At my 36, 38, 39 and 40 week prenatal visits, my midwife checked to see if I was progressing towards labor. At my 39 week check-up, my midwife was delivering twins so another doctor in the office did my check-up. Then at my 40 week visit, my midwife was again delivering a baby. Funny how this never happened at any of the other prenatal visits. At 40 weeks though, I decided I needed to visit with my actual midwife so I waited for her. Even at 40 weeks it looked like I was no where close to going into labor on my own. So we tentatively scheduled for me to be induced on October 24.
Well, on my due date (Oct. 16) my friend had her baby girl! She was due on the 24th, so we thought it was pretty funny that it looked like we were switching due dates. This was my friend's 3rd child, and she had once mentioned to me how she craves cinnamon after having a baby. So instead of having a baby on the 16th, I decided to make cinnamon rolls for her! It was my first attempt at ever making them, but I thought they turned out well!
I started taking long walks up and down the hills in Bountiful hoping to kick-start labor. The walks would cause my Braxton Hicks contractions to start being a lot more regular, but after a few hours they would start going away.
On October 18th, my midwife called me to let me know that she would be up in the Uintahs for the next few days. She gave me her cell phone number and told me to call her before I go to the hospital if I go into labor.
On October 19th, I decided I wanted Costa Vida for dinner. So PE and I walked down the hill to Costa Vida and shared a burrito. I was having pretty regular Braxton Hicks at this point in time (about every 5 minutes). After dinner, PE mentioned that he really wanted to get fries and bring them home so he could eat them with mayo and our chilean hot sauce. So we walked further down the hill to Wendy's and bought some fries. The walk back up the hill was a bit harder on me. My contractions were getting a little more intense, but I still wasn't sure if I was in labor or not. We made it back to our apartment and ate french fries w/ mayo & hot sauce while I kept track of how close together my contractions were. We were rudely interrupted by a salesman at this point in time. PE answered the door and let the guy give his sales pitch. The salesman could see me on the couch through the doorway and so he kept trying to drag me into the conversation, and I was a bit terse with him. I really wanted to tell him to go away and leave us alone because I was going to have a baby!!! Well, the salesman finally took "no" for an answer (after the 100th time), and left us alone.
My contractions were 3-5 minutes apart, but I still wasn't sure if they were real contractions or just braxton hicks because they weren't painful. We decided to try to get some sleep, and PE told me we couldn't go to the hospital until after midnight (so that insurance doesn't charge us for an extra day). I didn't sleep at all because my contractions were getting more intense. So once it was midnight, I woke PE up and told him that I thought we needed to go to the hospital. He told me to call my midwife to see what she thought. I tried calling her twice but just got her voicemail.
So we left for the hospital and arrived there at 12:51 am. They took me up to labor and delivery and hooked me up to the monitors. Based on my contraction pattern, I was in labor but when they checked me, I was still completely closed! But they let us stay at the hospital and gave me some medicine to space out the contractions since my contractions were right on top of each other. They also put me on oxygen for the baby's sake. The nurse kept calling my midwife, but couldn't reach her until 5 am. She told them to start me on pitocin at 8 am. So at 8 am I was measuring at a 2 and so they put me on pitocin. My midwife came in around 10:30 am. She checked me and I was at a 3.5, so she broke my water and kept me on pitocin. We ended up switching delivery rooms at this point in time so I could use the nice jacuzzi tub to help cope with the pain.
Well, they couldn't get the portable monitors to work so they ended up having to pull me out of the tub (but it wasn't really helping anyways). At this point in time they thought I still had ~6 hours left and I knew that I couldn't handle the pain for 6 more hours so I asked for an epidural. They got the epidural in pretty fast and it was a relief. Shortly after the doctors/nurses left the room, I felt like I needed to switch over to my right side. My nurse came in to help with that, but she decided to check me. She said that the baby's head was really low so she called my midwife in and she checked me and said that I was at completion. Suddenly we had a bunch of nurses in the room getting everything ready for the baby. If I had known how close I was, I probably wouldn't have gotten the epidural!
I pushed for somewhere between 5-10 contractions, and our baby boy entered the world at 12:46 pm! He came into the world screaming. They wiped him off and gave him to me to hold. They then did a wellness check on him and measured him. He was 8 lbs 12 oz and 21.5" long! Then I was able to breastfeed him, and PE and I were able to enjoy our little boy. About an hour later a nurse came in to see if I could get up and walk yet. But I still couldn't feel my legs at all. Turns out that they forgot to turn off the epidural! So we had to wait in the delivery room for a few more hours before I could feel my legs and walk.
We called our parents/siblings around 3 pm to tell them the good news. My dad didn't believe me when I told him he needed to come see his grandbaby. So we had visitors off and on for the next 2 days. It also took us the whole time we were at the hospital to decide on a name for our baby boy. But after seeing him and sleeping on several names, we finally decided on a good name for him.
We love our baby boy very much and we are so grateful to have him in our family!
.JPG)
