little guy!
By the way, is anyone still reading? This is quite a novel of a post, but I really wanted to document everything so I wouldn’t forget! Lots more to write about, which I’ll save for future posts!
Love, love, love! Baby love! :)
xoxo
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