The Day You Were Born...

In honor of Drew's 17 month birthday today, I thought I would tell the story of his birth. A friend of a friend told one of her birth stories on her blog and since I love reading about these, I thought I would share Drew's story. (this is crazy long, but I just had to journal it the way I remember for our family journal)

My due date was November 12, 2006 and I was bound and determined to make it to the month of November. I had already had my mommy bracelet made with November topaz's on there, I wanted to make it past Halloween since I didn't get him a costume. I was going to make it into November...until October 26, 2006 Drew decided to show me who was going to be boss from now on! I had my 36 week appt with my OB, whom I Love! He told me that Drew had not dropped and that I had not started to dilate. Whew, I did not want this process to be starting already! The next week I went for my 37 week appt and I told Will on the way there, "he hasn't dropped yet, this appt is going to be uneventful"...Well as soon as I saw Dr. Robins, I told him I didn't feel like anything had changed and that I didn't think Drew had dropped. He took one look at me and said "I don't know about that". During the exam he informed me that I was dilated to 1cm and that Drew had indeed dropped quite a bit and that he was feeling his head. Ok, ouch...that was what he was doing in there! He told me that he didn't think I would make it to my due date and to make sure my bags were packed. Well, he was right because 3 days later I went into labor. Bags NOT packed. For those of you who know me, you know that I am a big planner. But I just knew I would make it past Nov. 1st!

I got up to go to the bathroom at 5am and went back to sleep. At 5:30 I was woken up by my water breaking in bed. It wasn't this huge flooding water that I expected, mine was more of a slow trickle. But as soon as it happened, I knew it couldn't be anything else. I immediately got up to go to the bathroom. I sat there in disbelief for a few minutes and then called to my sleeping husband to let him know I thought he should get up. He didn't believe me when I said I thought my water was breaking. He told me it was just extra discharge. Ok Will, I have been the one carrying this baby for 9 months, I know what is normal and what is not! I sat there scared on the toilet for several minutes, thinking to myself. I know that I will not come home from the hospital without this baby if my water is breaking. I was scared, I needed a few more days to prepare for this birth! I started doing some cleaning upstairs and my water kept slowing breaking. I finally decided I needed to take a shower. I wanted to take one early but I had every intention of staying at home as long as possible. I didn't want to rush to the hospital to be confined to a bed. I wanted to use many different positions and let my body labor as naturally as possible. Around 7:30am I decided that I needed to call my doctor. When he found out that my water had broken, he told me I needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible. ( I guess I forgot from the birthing class that once my water broke I needed to go!) I finished getting our bags packed and I remember going to put a few bills in the mailbox before we loaded up in the car. Great timing of course, 8:00am on a Thursday morning headed for George Bush and the Dallas North Tollway, traffic central! I was having pretty bad contractions all the way there. I remember feeling like it took us forever to even get out of our neighborhood because of school/work traffic that morning. Will drove with the hazards on trying to get onto the Tollway in a hurry. He dropped me off at the front door of Plano Presbyterian and went to park the car. We headed up to labor and delivery and they were expecting me. I got undressed and into the gown and the nurse examined me, I was already dilated to a 6cm. She assured me that if I wanted the epidural that they needed to call the anesthesiologist right away. I remember doing my breathing that I learned in the birthing class and it really helped me get through the contractions. Getting the epidural was a piece of cake compared to the contractions I was having. The nurse who was with me while he did it was fabulous and kept me very calm. I got sick from the epidural and my blood pressure dropped and I threw up. Luckily my doctor was in the room at that time and knew that I needed some other kind of med to help me feel better. After I got that I felt better within minutes. It was probably around 11 by the time I got my epidural and was able to lay down and relax. Drew's heartrate was a little "tacky" so at some point they put an internal monitor on him. I thought those monitors "never came off" like the one around your belly, but I was wrong. At one point it was just Will and me in the room and we were addicted to watching the monitors when all the sudden Drew's went blank. Common sense and the birthing class told us that if something were wrong, it just wouldn't all of the sudden go blank but we were in a panick. We called for the nurse but they were all busy...after a few more seconds of staring at this blank heart monitor for my little boy, I started to freak out! I told Will to start screaming down the hallway and to get someone in there! My nurse came running and when she saw the monitor, she too started to panick. OH NO! They were flipping me from side to side trying to get his heartrate to come back up, she was yelling that she needed a doctor in there! A couple more nurses came in and luckily one of them noticed that the damn plug had come unplugged. It was the scariest part of the whole day! After some tears, we were able to relax again. I looked at the clock and was really hoping I had at least an hour to relax and try to gain some strength. But...about 11:45 I was fully dilated and ready to push. I pushed for almost 2 hours! It was hard because I couldn't feel the contractions to help me know when to push. Drew's head was turned to the side instead of facing down and I just wasn't going to get this kid out. I was very set on having a vaginal delivery. I just knew that if I had a C-section this time that I would never get to experience it at all. My doctor came in and said he thought we needed to get Drew out and did I want his opinion...I hesitated because I was afraid he was about to wheel me to surgery...he said if I allowed him to use forceps that he thought I could have Drew out in 1 push but that the way he was turned, he was basically stuck. I agreed to the forceps and 1 push and I delivered our first born child.

NICU had to come in to do all his testing since he was a forceps delivery. That was ok with me, especially since they did everything right there in the delivery room. Drew was born at 1:49pm was 6 lbs 13 oz and was 19" long. They did his apgars and everything else right there while Will took pictures and I got "worked on". It was truly the most amazing day of my life. I didn't get to hold him right away because of the NICU staff but after they did their tests, he was given to me to have skin to skin contact and to nurse before he went to the nursery for his bath. We have been in love ever since!